Photo: Jamaica goal defence Vangalee Williams leaps to prevent New Zealand from scoring at the Commonwealth Games in Australia in April. Jamaica defeated New Zealand for the first time in a competitive game to win the bronze medal.
The INF World Rankings annual update sees an historic change within the top three. For the first time ever, England move into second place, making this the first time that the top two hasn’t included both Australia and New Zealand.
The rankings reflect the matches played up to June 30th 2018, including the recent Netball Europe Open Challenge and the Namibia Quad Series.
Matches played between 1st July 2015 and 30th June 2017 now have a 50% weighting, those played since 1st July 2017 are weighted at 100%. Matches played before July 2015 are no longer included in determining the INF World Rankings.
Trinidad & Tobago have moved up to 10th, making them the second highest ranked side in the INF Americas Region. Wales and Barbados drop down one place, but both still remain in the top 12. Following two victories in the Namibia Quad Series, Zimbabwe move up two places into 13th, which sees Fiji and Samoa drop to 14th and 15th respectively.
With a clean sweep in their matches at the Netball Europe Open Challenge, Ireland move up two places to 19th and after winning their own Quad Series, Namibia move up five places and are now ranked 28th.
Six teams have dropped off the rankings as they haven’t played the number of matches required to gain a ranking in the weighted time period, resulting in 34 teams now having an INF World Ranking.
This update means we now know who qualifies for next year’s Netball World Cup as automatic qualifiers. England is the host and qualifies automatically. A further five teams qualify automatically based on the INF World Rankings – Malawi (6th) will join Australia (1st), New Zealand (3rd), Jamaica (4th), and South Africa (5th) in Liverpool next year.
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