Chatting to a mate of mine about sports while watching the Proteas whop Pakistan today, we decided that it's pretty sweet to live in the Southern Hemisphere. We both decided that the Southern Hemisphere (SH) dominates the world of sports in many areas.I decided that I should do some research in to this, and guess what I found? I found a lot of tables by alot of sources, took me a few minutes to find some reliable ranking pages but it has been done. Below you will see the tables for Rugby, Football, Hockey, Cricket and Netball.RED teams are Southern Hemisphere
RUGBY
IRB World Rankings 23/10/2006
Position(last week)
Member Union
Rating points
1(1)
NEW ZEALAND
92.91
2(2)
FRANCE
87.53
3(3)
SOUTH AFRICA
87.05
4(4)
AUSTRALIA
86.13
5(5)
IRELAND
82.01
6(6)
ENGLAND
79.66
7(7)
SCOTLAND
77.72
8(8)
ARGENTINA
77.49
9(9)
WALES
76.34
10(10)
SAMOA
73.86
CRICKETODI
1
Australia
128
2
South Africa
123
3
New Zealand
114
4
Pakistan
111
5
India
111
6
Sri Lanka
108
7
West Indies
106
8
England
97
9
Bangladesh
34
10
Zimbabwe
30
11
Kenya
0
TEST MATCH
1
Australia
130
2
England
119
3
Pakistan
112
4
India
111
5
Sri Lanka
103
6
South Africa
94
7
New Zealand
92
8
West Indies
72
9
Zimbabwe
28
10
Bangladesh
2
FOOTBALL
Fifa World Football Rankings For October 2006
Rank
Team
PtsOct 06
+/-RankSep 06
+/-PtsSep 06
1
Brazil
1649
0
19
2
Italy
1550
0
0
3
Argentina
1479
0
7
4
France
1462
0
0
5
England
1434
0
0
6
Netherlands
1322
0
0
7
Spain
1309
0
0
8
Portugal
1301
0
0
9
Germany
1229
0
0
10
Czech R
1223
0
0
NETBALL1 New Zealand2 Australia3 Jamaica4 England5 South Africa6 Samoa7 Barbados8 Fiji9 USA10 Trinidad & TobagoHOCKEYWomen1. Netherlands2.Australia3.Argentina4.Germany5.China6.Japan7.Spain8.New Zealand9.Korea10.USAMen1.Germany2.Australia3.Spain4.Netherlands5.Pakistan6.Korea7.India8.Argentina9.England10.New Zealand11.South Africa
So there they are... and I think I was wrong... SH is not the place to be in terms of sports. We (when I say we I include all nations, continents and states in the SH for a full list visit Wikipedia) need to do some work, hit the streets, crack the gyms, pump the iron and inject... no wait, thats illegal!!From the top:Rugby4 out of the top 10, 3 of those in the top 4.That pretty good. CricketOne Day Internationals: 5 out of the top 10, 3 of those in the top 3.Test Matches: 4 out of the top 10, 1 in the top position.Thats awesome, Cricket we definately dominate.Football2 in the top 10, 2 of those in the top 3.Thats not so good.Hockey5 out of the top 10, 2 of those in top 2. Thats pretty damn goodNetballMen: 4 out of top 10.Women: 3 out of top 10.Hockey Not So Good.So on average: We are dominated in 3 out of the above 5 sports. we only dominate in 2, Hockey and Cricket and that is merely because we have teams in the top 3.I think that in terms of the above sports there are a few countries that we all need to thank as SH inhabitants:AustraliaNew ZealandSouth AfricaBrazilWithout these four countries, we would have no teams in any of the rankings in the top 5.
New Zealand
South Africa
Brazil
Without these four countries, we would have no teams in any of the rankings in the top 5.