World Rugby Rankings & Results Scraper

Scrape World Rugby (world.rugby) — the official global governing body's rankings and match data. Get current or historical men's and women's world rankings, match results and fixtures across international and club rugby, and national team profiles including Rugby World Cup history. HTTP-only via World Rugby's public data API. No auth, no proxy, no login.

What this actor does

• Three modes: rankings, matches, teamProfile
• World rankings: men's and women's, current or any historical date
• Match results & fixtures: completed results and upcoming fixtures, XVs and Sevens, international and club rugby
• Team profiles: national team identity, Rugby World Cup finishes history, current ranking
• Filters: gender, date range, match status, team name, competition name
• Empty fields are omitted — every record only contains fields that were actually available for that team/match

Output: rankings (mode = rankings)

• teamId — World Rugby numeric team ID
• teamName, teamAbbreviation, countryCode
• gender — men or women
• rank, ratingPoints
• previousRank, previousRatingPoints — from the prior ranking update
• rankChange — positive = moved up, negative = moved down
• rankingDate — the actual ranking-update date the snapshot reflects
• sourceUrl
• recordType: "ranking", scrapedAt

Output: matches (mode = matches)

• matchId, competition, eventPhase (e.g. Final, Quarter-final), matchDescription (e.g. Match 48)
• gender, discipline (fifteens or sevens)
• matchDate, matchDateTimeUtc
• status — completed, upcoming, live (match currently in progress), or cancelled
• homeTeam, awayTeam, homeTeamId, awayTeamId
• homeScore, awayScore — present once available
• winner — team name or Draw (completed matches only)
• venueName, venueCity, venueCountry
• attendance — reported crowd figure, when World Rugby publishes one (mostly major/marquee matches)
• sourceUrl
• recordType: "match", scrapedAt

Output: team profile (mode = teamProfile)

• teamId, teamName, teamAbbreviation
• country, countryCode, teamType (Country / Club / Invitational)
• rwcBestFinish, rwcBestFinishYears
• rwcFinishHistory — map of Rugby World Cup year → finish (e.g. "2023": "winner")
• currentRank, currentRatingPoints, gender — when the team appears in the current world rankings
• sourceUrl
• recordType: "team", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	rankings	rankings / matches / teamProfile
gender	string	men	men / women / both (mode=rankings, mode=matches)
rankingDate	string	–	Historical snapshot date YYYY-MM-DD (mode=rankings)
matchStatus	string	all	all / completed / upcoming / live (mode=matches)
includeSevens	boolean	false	Also include Rugby Sevens matches (mode=matches)
dateFrom	string	30 days ago	Match date range start YYYY-MM-DD (mode=matches)
dateTo	string	30 days ahead	Match date range end YYYY-MM-DD (mode=matches)
teamNameContains	string	–	Filter matches to a team name substring (mode=matches)
competitionContains	string	–	Filter matches to a competition name substring (mode=matches)
teamIds	array	–	World Rugby numeric team IDs (mode=teamProfile)
teamNames	array	–	National team names, resolved via current rankings (mode=teamProfile); prefilled with ["New Zealand"] for the platform's daily test run
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap on emitted records (1–1000)

Example: current men's world rankings

{
  "mode": "rankings",
  "gender": "men",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: historical women's rankings snapshot

{
  "mode": "rankings",
  "gender": "women",
  "rankingDate": "2023-08-01",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: completed Six Nations results

{
  "mode": "matches",
  "gender": "men",
  "matchStatus": "completed",
  "competitionContains": "Six Nations",
  "dateFrom": "2026-01-01",
  "dateTo": "2026-04-01",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: national team profiles

{
  "mode": "teamProfile",
  "teamNames": ["New Zealand", "South Africa", "Fiji"],
  "maxItems": 20
}

Use cases

• Sports media — auto-publish weekly world ranking movements
• Betting & fantasy sports — feed live results and upcoming fixtures into models
• Fan platforms & apps — power a rugby results/rankings widget
• Sports analytics — build historical ranking-trend datasets by date
• Research — study national teams' World Cup performance history

FAQ

What is the data source? World Rugby's own public rankings and fixtures data (world.rugby), the sport's official global governing body.

How far back does historical ranking data go? World Rugby's ranking system was introduced in 2003, but the public API backing this actor's historical snapshots has a different floor per gender: men's rankings only go back to around 2020-09, while women's rankings go back further, to around 2016-02. Requesting an earlier date than either floor returns the nearest (earliest) date that has data — confirmed live: requesting rankingDate=2015-01-01 with gender=men returns the 2020-09-21 snapshot, while the same request with gender=women returns the 2016-02-08 snapshot instead. The actual date used is always returned in the rankingDate output field, so you can detect a clamp.

Does matches mode cover club rugby too, not just internationals? Yes — matches returns any match on World Rugby's calendar in the date range, including major club competitions (e.g. Top 14, United Rugby Championship) alongside international Tests, since it draws on the same official results feed used across world.rugby.

Why don't some matches have a score? Upcoming/fixture matches haven't been played yet, so homeScore/awayScore/winner are omitted until the match is completed.

How do I find a team's teamId for teamProfile mode? Run rankings or matches mode first — every record includes teamId (and homeTeamId/awayTeamId). For national teams you can also just pass the team's name via teamNames.

Is this affiliated with World Rugby? No — this is an independent, third-party actor built on World Rugby's publicly accessible data feed.

What does matchStatus: "live" return? Matches currently being played — first half, half-time, or second half — with real-time scores. This is a small, transient set (usually 0-5 matches at any given moment, since most Test windows only have one or two matches kicking off at once); it will often be empty outside an active match window.

Are there rate limits? The actor uses polite delays between requests. Very large maxItems values on matches mode may take longer since results are paginated 100 at a time.