With just one match played over the weekend, things obviously haven’t changed much on the 10 Nations Rugby table this week.
Australia has taken eighth place outright after gaining a point from their real world loss to England and gaining the smallest of boosts to their points differential, with the ranking factor of 7.66 gained for playing the Poms just enough to outweigh the seven points they lost (by giving them an overall +0.66 for the game).
This also ensures they hold their slender lead over France in their simulated match for the time being, who are only one point behind them on ninth, four table points they can therefore ill afford to hand over.
England on the other hand have strengthened their grip on third place with their win and can essentially seal a top three finish if they win, as anticipated, against Argentina this weekend, gaining the five table points with a minimum of another one to come from their real world game the following week.
The battle for number one also resumes this weekend, with South Africa up against Wales and New Zealand taking on France.
South Africa currently hold onto their slender one point lead but have one less match still to be played, so all going to form you would be expecting New Zealand to finish over the top and claim number one.
But a loss to the enigmatic French would cash in that bonus match and their grip on the championship Iced Vo-Vo’s would start to look extremely shaky (although south Africa still have to play the French as well).
The other notable beneficiary from this weekend could be the French.
A decent performance against New Zealand would give their differential a boost as a result of the ranking adjustment factor of 13.84 they’ll get, potentially bringing them closer to Samoa in their simulated match (and possibly also Australia, pending the score in their Italy game).
The current ranking table is unchanged this week and is as follows.
1. South Africa 33
2. New Zealand 32
3. England 30
4. Wales 20
5. Samoa 18
6. Ireland 14
7. Italy 14
8. Australia 12
9. France 11
10. Argentina 4
As always full details of tables and competition structure can be found on the official 10 Nations website.
soapit
Guest
simply because they werent ranked in the top ten at the first irb rankings update of the year (7th jan from memory)
Gavin Melville
Roar Pro
Can I ask why you've excluded Scotland?
soapit
Guest
i think we'd need to sit down with that for me to understand it mate. to answer ur questions ranking adjustments are based on the first irb rankings from the year, the same ones that determine which teams are in the tournament. and ur right simulated match results are only final after the very last match of the tournament is played so you could very well see a teams table points go down after a weekend where the result of their sim match gets overturned. keeps em trying till the very end even if the particular match they're playing is a foregone conclusion thought you were talking about me for a sec btw but then realised 2006 was befor emy time.
soapit
Guest
weebly.com, made the whole thing too easy, tables were a bit more tricky but bit of googling sorted it.
Dasher
Roar Guru
How did you get the website running?
Dasher
Roar Guru
Mate, I read a bit more about how the simulations and adjustments are done. I like the adjustment factor - does that evolve as the season progresses or is it arbitrarily set at the start of the season? The simulation bit is a bit funny for me though. Is it saying that if two teams won't play each other the result of the simulated match is decided by each team's points difference? And in that case, at what point do you run the simulated match - because a team's points difference ought to change over the season. Dominance matrices are very basic - and it looks like you've almost got it set up on the website in the fixtures table. It's simply a table with teams down the rows and their opponents along the columns. Going across the rows, you register wins as ones and losses as zeros - or whatever - I use competition points (so {0,1,2,3,4,5}) but you could use actual scores. Once you've filled out the table, you make space for a second table and multiply the matrix by itself. This second matrix/table shows you the "second-order dominance". For instance, say Australia beat Italy on the weekend, and South Africa don't play Italy but beat Australia, this matrix will tell you that South Africa would beat Italy. As this doesn't always reflect reality, you reduce the weight of the second-order dominance (and you can do third, fourth, fifth etc order dominance). This fills in the blanks on your original table. I had started something like this a couple of weeks back, but study got in the way. Also I did a very simplified version for the 2006 NRL season and used its output to do my tips. It was flawed from the outset, but it was an interesting experiment. I certainly didn't come last - and I beat the guy I sat next to at work, who knew what I was doing. Imagine how cheesed off he was.
soapit
Roar Guru
hi mate, seen you on here a few times and wondered how you were going these days. back at uni apparently, glutton for punishment. theres full explanations of how the matches are simulated on the website which may do a better job then i'm about to but basically its decied by comparing an adjusted differential which is basically their normal differential for the real world matches with bonus postive points added to it for each real world opponent they play (the amount of positive points being the difference between that teams irb ranking and the 10th nations irb ranking - therefore you get zero bonus differential points for playing 10th placed italy and 13 or so for playing new zealand). will be interesting how it performs. dont get caught up that nz are second, they've only got one less point than SA with a game in hand. tbh looking at the standings theres not too much i'd argue with looking at the actual results. dominance matrices sounds well out of my league at this point, i havent maintained your thirst for learning and have long since forgotten just about everything i ever knew about matrices. just getting the ranking and simulated tables to auto update when i punch in the results took me long enough. however long term i'd be tempted to get it independent of the rankings entirely but it'd be at the cost of simplicity. its already reasonably complicated relying on a simple calc involving a well established concept like irb rankings so pushing the simulation of matches behind the curtain might make it difficult for people to engage if they didnt completely understand the process. though i'm tempted to do it just to see what kinda of mofo spreadsheet you'd come up with for it. anyway good to hear from you mate and glad you liked the site, if ur ever down north coast way or need some free accommodation give me a shout.
Dasher
Roar Guru
Hey Alan, it seems you've built on what we've discussed last year. And good work for getting a public site up and running - it should only help the idea get traction. Can you elaborate on how you simulate matches? Also do you use dominance matrices for any calculations? Some US college sports competitions use them and they work surprisingly well when not everybody plays each other. I got in a huge row with somebody on The Roar the other day about the disparity between IRB rankings and where we really are. My line of argument being that we've been ranked third by IRB's flawed system, but we really should have been lower for some time now. Whilst I don't agree that NZ are second, I think this system properly reflects where we rate. I was going to write a similar article outlining my system but, with uni exams right now, I haven't had the time. Maybe we can collaborate later.
soapit
Roar Guru
pleasantly surprised to see the word "hooray" added to the title, nice touch