World Rugby Men's Rankings preview: 1-2 March, 2025

World Rugby has published the ranking permutations for this weekend's semi-final round of the Rugby Europe Men's Championship 2025.

Permutation highlights:

• Georgia cannot improve their rating with victory over Romania this weekend as a result of the 11.93 points and nine places separating the teams before home advantage is taken into consideration.
• However, a first defeat in the Rugby Europe Men’s Championship in eight years will lead to some movement with the Lelos slipping below Wales and Japan into 13th place. 
• A defeat by more than 15 points will see them fall an additional place to 14th, with Samoa the beneficiary. 
• Romania must win by this margin to replace Tonga in 19th with an additional place possible if combined with a Spain defeat in the other semi-final in Portugal. 
• In this scenario Spain would swap places with Romania and drop to 20th.
• Portugal cannot pick up enough rating points in victory to improve their position of 15th. 
• Os Lobos will fall below USA in defeat with a loss by more than 15 points resulting in Spain becoming the higher-ranked of the Iberian rivals.
• A smaller margin of victory would be enough for Los Leones to leapfrog Uruguay into 17th. 
• The Netherlands cannot improve their rating by beating Germany to keep their Men’s Rugby World Cup 2027 qualification hopes alive with the difference between the teams pushed to more than 10 rating points by the home advantage weighting.
• However, a defeat will cost them at least one place and potentially as many as four depending on the margin. 
• A convincing win for Germany will see them return to the world’s top 30 and close to within two places of the Dutch. 
• Points are on the line for both teams in the other fifth-place semi-final between Belgium and Switzerland. 
• Regardless of the scoreline, Belgium will move above Zimbabwe into 26th place in victory with another place possible if the Netherlands are beaten at home.  
• A first Rugby Europe Men’s Championship win for Switzerland will result in them overtaking Belgium in the rankings with 25th place possible depending on the margin and result in Amsterdam.