Should we care about the world rankings?

THE way Clive Woodward saw it back in 2003, the International Rugby Board’s new-fangled ranking system was a many-splendored thing.

“I love the thought of England travelling to the World Cup as the number one team,” he said ahead of that year’s global gathering in Australia. “It means everyone else will be looking up at us, wondering if they’re good enough.”

Martin Johnson? He took a different view ahead of the 2011 tournament. “Does anyone really care what the rankings say?” he would ask the usual suspects in the Fleet Street hack pack during his time as Woodward’s successor but two in the Big Man’s Chair. “Does it have much relevance?”

This last question was one we routinely asked when discussing the IRB as an organisation, and have been asking it ever more urgently since, after a long and expensive consultation process, it rebranded itself as “World Rugby” – better known to readers of this column as the “Non-Governing Governing Body”. Indeed, it is possible to argue that for all the complications of its methodology, the ranking system makes far more sense, and is of significantly greater value, than the body responsible for running it.

But as the epic failings of the NGGB are precisely the same today as they were yesterday and will be tomorrow – like taxes, the poor and Nadine Dorries, it seems they will always be with us in one way, shape or form – there is no pressing need to trek over familiar terrain. With a World Cup less than a week away, there are better things to discuss.