The ranking system is let down by the fact that although efforts are being made to encourage international RL, there ares till too few matches to fairly rank nations. So I'll give my ratings of nations including heritage players, with the current official ranking after:
Tier 1:
Australia 1, New Zealand 2, England 3.
Tier 2:
Scotland 4, Samoa 5, France 6, Ireland 7, Fiji 8, Wales 9, USA 10, Tonga 11, Canada 13, Italy 14, PNG 15, Cook Is 24.
Tier 3:
Serbia 12, Russia 16, Jamaica 17, Belgium 18, Malta 19, Spain 20, Lebanon 21, Ukraine 22, Germany 23, Czech Rep 25, Norway 26, Denmark 27, Greece 28, Sweden 29, Netherlands 30, Niue 31, South Africa 32, Hungary 33, Phillipines 34, Thailand 35.
Tier 4:
Chile 36, Vanuatu 37, El Salvador 38, Latvia 39, Solomon Is 40, Uruguay 41, Morocco 42.
Some of the calls here are marginal. Should Lebanon and Jamaica be Tier 2? If heritage players are excluded, then the quality of some of the teams changes drastically. Heritage players (usually Australian) all show up for World Cups, but not for friendly internationals.
I would especially like to see more Nines RL played internationally but also more games with the full thirteen players. It would promote the game in countries where the code flies beneath the radar and more people will get involved. Of course it all costs money and that is something the international federation doesn't have a lot of.
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