The Southern Hemisphere tours of the Home nations and Ireland are well and truly over by now with almost all of the players from these teams now able to put their feet up for a bit of rest and recuperation after what has been a very long season.
For what it’s worth I thought it would be interesting to see which team had the best tour.
This could be difficult as each team faced different opponents and some had midweek games while others didn’t. To try and take away any bias and subjectivity we have a look at the results as well as the comparative rankings of the teams according to the IRB.
The only undefeated northern hemisphere team in the test matches was Scotland, although it can be argued that their opponents were ranked below the opposition the other three countries faced. However, apart from Fiji, the teams Scotland faced were above them in the world rankings list prior to the tour.
Ireland came close to a historic victory against the All Blacks in the 2nd test match, ultimately going down to a very late Dan Carter drop kick. However, this was as good as it got for the Irish who suffered a big loss in the opening test match and lost by an even bigger margin in the 3rd test.
The two series involving England and Wales were a far closer affair as can be seen by the points differential for all three tests. However, neither team won a test match, and the best result out of the 6 test matches involving these teams was a draw for England in the 3rd test against the Springboks.
Wales are probably the team who will be feeling like they let things slip during the test series against Australia, losing the 2nd test to a last minute penalty, and going even closer in the 3rd test.
The results of the four teams, for the test matches only, as follows:
| Team | Results | Points Differential |
| England |
L L D |
-14 |
| Ireland |
L L L |
-95 |
| Scotland |
W W W |
+16 |
| Wales |
L L L |
-11 |
The IRB world rankings scheme is quite a complex one and it is beyond the intention of this article to go into an explanation of how it works. However, whatever its perceived weaknesses it does give some idea of the teams relative performance.
The table below lists the rankings of each team prior to the start of their tours and those at the end of the tours with actual points according to the ranking scheme in brackets (from IRB website):
| Team | Ranking at start of tour | Ranking at end of tour | Change |
| England | 4th (83.62) | 4th (83.09) | 0 |
| Ireland | 8th (79.85) | 7th (79.85) | +1 |
| Scotland | 12th (73.86) | 9th (77.97) | +3 |
| Wales | 5th (83.32) | 6th (82.26) | -1 |
The table shows the expected result of Scotland gaining places following their successful tour, while England’s ranking remained the same, in spite of them having slightly fewer points at the end of the tour.
Wales dropped one place, this in spite of coming so close to beating Australia, a team ranked a few places above them at the start of the tour. The odd thing is that Ireland who according to scoreboard had the worst of tours actually came away from their tour to New Zealand one position higher on the rankings list than at the start.
This just highlights that while the rankings scheme is a fairly complex one it can still produce the odd result at times. One has to bear in mind that the tests involving the home nations and Ireland were not the only ones taking place in the last month. France, Georgia and Italy were also on tour and the Pacific Nations Cup was taking place.
The results of these other games would also have had a bearing on the results. It seems like the result in Argentina this past Saturday, where France beat Argentina, had quite a bearing on the list. France gained two positions compared to the week before while Argentina fell two positions in the same time. This helped propel Ireland up the table by one position in spite of the big loss against the All Blacks.
South African fans are used to seeing the Springboks in the top 3 of the world rankings and are always looking to them to top the rankings and so may wonder why all the fuss about the position of teams outside the top 3.
The rankings matter as they are used to determine the seeding of teams for the draw of the pools for the World Cup. Teams in the top 4 are given top seed status and so are guaranteed each to have their own pool and thus not meet in the group stages. Teams from position five to eight are then seeded in the 2nd group and drawn in separate pools, with the same applying to teams from nine to twelve.
In a worst case scenario the team ending 9th could face the top team in the world and the 5th best team and another team ranked lower than them, making it very hard to progress to the knockout stages. However, if that same team ended 8th instead then they, in a similar draw, would face the top team and two teams ranked lower than them outside the top 8.
The draw for the 2015 World Cup in England is due to take place at the end of the year. There is a lot of international rugby to be played between now and then.
The only teams that can do anything significant about their relative positions in the top 8 are the southern hemisphere teams who will be taking part in the Castle Rugby Championship. Argentina, in particular, stand to gain or lose the most in respect to their position within the top 8.
Apart from obviously wanting to win the inaugural four nations championship the Springboks will want to win to consolidate, and perhaps boost, their position in the top 4. There is currently a smaller gap, points wise, between South Africa in 3rd and France in 5th place than there is between South Africa and Australia who are currently 2nd.
The Autumn Internationals will also thus have increased significance this year. There may well still be a competition for two of the top seed spots by then, depending on how the Castle Rugby Championship goes. The competition for places 5 to 8 could also prove to be very interesting.