The Slide of the Welsh regions.

Sidestep wrote:In this instance I think Quins was just making his point, and this is the most relevant current post in which to do that.
No need to shoot him down without a measured response saint.
I personally would like to see the Rabo survive.

The additional finance provided by the Sky deal should enable the regions to add some quality NWQ players to improve their squads and once more competitive they will be able to lure back the exile players.

Griff wrote:

Sidestep wrote:In this instance I think Quins was just making his point, and this is the most relevant current post in which to do that.
No need to shoot him down without a measured response saint.
I personally would like to see the Rabo survive.

Sidestep, I think Saint was referring to the author of the article, Kingshu.  He's an Irish poster, but comes up with a Welsh Regions thread every month or so!  

Impossible Standards wrote:

The additional finance provided by the Sky deal should enable the regions to add some quality NWQ players to improve their squads and once more competitive they will be able to lure back the exile players.

To be honest this in my opinion is one of the reasons why we are in trouble. The regions had a number of expensive NQW players on the books which meant that no replacements were found in the academies. This unsustainable structure has since collapsed now that the benefactors have all withdrawn most of their money. We are now in the rebuilding process and doing what the regions were set out to do and that's produce Welsh players. If more money comes in from Sky I hope the regions don't spend it all on a few NWQ players and reserve some for the younger players and quality coaches!

bedfordwelsh wrote:The main stumbling block to any Angle-Welsh league would be that of Relegation, the Regions wouldn't agree to relegation whilst the English wouldn't agree to theRegions being ring fenced.

Bluedragon wrote: I would love to see the season restructured to play in 3 conferences - British A, British B, and France / Italy

George Carlin wrote:How are these ratings compiled?
 
I was fascinated to see that Glasgow are apparently 7th, ahead of Toulouse, Tigers, Castres, Racing Metro and Munster. And apparently we c*cked something up in the autumn that meant we lost a previous position of 5th! Obviously, I would say that these people have wisdom beyond their years but practically speaking, can you really read much into this?

George Carlin wrote:How are these ratings compiled?
 
I was fascinated to see that Glasgow are apparently 7th, ahead of Toulouse, Tigers, Castres, Racing Metro and Munster. And apparently we c*cked something up in the autumn that meant we lost a previous position of 5th! Obviously, I would say that these people have wisdom beyond their years but practically speaking, can you really read much into this?

EuroRatings wrote:The Eurotable, a computer-generated ranking of Europe's top rugby clubs, is based on each club's performance over its past 30 games (domestic and European). It was first launched in April 2000 and indeed is a prototype of a pan-European football ranking system that was published in the Wall Street Journal Europe between 1995-2000 (known as the Eurofootsie).

Updated every Monday evening, the Eurotable aims to provide an invaluable form guide for those wishing to compare the best teams in Europe. Eurotable covers Europe's top clubs/provinces (1) playing in France, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Italy.

Each week, the results of all domestic league and cup games (2) as well as European ties are fed into the computer. As with any league, points are awarded to teams for winning or drawing a match. The Eurotable, however, takes account of many other factors:
A.Points scored and points conceded (the points system encourages attacking rugby but it also rewards sides who lose a match by a narrow margin.).

B.Whether the game was played at home or away (bonus awarded to the away team).

C.
Strength of the opponent (more points are awarded when playing against a top-ranked opponent as opposed to a weaker one).


D.Strength of the domestic league (Account is taken of the differences in playing standards of the various domestic leagues by applying coefficients for each country. These are based on the performance of each country's clubs in the Heineken Cup (and to a much lesser extent, the European Challenge Cup) over the previous three seasons. The approach is similar to that used by UEFA to calculate their football rankings for each country.  

E.Importance of the game (more points are awarded for European Cup games and at the latter stages of all cup competitions).

F.Recent form feature (a unique weighting of the results ensures that a team's more recent performances are given more credit than those of earlier games. As a result, the rankings will usually reflect current form rather than a team's standing over its last thirty games.


The number of points credited to each team over their last 30 games (3) is summed up and teams are then ranked from top to bottom. Each team's rating is expressed as a percentage of the top-ranked team.

(1) The Eurotable covers all teams competing in the English Aviva Premiership, the French Top 14 and the RaboDirect Pro 12. At the beginning of the season, teams that are newly-promoted into the 'premier' leagues have to prove themselves before they are included in the Eurotable. A team has to play 10 games before it is given a provisional Ranking.

(2) Included are all games in the English Aviva Premiership, the French Top 14, the RaboDirect Pro 12 and the LV= Cup as well as the Heineken Cup and European Challenge Cup. Friendlies and games against touring sides are also excluded.

( 3)  On certain occasions, a team's total ranking points may fall despite winning a match. In such cases, the match is ignored for the particular team and the previous 30 games are used to calculate the ranking. Such games are denoted by a '*'. When does this arise ?

- One example is where a team has already won its national league or is guaranteed to qualify from its Heineken Cup or European Challenge Cup pool in first place, then any subsequent results (in that particular competition) that would result in a fall in their total ranking points are ignored.
- Another example is when a team wins a cup match against one of the weaker Italian, Spanish or Romanian sides in the Challenge Cup (fewer points are at stake for such cup matches) or when a team's recent record is so good that, say, a low-scoring home win against a low-ranked team will not increase their total ranking points.

geoff998rugby wrote:

Bluedragon wrote:  I would love to see the season restructured to play in 3 conferences - British A, British B, and France / Italy

So you don't want the Irish involved  

Mind you means someone else would have a chance of winning I suppose  

geoff998rugby wrote:Yep they won at Ravenhill this year.

Glasgow are the most consistant team in the league - probably lose less against teams in the bottom half of the league than the 3 top Irish provinces.

The let in less tries than any other team and are a tough nut to crack.
You need to stretch them and then superior skill can show but you get it wrong, as we did, and they will pounce.

quinsforever wrote:i had an email exchange with the guy who runs the ratings. i was asking him how the weightings work. within the rabo he uses different coefficients for each of the nationalities based on 3 or 5 year HC performance of that nations clubs. So within the Rabo, wins against irish teams carry a lot of weight.