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Dubai: For the first time in Rugby World Cup Sevens history the seedings will reflect recent international performances with the hugely competitive IRB Sevens World Series and regional qualifiers determining the men's rankings, and the regional qualifiers determining the rankings for the inaugural women's tournament.
"Rugby Sevens has experienced a boom in global competitiveness since the last Rugby World Cup Sevens in Hong Kong in 2005. Therefore the Rugby World Cup Board has agreed that a structure that reflects the recent form of the qualified teams would be a better fit for ranking teams for the Rugby World Cup Sevens 2009 in Dubai," said head of Rugby World Cup Kit McConnell.
"The new rankings process will therefore fully reflect the competitiveness of the best men's national teams on the global IRB Sevens World Series. This falls into line with the process for the Rugby World Cup 2011 when the IRB World Rankings will be used for the first time to seed the teams for the pool allocation draw," he added.
Cumulative points
The seeding for the men's competition will see the 12 IRB Sevens World Series core teams ranked entirely on their cumulative points total over the last two Series and the opening two rounds of the 2008/09 Series, which kicks off next month. The top six teams will each top a competition pool with the teams ranked seven to 12 drawn in the second band.
The remaining 12 qualified teams will then be ranked 13-24 based upon performances in their regional qualifiers and overall playing strength and randomly drawn into the third and fourth bands to complete the structure.
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