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South Africa vs Ireland - the battle to be ranked number one
By Jon Newcombe
Ireland will replace South Africa as the number one ranked team in the world if they pull off a sensational win against the Springboks in Pretoria this Saturday.
Andy Farrell's side go into the match at Loftus Versfeld just under four points worse off than their hosts in second place, but that would flip on its head if they achieve a big enough margin of victory.
A win by 16 points or more would result in a swing of just over five rating points with Ireland sitting top on 93.22 points, a position they last held in the middle of last October, with the Springboks placed second on 92.01.
Their only victory to date over the Springboks on South African soil was at Newlands in June 2016 when Paddy Jackson's kicking and tries from Jared Payne and Conor Murray helped them to a historic 26-20 win, despite CJ Stander's red card.
Ireland went into the last Rugby World Cup as the world's number one team having held that position for 14 months. But their quarter-final exit at the hands of New Zealand coupled with South Africa's progression to the last four enabled the Springboks to replace them, and they have remained proudly on top ever since.
Ireland won last year's seismic Rugby World Cup encounter 13-8 on neutral soil in Paris and have won the last three meetings overall, but they were well beaten on their only previous visit to Pretoria in 1998, losing 33-0, when current Springboks head coach Rassie Erasmus was among the try scorers.
In the overall head-to-head record, South Africa have won twice as many games as Ireland (18-9) with one draw.
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Latest Comments
The boy needs to bulk up if wants to play 10 or 11 to handle those hits, otherwise he could always make a brilliant reserve for the wings if he stays away from the stretcher.
Go to commentsIn another recent article I tried to argue for a few key concept changes for EPCR which I think could light the game up in the North.
First, I can't remember who pointed out the obvious elephant in the room (a SA'n poster?), it's a terrible time to play rugby in the NH, and especially your pinnacle tournament. It's been terrible watching with seemingly all the games I wanted to watch being in the dark, hardly able to see what was going on. The Aviva was the only stadium I saw that had lights that could handle the miserable rain. If the global appeal is there, they could do a lot better having day games.
They other primary idea I thuoght would benefit EPCR most, was more content. The Prem could do with it and the Top14 could do with something more important than their own league, so they aren't under so much pressure to sell games. The quality over quantity approach.
Trim it down to two 16 team EPCR competitions, and introduce a third for playing amongst the T2 sides, or the bottom clubs in each league should simply be working on being better during the EPCR.
Champions Cup is made up of league best 15 teams, + 1, the Challenge Cup winner. Without a reason not to, I'd distribute it evenly based on each leauge, dividing into thirds and rounded up, 6 URC 5 Top14 4 English. Each winner (all four) is #1 rank and I'd have a seeding round or two for the other 12 to determine their own brackets for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. I'd then hold a 6 game pool, home and away, with consecutive of each for those games that involve SA'n teams. Preferrably I'd have a regional thing were all SA'n teams were in the same pool but that's a bit complex for this simple idea.
That pool round further finalises the seeding for knockout round of 16. So #1 pool has essentially duked it out for finals seeding already (better venue planning), and to see who they go up against 16, 15,etc etc. Actually I think I might prefer a single pool round for seeding, and introduce the home and away for Ro16, quarters, and semis (stuffs up venue hire). General idea to produce the most competitive matches possible until the random knockout phase, and fix the random lottery of which two teams get ranked higher after pool play, and also keep the system identical for the Challenge Cup so everthing is succinct. Top T2 side promoted from last year to make 16 in Challenge Cup
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