Ireland deserve No 1 spot but World Cup contenders are enticingly spread

Rugby union is not renowned as a perfect science but the symmetry of this month’s north v south contests has been striking. Four tours by Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland, four narrow 2-1 outcomes, six Test wins apiece for each hemisphere and a collective points aggregate of 280 v 282. The margins across global rugby have never been tighter.

Any one of half a dozen teams, as things stand, could win next year’s World Cup in France and the world’s No 1 ranked team is currently not South Africa, New Zealand or even France. Step forward Ireland, now officially first among equals following the epic weekend deeds of Andy Farrell’s squad in Wellington.

If this month’s most far-reaching rugby result arguably occurred seven and a half thousand miles away in Colorado, where a red-hot Chile have just gatecrashed England’s group at the World Cup at the expense of the United States, there is no minimising the ripple effect of the All Blacks’ implosion on home turf over the past couple of weeks.

It was not just that Ireland were such deserved history makers. If Ian Foster survives the fallout from his side’s alarmingly disjointed performances in the second and third Tests – he missed the first with Covid – it will further thicken the fog into which the Kiwi game is suddenly disappearing, even allowing for the brilliance and defiance of Tadhg Beirne, Peter O’Mahony, Josh van der Flier and Johnny Sexton.

To watch Robbie Henshaw stroll through a bunch of black-clad statues for the try that helped put Ireland 22-3 up before half-time in the “Cake Tin” was to wonder what is afflicting a team who used to set such impossibly high standards. And then to conclude that their aura has been slipping for a while: this was the All Blacks’