World Rugby Women's Rankings preview: 13-14 September, 2025

World Rugby has published the ranking permutations for the quarter-finals of Women's Rugby World Cup 2025 in England this weekend.

Permutation highlights:

• England, Canada and New Zealand – the top three teams in the rankings – cannot improve their ratings by beating lower-ranked opponents in the quarter-finals.
• France can only gain a maximum of 0.89 rating points for beating Ireland, which means they will only climb the rankings if they win and either Canada or New Zealand lose.
• If both suffer shock upsets against Australia and South Africa respectively, then a victorious France will jump two places to second.
• Ireland must win by more than 15 points if they are to climb above France into the top four, a position they last occupied in June 2016.
• Defeat, though, could see Ireland drop as low as seventh if Australia and Scotland were to shock their higher-ranked opponents.
• England cannot lose top spot even with a heavy defeat to Scotland given their 7.63 rating point cushion of Canada in second.
• However, Canada will surrender second place to New Zealand if they lose to Australia and the Black Ferns beat South Africa.
• Scotland will equal their record high of fifth if they end England’s 30-test winning run and Ireland bow out of the tournament against France.
• The Wallaroos could also end the weekend in fifth if they beat Canada and the other quarter-finals are won by the higher-ranked team.
• South Africa, the lowest ranked quarter-finalists in 10th, will jump two places to a new high of eighth if they end New Zealand’s title defence – or seventh if Australia are beaten by Canada.