AP Top 25 Rankings

Not much change at the top this week with teams winning or not playing to maintain their spots.

Hull clinching the conference title helped move them up to 5th and over a Sheffield team that dropped 4 places after their loss to Derby.

Surprisingly Kingston have risen four spots despite not playing a game, but this is probably down to  conference rivals Brighton losing to BNU although the loss only moved Brighton down two spots.  As a result BNU was the biggest riser of the week moving from 25th up to 20th.

The 'Drop Like A Stone' award goes to Plymouth who let in 50 against an unranked team. They fell to 21st and run the risk of dropping out the top 25 completely with a poor result this week.

Bradford coming in at 25th are a re-entry after appearing in the December edition of the rankings and the only new side are Manchester, who have gradually gained more voting momentum within the sacred 12.  The first edition brought Manchester just 2 votes putting them in at 33rd. Last week they drew 5 votes and moved up to 26th. They currently sit 23rd with 8 votes.

This week sees big games such as Birmingham v Loughborough and Southampton v Portsmouth, which will have a major effect.

1 Birmingham -
2 Hertfordshire -
3 Loughborough -
4 Derby -
5 Hull +2
6 Stirling -
7 Bath +1
8 Southampton +1
9 Sheffield -4
10 UWE +1
11 Kent +2
12 Kingston +4
13 UEA -3
14 Brighton -2
15 NTU -
16 Glasgow +3
17 Portsmouth +1
18 Warwick +2
19 Carnegie -2
20 BNU +5
21 Plymouth -7
22 Cambridge +3
23 Manchester NEW
24 Uclan -3
25 Bradford NEW