{"id":802,"date":"2017-11-09T17:24:09","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T17:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/?p=802"},"modified":"2019-02-09T11:12:56","modified_gmt":"2019-02-09T11:12:56","slug":"autumn-internationals-1-who-will-win-in-2017-week-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/autumn-internationals-1-who-will-win-in-2017-week-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Autumn Internationals #1 – Who will win in 2017? – Week 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s November again and for rugby fans, it means the Autumn Internationals are on us again.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Ahead of the first round of matches, I have used World Rugby’s Rankings <\/a>to predict who will win and to set expectations for each nation.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, I made a similar set of predictions for the 2017 6 Nations and correctly called 12 out of 15 games<\/a>.\u00a0 The prediction model is explained in one of my 6 Nations post <\/a>but World Rugby’s goal is that rankings can be used as a predictive tool.\u00a0 The idea is to take each team’s current ranking and add 3 points to teams playing at home.\u00a0 Whoever has the higher ranking is then expected to win but clearly the closer the rankings, the closer the game is expected to be.\"\"<\/p>\n

The table to the right shows the top 20 nations in world rugby as of 9th November 2017.\u00a0 New Zealand are still number 1 with England 3 points behind them.\u00a0 Bear in mind that World Rugby add 3 points to a home team when predicting a match so this indicates that if England were to play New Zealand at Twickenham this month, it would be too close to call.\u00a0 Unfortunately, rugby fans have to wait until November next year to see that match by which time the rankings could have changed.<\/p>\n

I was surprised to see Scotland at #6 in the current rankings.\u00a0 I know they had a decent 6 Nations but I hadn’t realised they had progressed in the rankings to this extent.\u00a0 If I were a Scottish fan, I would be setting the team the goal of building on this.\u00a0 The other notable team is Fiji who are currently ahead of Argentina who have slipped back in the rankings this year.\u00a0 Finally, it is worth noting that Wales will play Georgia this month and on current rankings they will provide a sterner test than Italy.<\/p>\n

World Rugby\"\" update their rankings after every round of matches so whilst I can use these rankings to predict the matches this weekend, I am on shaky grounds to use them to predict the 2nd and 3rd weeks of matches.\u00a0 I have done so in the table below but my main reason for doing this is to set expectations for each nation.\u00a0 Most nations are playing 3 matches with Wales & South Africa playing 4 matches and the tier 2 nations playing 2 or 1 match.<\/p>\n

The ranking points in the PTS columns next to each nation and the difference in rankings is represented by the horizontal bars in the middle which point to the stronger team.\u00a0 These teams are then listed in the last column as the predicted winners.\u00a0 So in week 1, England & Scotland are predicted to have the easiest games whilst Wales V Australia is predicted to be the closest game.<\/p>\n

Having made predictions for each match (subject to the caveats for weeks 2, 3 & 4), I summarise the expected performance for each nation in the next table.\u00a0 As well as listing number of matches, wins and losses, I have also listed the number of close matches (defined to be matches with a ranking gap of 3 points or less).\u00a0 My experience of predicting the 6 Nations suggests that these are the matches that will u\"\"pset my predictions.\u00a0 Of the 5 close matches then, 2 were incorrectly predicted whereas among the 10 non-close matches only one was incorrect which happened to be Ireland beating England to deny England the Grand Slam.<\/p>\n

Of the 6 Nations and Rugby Championship teams, England, Ireland and New Zealand are expected to win all of their matches with none of them expected to be close.\u00a0 For excitement, one should watch the Wales, South Africa and Australia games and we will find out how close with Wales playing Australia in the 1st round on Saturday.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s November again and for rugby fans, it means the Autumn Internationals are on us again.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Ahead of the first round of matches, I have used World […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":805,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[59,14,12,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-archive","8":"tag-autumn-internationals","9":"tag-forecasts","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sport-analytics","12":"entry","13":"override"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions\/810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}