Tests take on World Cup significance

SOUTH AFRICA'S 63-9 win over Argentina in Ellis Park last Saturday has cemented the world champions' status atop the IRB's world rankings, inching them further ahead of New Zealand.

The Tri-Nations, which resumes with Saturday's global summit in Cape Town, will go some way toward determining the pecking order at the top of the game. But the 20 Test matches pencilled in for the November European window will have a bigger bearing on the rankings and by extension seedings for the 2011 World Cup draw on December 2nd in London.

The IRB's decision to base the group seedings and draw for 2011 on world rankings has, as the Ireland coach Declan Kidney recently observed, given the November Tests a significance they've never had. With the top four ensured of a number-one RWC seeding and those ranked fifth to eighth a number-two seeding, Ireland are clinging a tad perilously to eighth place, just above Scotland, after seven defeats in nine matches.

The world rankings are calculated on a "points exchange" system whereby sides take points off each other based on match results. Whatever one side gains, the other loses. The exchanges are based on the result, the relative strength of the teams and the margin of victory (more or less than 15 points), and there is an allowance (three rankings points) for home advantage.

Ireland reached a high of third in the world just under two years ago but, fifth going into the World Cup, dropped to seventh by the end of the finals and to eighth after their worst Six Nations ever.

While Ireland were losing away to New Zealand and Australia last summer, Scotland were afforded the opportune time to twice play an Argentina side ranked third in the world after their RWC exploits but at nothing like the same strength. Scotland, with the added stake of playing on Puma soil, won the second Test and but for a late try by Argentina would have usurped Ireland in eighth place.

Kidney is also right to contend that Ireland could win all three autumnal matches at home to Canada, New Zealand and Argentina and still drop in the rankings. It's also true the potential damage for losing at home to Canada would be greater than the gains made in beating New Zealand.

While long-term forecasts on the value of any matches are practically impossible, based on current tallies, Ireland could gain two ranking points by beating New Zealand but would lose 2.5 points if defeated by Canada.

Ireland have to at least match Scotland's results (and those of Italy) next November to retain the minimum requirement of a top-eight ranking and second-tier seeding. To that end, the picture is clarified by the similarities of the schedules; Scotland host New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina.

There is, of course, a danger we could read too much into these rankings and seedings. For example, as eighth and ninth seeds, Ireland and Scotland could still end up in the same pool , while there would be no avoiding a tricky third seed such as Italy, Fiji or Samoa, in any case.

Nonetheless, securing a top-eight ranking would at least save Ireland from being drawn with two teams ranked above them and therefore the possibility of being thrown into a pool containing, say, the All Blacks and France.

Indeed, the French management are kicking up the biggest fuss of all, as the two heavy defeats to Australia - when France were minus players from top-four sides - have left them in seventh place.

So for the first time they have little hope of a top-four World Cup seeding and every chance of facing one of the Southern Hemisphere big three in the pool stages for the first time. What's more, one of their three November Tests - against the Pacific Islands - carries no ranking points