World Footy News

Additional commentary, Brett Northey

After several informal releases, worldfootynews.com today publishes our first formal World Rankings since 18th May 2013.

There's been 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 13th 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.