The updated World Rugby Men’s Rankings powered by Capgemini show that only three teams improved their rating as a result of this weekend’s results.
France were the team to gain the most with 1.12 points awarded to them for their nerve-racking 20-16 victory away to Scotland.
Les Bleus now have a rating of 87.39 points which, while not enough to improve on fourth place, closed the gap between themselves and New Zealand to 2.41 points.
Scotland lost an equal amount of points in defeat but keep hold of sixth place, with Argentina still 2.65 points behind them in seventh.
England, ranked in fifth, only picked up 0.08 points for their equally tense 16-14 win over Wales, to leave them further in arrears of France than before. Wales stay in eighth place, still comfortably ahead of Australia.
After two extremely close games, the solitary match on Sunday ended in a 36-0 win for Ireland against Italy. No points were awarded the reigning champions though, due to the 16.53 points and nine places between Ireland in second and Italy in 11th before home advantage was factored in.
There was also an absence of positional movement as a result of the Rugby Europe Men’s Championship round two fixtures.
Unlike the previous weekend there were no shocks with the favourites coming out on top in all four matches.
Georgia didn’t receive any points for their 31-10 victory over the Netherlands, and that was also true of Portugal’s 54-7 win against Poland and Spain’s 27-5 defeat of Germany.
However, Romania did enjoy a marginal gain for seeing off team-of-the-moment Belgium.
The Oaks’ 33-18 win over the Black Devils, who beat Portugal the previous week, was worth 0.02 points but, again, that was not enough for them to improve on 20th place.
