World Cup

Trophy Winners #3 – Rugby Union (Men) 1984 to 2026

October 5, 2026 By Nigel Marriott

Rugby is under way again in the Northern hemisphere and I am hoping for more trophies for my team Bath. I had expected to be updating my downloadable spreadsheet of trophy winners with the winner of the Rugby Championship. What I had not realised is this is now played every two years. This is to accommodate a biennial series between South Africa and New Zealand which concluded 3-1 in favour of South Africa. 2026 will conclude with the inaugural winner of the new Nations Championship which will also take place every 2 years but I’ve decided to stick to my schedule of updating this article in October of every year.

Rugby World Cup #4 – Who will win in 2019? – Final

October 30, 2019 By Nigel Marriott

England will take on South Africa in the 2019 Rugby World Cup final this weekend and I am predicting a win for England by 1 to 6 points. In other words, it will be close and exciting!

Rugby World Cup #3 – Who will win in 2019? – Model Evaluation

October 30, 2019 By Nigel Marriott

After 43 matches with 37 correctly predicted, the stage is set for an epic final between England & South Africa to settle the 2019 Rugby World Cup (Men’s). Ahead of making a prediction for that match, I have examined my model in depth and in this post I explore whether or not the model needs to be adjusted.

Rugby World Cup #2 – Who will win in 2019? – Knockout Round

October 18, 2019 By Nigel Marriott

It’s the quarter finals tomorrow and it’s time for me to predict the outcomes using World Rugby’s rankings. Although I got 33 out of 37 matches right in the pool stages, the 4 errors are enough to change my prediction of who will win.

Rugby World Cup #1 – Who will win in 2019? – Pool Stage

September 19, 2019 By Nigel Marriott

Augustin Pichot, vice-president of World Rugby, may not like its ranking system but ahead of the 2019 Rugby World Cup (Men’s), I have been able to use rankings to correctly predict 80% of international matches since 2017. For the world cup that starts this week, I used a dynamic ranking model to predict all matches and it shows that 4 countries cannot be separated for the trophy so we are in for some very exciting matches!