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Just in time for the upcoming Rugby world cup in Japan, Ireland has jumped over the all conquering All Blacks to claim the no.1 spot in the rugby world rankings. Now this might not be a measure of potential world cup success but it's a nice position being in coming into it.
For a country with a population the size of a small city and with Rugby only the 5th most popular sport we are punching so far above out weight it's not even funny. You can talk about the size of New Zealand but their primary focus is on rugby and success at that game.
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Over here it's actually more of a niche sport with a hard core following. The majority of the population play our indigenous Irish sports of hurling and football with soccer popular in the cities. Rugby has only gotten popular in the last 20 years since the introduction of European competition and the sponsorship that comes with that.
Even so this is a great achievement for a small country but not one that I am going to get over confident with.
In our four warm up matches we have beaten Italy (poor team), Wales twice ( solid team but not full strength), and lost to England ( full strength and destroyed us).
By me reckoning we are 4/5 in reality with the English team looking scarily strong. As much as that pains me to admit, they have the best team right now with depth behind it to win the world cup.
I am looking forward to the tournament as we have a good team with a chance to win it. Our group isn't too tough with Scotland the main competition to top the group and we normally have the beating of them.
I'll try to come up with a competition for the tournament to get people involved but I still have a few days to think of something good.