It’s November again and for rugby fans, it means the Autumn Internationals are on us again. The nations of Europe welcome teams from all over the world for the next 3 or 4 weeks to test each other and find out where they stand. Ahead of the first round of matches, I have used World Rugby’s Rankings to predict who will win and to set expectations for each nation.
Earlier this year, I made a similar set of predictions for the 2017 6 Nations and correctly called 12 out of 15 games. The prediction model is explained in one of my 6 Nations post but World Rugby’s goal is that rankings can be used as a predictive tool. The idea is to take each team’s current ranking and add 3 points to teams playing at home. Whoever has the higher ranking is then expected to win but clearly the closer the rankings, the closer the game is expected to be. [Read more…] about Autumn Internationals #1 – Who will win in 2017? – Week 1