{"id":292145,"date":"2025-11-18T08:07:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T08:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/292145\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T08:07:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T08:07:17","slug":"irl-confirm-latest-international-rankings-nrl-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/292145\/","title":{"rendered":"IRL confirm latest international rankings – NRL News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The International Rugby League<\/a> have confirmed their updated rankings, with the draw for the 2026 World Cup set to be announced in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Samoa<\/a> are the big improvers in both the men’s and women’s game after strong performances during the Pacific Championships.<\/p>\n

In the men’s game, they have improved to fourth place ahead of Tonga<\/a>, who now sit fifth, while the women’s Samoan side has moved from 12th to 5th.<\/p>\n

Australia<\/a> remain the world number one for both genders, while New Zealand<\/a> are ahead of England<\/a> for spots two and three in both sets of rankings.<\/p>\n

In the men’s rankings, Samoa<\/a> and Tonga<\/a>, as mentioned, round out the top five, while Papua New Guinea<\/a>, Fiji<\/a>, France<\/a> and the Cook Islands<\/a> are all World Cup bound and take the next spots.<\/p>\n

Lebanon<\/a> are the other team in the World Cup; however, they have now fallen to 21st spot after losing to Italy<\/a> without any NRL<\/a> players. Serbia have instead taken tenth spot in the rankings after winning Division B of the European Championship.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Ukraine have moved to 12th spot after winning Division C in Europe, remaining behind the Netherlands (11th), but ahead of Wales, Italy<\/a> and Greece<\/a> in 13th, 14th and 15th respectively.<\/p>\n

In the women’s game, Samoa’s move to fifth, and France<\/a> retaining fifth, means Papua New Guinea<\/a> and Wales move down to sixth and seventh spot respectively, while Ireland<\/a>, the Cook Islands<\/a> and Fiji<\/a> round out the top ten, with Canada, Nigeria, Greece<\/a> and Tonga<\/a> the teams immediately outside the top ten.<\/p>\n

Fiji’s move to tenth comes after they won the women’s World Series to qualify for the 2026 World Cup against Nigeria, Canada and Ireland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Men’s rankings<\/p>\n

1. Australia<\/a>
2. New Zealand<\/a>
3. England<\/a>
4. Samoa<\/a>
5. Tonga<\/a>
6. Papua New Guinea<\/a>
7. Fiji<\/a>
8. France<\/a>
9. Cook Islands<\/a>
10. Serbia<\/p>\n

Women’s rankings<\/p>\n

1. Australia<\/a>
2. New Zealand<\/a>
3. England<\/a>
4. France<\/a>
5. Samoa<\/a>
6. Papua New Guinea<\/a>
7. Wales
8. Ireland<\/a>
9. Cook Islands<\/a>
10. Fiji<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The International Rugby League have confirmed their updated rankings, with the draw for the 2026 World Cup set…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-292145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}