Wynne Gray: IRB raises eyebrows with mystery rankings

COMMENT


Not having an IRB staff list, I had no idea Messrs Duckworth and Lewis had shifted from their summer work to invade rugby.

But evidence arrived with the revelation that, less than a month away from the World Cup, the sport's ruling body had some official world rankings.

And what's more, the IRB boffins had worked at their usual breakneck pace with extensive data on international matches going back to 1871 to make their findings.

In one of their rare communications with the outside world, the IRB unveiled their choices which had been accumulated using such factors as the rating gap, weighting changes and core ratings.

Maybe it is a worthy formula but it looks more suited to the extraordinary run-chase calculations employed when one-day cricket hits bad weather.

When the Dublin-based IRB rate Ireland third behind England and New Zealand, you can also raise a quizzical eyebrow.

As former Wallaby turned television observer Chris "Buddha" Handy noted: "Maybe the IRB, whose headquarters are in Dublin, is a little too close to St James Gate, where the famous Guinness is brewed, and they have been imbibing a little too much."

Interesting, though, that Ireland who have won 15 of their last 17 tests (many against inferior opponents) are ahead of the Wallabies (rated fourth) despite beating them only once in the past 25 years.

It is odd that the rugby world is about to descend on Australia for the fifth World Cup and the IRB chooses to rank sides officially for the first time.

Why they did not use those ratings for this tournament is baffling. Illogically instead, the IRB chose to go with the finishing order from the last World Cup. Why use those four-year-old results when, according to their own press release, they have been rating sides for some time?

They claim, for example, that the highest rating ever given a team was in 1997 to the All Blacks.

Why were these seedings not produced to work out an up-to-date World Cup draw?

Using the IRB ratings the All Blacks would have had the Springboks in their pool, England and Argentina would have been in the same section, Ireland and France in another, while the Wallabies and Samoa would have rounded out the top eight in their pool.

Seeded teams for this year's cup who would have missed that preference on the IRB ratings were Scotland and Wales. Maybe that home union fellowship explains the delay.