Forecasts – Page 3

6 Nations #6 – How did the rankings do in 2017?

March 23, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

Ireland’s win over England brought the 2017 6 Nations to a close. England were crowned champions but were not able to top it with back to back grand slams. Over the last few weeks, I have been using the World Rugby Rankings to predict the outcome of the matches and now it is time to see how they performed.

6 Nations #3 – Who will win in 2017? – week 3

February 18, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

So the 6 Nations is underway again and the traditional rivalries are reheated. Who will win is once again on all the sports pages and there are no shortages of pundits willing to give their opinions. If you want a different way to predict what will happen, why not use the World Rugby Rankings?

Ranking tables play a big part in a number of sports but they are not widely understood among sports fans. At bottom though, rankings are intended to be used as a predictive tool for what will happen in a match. A good ranking system will be more accurate in predicting outcomes than a bad ranking system. However, a perfect ranking system is something we don’t want otherwise sport becomes boring as we will always know the outcome in advance. So as a forecasting tool, a ranking system is a curious beast. We want it to be good but not great.