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World Rankings as at 28th August 2011


There is currently no official system of World Rankings for Australian Football, as the international game is still mostly amateur, still maturing and there are often difficulties in nations having all their best players available. However, due to popular demand, worldfootynews.com has been providing rankings since 2006. Below are the rankings as at 28th August 2011.

This is the first update since 6th June 2011 which was the last prior to the 2011 AFL International Cup. The winners Ireland have replaced Papua New Guinea as the number one contender to Australia.

The matches on the initial seeding day were much shorter games so weighted as 1 whereas International Cup matches are normally worth double.

54 IC11 men's games were played, with 4 teams graduating from provisionally ranked to fully ranked (i.e. have played 8 eligible matches) - Peace Team, China, India and Tonga (impressive in debuting inside the top 10).

Big movers were South Africa up 3 (although a slightly worse tournament than 2008 their ranking had some ground to make up from their poor results when first on the international scene), Denmark down a massive 7 positions and a 3 spot drop to Japan and Finland, in part due to some new entries being above them.

Perhaps one anomaly is the USA down a spot despite an excellent tournament. However, the rankings reflect how a team performs against its opponents, not where the side finishes a tournament (though obviously these are often closely related). Their early wins were against lowly ranked sides, and their superb victory over South Africa was somewhat diluted, statistically, by South Africa's historically low ranking. The US were then defeated by Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, hence overall their ranking did not push up.

Japan are somewhat hard done by, a symptom of the way the rankings work and having finished at the bottom of IC11 Division 1 meant they didn't have the opportunity to defeat Division 2 sides they were clearly better than. No rankings system is perfect.

World Footy News / Homes Australian Football World Rankings

(as at 28th August 2011)

Rank        Team Points Games Rank Change
1 Australia - - steady
2 Ireland 57.78 38 +2
3 Papua New Guinea 54.66 29 -1
4 New Zealand 53.00 33 -1
5 South Africa 49.03 22 +3
6 Nauru 46.15 19 -1
7 United States 45.87 35 -1
8 Tonga 44.73 9 new
9 Great Britain 43.51 43 +1
10 Samoa 41.85 18 -1
11 Canada 37.82 35 +1
12 Sweden 37.41 25 -1
13 Germany 37.37 10 steady
14 Denmark 37.06 41 -7
15 Peace Team 36.46 11 new
16 China 34.36 11 new
17 Japan 30.39 24 -3
18 Finland 29.02 13 -3
19 India 28.45 11 new
Prov. Fiji 45.21 6 - *
Prov. Croatia 40.60 4 - *
Prov. France 38.23 7 - *
Prov. Iceland 35.64 4 - *
Prov. Spain 28.00 6 - *
Prov. Timor-Leste 27.40 6 - *


* Nations marked in grey with an asterisk have played less than eight (8) matches under our criteria, and currently hold provisional ranking points, but are not yet officially ranked. Spain has not played for more than 4 years and so would be provisionally ranked either way. They must play an eligible match by 13/08/2013 to remain on the list.



   For a full discussion of the eligibility criteria of games see World Rankings - Criteria

   For a full list of the included matches, see World Rankings - Matches

   For a full discussion of how the rankings are produced, see World Rankings - Method

   For previous rankings see World Rankings - Historical



Last Updated: Wednesday, August 28 2013 @ 04:09 am ACST| Hits: 2,665 View Printable Version