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England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland will all face stiff southern hemisphere opposition when the draw for the 2011 Rugby World Cup is made on Monday.
Wales' win over Australia lifted them to fifth place in the world rankings, with England dropping to sixth.
The top four in the rankings - New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and Argentina - will be top seeds in each of the four pools in New Zealand.
Ireland and France are in the second tier with Scotland in the third group.
That means Frank Hadden's side, who finished the November internationals ranked ninth in the world, will have two of the world's top eight teams in their group.
Warren Gatland's Wales could have moved into the top four, and avoided one of the Tri-Nations giants in New Zealand, if they had beaten Australia by more than 15 points on Saturday.
In the end the Welsh ran out 21-18 winners to leapfrog England, who completed a whitewash at the hands of the Tri-Nations sides as they went down 32-6 to New Zealand at Twickenham.
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The draw is very important because from there we can develop the match schedule, select base camps and develop the ticketing strategy
RWC 2011 boss Kit McConnell
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Wales second row Alun Wyn Jones was philosophical about not making the top four.
"We know that if we had beaten Australia by 15 points that would have done us a world of good in the seedings," he told BBC Radio 5 Live's Sportsweek programme.
"But knowing that we can pit ourselves against the best as we have done, and had 50% of the game against the All Blacks [the previous Saturday], means we will have all confidence going into the World Cup whoever we are drawn against."
If England, under new boss Martin Johnson, had defeated New Zealand they would have moved above Argentina into fourth.
The draw for allocating the pools will take place in London on Monday, 1 December at 1500 GMT.
Kit McConnell, head of Rugby World Cup 2011, defended the decision to conduct the draw three years before the tournament takes place.
"The draw is very important for us because from there we can develop the match schedule, we can select team base camps and we can also develop the ticketing strategy for the tournament," explained McConnell.
"Those three elements are really critical to putting the building blocks in place early enough to make 2011 the same success as we saw in France (2007).
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IRB WORLD RANKINGS 30 NOV
1 New Zealand
2 South Africa
3 Australia
4 Argentina
5 Wales
6 England
7 France
8 Ireland
9 Scotland
10 Fiji
11 Italy
12 Tonga
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"By having certainty about which teams are playing which other teams in each pool, we can develop the match schedule.
"That is obviously of critical importance to the teams and also the supporters to know who is playing which other teams when, and where, and we will be announcing that in March, so that is really the next key step in the tournament preparations."
As in 2007, there will be four pools of five teams, with the top three positions in each pool filled by the 12 pre-qualified teams from the last World Cup.
Those 12 are Argentina, Australia, England, Fiji, France, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, Tonga and Wales.
The IRB rankings determined which seeding band the countries find themselves in, with one-to-four in the rankings forming the top band, five-to-eight the second tier, and nine-to-12 the third.
The final two bands will be filled by teams who have fought their way through qualification competitions taking place around the world.
Band four will be composed of the top qualifier from the Americas, the top two teams from European qualification and the leading team from the Oceania competition.
The final band will be made up of the teams which finish top of qualifying in Africa and Asia, the second American team and the winner of a play-off involving teams which had missed out in their respective regional qualifiers.
2011 Rugby World Cup draw:
Band One - New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Argentina.
Band Two - Wales, England, France, Ireland.
Band Three - Scotland, Fiji, Italy, Tonga.
Band Four - Oceania 1, Europe 1, Europe 2, Americas 1.
Band Five - Africa 1, Asia 1, Americas 2, Play-off winners.
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