The "Red Nation" - whose male team have also been climbing in the IRB men's rankings - moved up from 10th to 5th, leap-frogging Ireland, Wales and Spain, but remain behind their great rivals, the USA, as a result of their only defeat in the tournament in Colorado at the beginning of the month.

The USA missed out on the final, but that win and their overall their performances mean that they also move up a place, to fourth.

South Africa may not have won a game, but some good performances against significantly higher ranked teams were enough to push them into the top 10, above both Scotland and Australia. England, on the other hand, dropped points despite making the final due to suffering defeats to lower ranked teams. However, they remain firmly in second place.

The way the ranking is calculated favours active teams, and in practice a ranking point margin of less than 50 points between two teams can be overturned in a single game - so the differences between Canada and Ireland, or Wales and Italy, or Italy and Spain, are very small and positions could very easily change after the Autumn Internationals and the Six Nations.

In the meanwhile it is interesting to note that - Australia aside (whose decline to 12th is entirely due to their inactivity) - the top six teams are exactly the same, and in exactly the same order, as they were after the last World Cup.

For the next round of intenationals in September the attention moves away from the top of the rankings, with the African and Asian World Cup qualifiers. Looking at the current rankings South Africa and Kazakhstan start as clear favourites, 3,000 and 1,000 ranking points ahead of their rivals - but in the real world anything could happen, especially in Africa where no East African team has ever played outside of its region before.

1 New Zealand 4669 2 England 4635 3 France 4451 4 (↑1) United States 4342 5 (↑5) Canada 4240 6 (↓2) Ireland 4202 7 (↓1) Wales 4025 8 (↓1) Italy 3970 9 ( ↓1) Spain 3948 10 (↑2) South Africa 3850 11 (↓2) Scotland 3837 12 (↓1) Australia 3500 * Nomads 3126 13 Sweden 2982 14 Netherlands 2944 15 Kazakhstan 2679 16 Samoa 2501 17 Russia 2074 18 Germany 1968 19 Belgium 1694 20 Finland 1580 21 Japan 1573 22 Hong Kong 1166 23 China 970 24 Norway 932 25 Switzerland 913 26 Singapore 874 27 Uganda 889 28 Kenya 884 29 Romania 826 30 Trinidad & Tobago 820 31 Fiji 718 32 Cayman 697 33 Thailand 684 34 Uzbekistan 680 35 Denmark 644 * Caribbean Select 631 36 Jamaica 606 37 Tonga 541 38 Philippines 525 39 Luxembourg 501 40 Malaysia 488 41 Laos 467 42 Guyana 449 43 Brazil 408 44 Serbia 362 45 Rwanda 356 46 Barbados 304 47 Czech Republic 303 48 Bosnia & Herzegovina 265 49 Austria 251 50 Colombia 203 51 Zambia 186 52 Bahamas 182 53 Croatia 170 54 St Vincent 136 55 Portugal 128 56 Kyrgyzstan 127 57 Burundi 125 58 Venezuela 108 59 Cambodia 88 60 Hungary 83 61 Papua New Guinea 69 62 Zimbabwe 58

Data © Serge PIQUET August 2013