Ireland coach Declan Kidney feels that Saturday week’s clash with Canada represents his side’s ‘most important game’ of the autumn Tests because of ranking points and Rugby World Cup seedings.
Ireland are currently ranked eighth in the World Rankings and need to perform well against Canada, New Zealand and Argentina in the coming weeks as the IRB are using the rankings to seed teams for the 2011 Rugby World Cup draw, and December 1 is the cut-off point.
Kidney is putting together the final touches before he names the matchday squad for Canada on Tuesday.
Asked if he is conscious of the additional pressure on Ireland to maintain or better their ranking for the RWC draw, Kidney said: “There’s enough pressure. You want to win every game, any time you’re representing your country.
“The fact that there’s a knock-on consequence to the results this time (with the IRB World Rankings) just adds a little bit more spice to it.
“If we were 10th in the rankings we’d be delighted with the opportunity to climb. We’re eighth, you could get nervous but you can’t afford to let that happen.
“The peculiarities of this ranking system are that we could win all three matches and drop a place.
“All we can do is what we can do on any given day and see where we end up ranked at the end of the November series.”
