JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Next week the Philippine Volcanoes, the national men’s 15’s rugby team, faces Hong Kong in a very important International Rugby Board-sanctioned test match. Hong Kong is ranked # 37 in the world at present. The Philippines does not yet have an IRB ranking; the Philippine Rugby Football Union became a full member of the IRB only recently, in 2009, and the national team needs to play ten international test matches in order to get a ranking. The test match against HK would be the 8th.

Looking through the IRB rankings, we see two teams that the Philippines beat at the A5N Division 2 championships last year: Thailand at 59, and India at 74. The Philippines won the championship, gaining promotion to Division 1 where they will compete with Korea (32nd in the world), Malaysia (56) and Singapore (50) in late May. If the Philippines were included in the world rankings today, by our guesstimate the ranking would be in the 60s. The winner of the Division 1 tournament moves up to the A5N Premier Division with Japan (13), Kazakhstan (27), UAE, Sri Lanka (42) and HK.

When will the Philippines play in the Rugby World Cup? Our players say: 2015.

So we’ll see you at the test match on Saturday, April 16. We will cover the national team training camp and feature Coach Expo Mejia and the Volcanoes beginning this weekend so stay tuned.