Rating
87
Elite — top 3% of the field · Glicko-2 2351 ±77
Record
46-0-11
80.7% of 57 matches in the last five years
Average margin
+14.4
31.9 for, 17.5 against
Home advantage
+7.0
Points per match better at home
Attack
+21%
31.9 scored per match, against the placed field's average
Defence
+36%
17.5 conceded per match; positive is fewer than average
- Head coach
- Andy Farrell
- Captain
- Caelan Doris
- Union
- Irish Rugby Football Union
- Emblem
- Shamrock with rugby ball
- Home ground
- Aviva Stadium
- First match
- ENG 7–0 (Kennington, England; 15 February 1875)
- Most caps
- Cian Healy (137)
- Leading scorer
- Johnny Sexton (1,108)
- Most tries
- Brian O'Driscoll (46)
- World Cups
- 10, from 1987
- Best World Cup
- Quarter-finals (1987, 1991, 1995, 2003, 2011, 2015, 2019, 2023)
Anthem
Amhrán na bhFiannThe Soldier’s Song
Irish · July 12, 1926 · 1:05
The team's own anthem is Ireland's Call, written for a side drawn from two jurisdictions; it is still in copyright and the source carries neither its words nor a recording. This is Amhran na bhFiann, played alongside it at home fixtures in Dublin.
Words
Recording and words from nationalanthems.info, used under CC BY 4.0.
From Wikipedia, read 2026-10-19. Not an input to any forecast — the rating does not know who is coaching.
New Zealand2026-07-18 · away21–40lost
Japan2026-07-11 · away36–20won
Australia2026-07-04 · away33–31won
Scotland2026-03-14 · home43–21won
Wales2026-03-06 · home27–17won
Newest first, from Ireland's own point of view. Home and away are as the record stores them; a fixture the record does not mark neutral is listed as one side's home, which is right for a league round and wrong for a final played at a third ground.
Biggest win: 106-7 v Portugal
Heaviest defeat: 19-42 v New Zealand
Elite — top 3% of the field
Box is the middle half of the ranked field, line is the median, dot is Ireland. The scale is this domain's own and does not compare across the two.
Teams that play alike sit close together. The two axes hold 72% of the variation between teams. Component 1 (42%) rises with more average margin and win rate. Component 2 (30%) rises with more high-scoring matches and margin swing.
30 of 66 teams sit too close together to name without covering another team's point, so they are drawn unlabelled. Every dot is still a link to that team, and hovering one names it.
- 1South Africa0.11
- 2Finland0.64
- 3Georgia0.64
- 4New Zealand1.08
- 5France1.15
Distance in the projection above, nearest first.