Latest World Rankings
World Netball has today updated the World Netball (WN) World Rankings, confirming five more teams that will be invited to compete at the Netball World Cup 2023 (NWC2023) based on their ranking position.
The Netball World Cup will be held in Cape Town, South Africa from July 28th July to the 6th August 2023, with 16 teams set to be invited to participate including the hosts, as well as the top five teams in the World Netball World Rankings as of the qualifying date of 12th August 2022.
Since the last WN World Rankings update published, on the 1st March 2022, many international test series and events have taken place including the PacificAUS Series, Europe Netball Open Challenge, COSANA Tri-Nations Series, Wales International Test Series, Netball World Cup 2023 Qualifiers – Oceania, and most recently the 38 matches at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Within the top six teams Jamaica has moved up to 3rd in the world, whilst England has dropped to 4th, this comes after Jamaica made history at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games making their first final and winning a silver medal.
This means that Australia (1st), New Zealand (2nd), Jamaica (3rd) and England (4th) will now be invited to compete at the NWC2023. Uganda (6th) will also be invited; they have also qualified through their world ranking, due to South Africa (5th) pre-qualifying as hosts.
The Netball World Cup 2023 Qualifier – Oceania has already taken place with Tonga and Fiji qualifying to be invited by World Netball to compete at the event.
Tonga finished both the PacificAUS Series in March 2022 and the Netball World Cup Qualifier Oceania in July 2022 unbeaten. World Netball requires team to have played 6 or more matches in the ranking period to be eligible for a World Ranking. Tonga has reached this threshold again and they now regain a world ranking, entering in 9th place in the world. This is a remarkable achievement as their highest previous ranking was 19th.
Fiji's new ranking is 15th, Cook Islands 16th, Samoa 18th, and Papua New Guinea 36th.
To view the full WN World Rankings table, click here.