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World Rankings as at end 10th August 2013


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 current rankings as at 10th August 2013.

This was our first formal World Rankings since 18th May 2013. There was plenty of movement in the lower half courtesy of two new fully ranked nations, France (16th) and Croatia (11th).

France brought their game tally up to our minimum required eight matches with a big loss to Germany, while Croatia qualified during the recent 2013 European Championships in Dublin. Some may argue that a rank of 11th in the world flatters the Knights, possibly rightly, but their form in 9-a-side has been very impressive for some time. Hopefully we'll see them make their International Cup debut at IC14 and that should help settle them in to a spot they deserve, wherever that may be.

In many respects EC2013 was a series of dramatic twists and turns that left us right where we started. Ireland almost came crashing down three times, but didn't. Denmark almost got past Great Britain, but didn't. The Swedes pushed their near rivals but couldn't topple them. Croatia pushed Sweden but didn't get over the line, and Great Britain nearly claimed their first major international title, only to have Ireland snatch victory with the last kick of the tournament.

The other international since our last formal update was the now-traditional defeat of Canada by the United States, an ongoing hoodoo that seems to keep the Canadians lower in our ranks than their form against other nations suggests. Although in fact if all USA vs Canada matches were removed from our system, yes the gap between the nations' points would be closer, but their positions would be unchanged (it turns out the US would still sit a fraction above Tonga, and Canada would push up close to but not surpass Fiji, but so would Sweden due to the impact of their games being different since all other teams would shift a bit in this hypothetical scenario).

Sadly Spain has now slipped off our rankings altogether. They were only ever provisionally ranked, having just six full-field games to their credit, but it has now been eight years since their last such match, which crosses our threshold for listing. If in future they return to full sized matches they will start from the default of zero matches and 40 points.

World Footy News / Homes Australian Football World Rankings

(as at end of 10th August 2013)

Rank        Team Points Games Rank Change
1 Australia - steady
2 Ireland 55.15 44 steady
3 Papua New Guinea 54.66 29 steady
4 New Zealand 53.00 33 steady
5 Nauru 51.17 22 steady
6 South Africa 49.03 22 steady
7 Great Britain 46.88 49 steady
8 United States 46.61 37 steady
9 Tonga 44.73 9 steady
10 Denmark 41.60 46 +1
11 Croatia 40.35 8 new
12 Fiji 40.18 9 -2
13 Sweden 37.81 29 steady
14 Canada 37.08 37 -2
15 Peace Team 36.46 11 -1
16 France 36.09 8 new
17 China 34.36 11 -1
18 Germany 34.09 16 -3
19 Japan 30.39 24 -2
20 Finland 29.02 13 -2
21 India 28.45 11 -2
Prov. Samoa 41.85 18 dormant **
Prov. Iceland 35.64 4 - *
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.
** Countries that have not played a qualifying full field match for 8 years fall off our list altogether. Samoa must play by 05/09/2016 to stay on the list. Spain recently fell off the list based on this criteria.



   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



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