Who will be be the Biggest team to EXIT the RWC early..?

First topic message reminder :

Many teams have stumbled before the form book has said they should, surprise wins in pool groups have put highly seeded teams in second place. Or even a second place team from the pools finally clicking into gear in the Quarters have seen a top seed exit early.

An impressive England team fell to Jannie de Beers impressive five drop goals for SA in 99, Wales beaten by impressive an Fijian team in 07 and a strong Samoan team in 99 and 91. New Zealand falling apart in the second half against the French who had previously lost to Argentina in 07 or again to the french in one of the greatest games ever in 99. England stepping it up against the Aussies in 07 and 95 in the quarters.

This always adds an unexpected element to the form book.

Possibilities this year?

Pool A France could fall at the hands of strong looking Tonga and Japan?

Pool B England may stumble to Scotland and Argentina?

Pool C Australia could underestimate Ireland, Italy or even the little known but impressive Russians?

Pool D SA could lose to any of Fiji, Samoa or Wales?

I believe a lot more depends on whether you have a SH or a NH Ref, TMO etc..... than the IRB Rankings

roddersm wrote:

BATH_BTGOG wrote:IMO the IRB rankings are a poor guide for what is going to happen in a knock out, pressure cooker situation

Actually they're not. If you look back at the last WC based on the rankings there were no major upsets bar England beating France and Australia and Fiji beating Wales.

Argentina, France and Ireland were all close on the rankings and Argentina performed the best. France beating the AB's was an upset but don't forget France were the host team.

Other than that most of the results went to form.

There is a difference between actual form and proven/current form. But I would say that the rankings are proven accurate to who is where in World Rugby whether a Rugby World Cup or not.

BATH_BTGOG wrote:I believe a lot more depends on whether you have a SH or a NH Ref, TMO etc..... than the IRB Rankings

Perhaps that's true... A lot of high tackles going in from Samoa on saturday, I'm sure none would have gone un-punished with a NH ref.

BATH_BTGOG wrote:I believe a lot more depends on whether you have a SH or a NH Ref, TMO etc..... than the IRB Rankings

What do you see as the difference?

For example do you think a SH ref would give England more chance against Argentina or a NH ref and why ?

Generalising massively, but I suspect one could surmise that Argentine play is more similar in style to that of the NH countries - that is after all where most of their players earn a living. Will be interesting to see if that changes after the Tri-Nations becomes the 4-Nations?

AsLongAsBut100ofUs wrote:Generalising massively, but I suspect one could surmise that Argentine play is more similar in style to that of the NH countries - that is after all where most of their players earn a living. Will be interesting to see if that changes after the Tri-Nations becomes the 4-Nations?

My biggest worry is that they'll actually end up influencing the other Tri-Nations sides, in particular forcing the Aussies to learn how to scrum and maul. The last thing we need to see are the already dominant Tri Nations forces improving in the one area where traditionally they can (occasionally) be overwhelmed.

England would be better off with a NH ref over an SH any day of the week, but it also depends who the NH ref is

Ohh god! don't let it be Wales...

roddersm wrote:

BATH_BTGOG wrote:IMO the IRB rankings are a poor guide for what is going to happen in a knock out, pressure cooker situation

Actually they're not. If you look back at the last WC based on the rankings there were no major upsets bar England beating France and Australia and Fiji beating Wales.

Argentina, France and Ireland were all close on the rankings and Argentina performed the best. France beating the AB's was an upset but don't forget France were the host team.

Other than that most of the results went to form.

Not 100% right.

In the tournament opener, France were against Argentina at home (giving them a 3-point ranking boost). This would have given France a ranking advantage of over 9 points, and if a side has a 10 point advantage they are considered so superior that they cannot gain any ranking points by winning (and vica versa, if a side has a 10 point disadvantage they are considered so inferior that they cannot lose any ranking points by losing). France losing to Argentina was, in IRB World Rankings terms, a shock. It was certainly a bigger shock than Fiji beating Wales in the group stages.

By the quarter-final stage, the match-ups were (with their World Rankings):

New Zealand (93.37) Vs France (84.50)
Australia (87.73) Vs England (80.07)
South Africa (86.40) Vs Fiji (75.88)
Argentina (85.53) Vs Scotland (77.03)

France didn't get home advantage, as they were playing in Wales. Therefore New Zealand losing to France was the biggest shock (on par with Argentina beating France) and England beating Australia was the second biggest shock.

By the semi-final stage, the match-ups were (with their World Rankings):
France (88.27) Vs England (83.60)
South Africa (86.40) Vs Argentina (85.53)

France's ranking would have been boosted by their home advantage to 91.27, which would give them a lead over England of around 7.5, meaning in World Rankings terms England's victory over France was as much a shock as their victory over Australia.

Argentina beating France in the Bronze final would have been a slight shock (about 4 points difference with France's home advantage), but not on the scale of some of the others.

So in terms of IRB World Rankings, the biggest shocks were:

Argentina beating France (in the pool stages: 9.12 rating gap)
France beating New Zealand (8.87 rating gap)
England beating France (7.67 rating gap)
England beating Australia (7.66 rating gap)
Tonga beating Samoa (7.37 rating gap)
Argentina beating France (in the Bronze final: 4.74 rating gap)
Fiji beating Wales (3.82 rating gap)

Looking at the knock-out stages, 4 of the 8 matches went with the IRB Rankings, 4 went against, suggesting that in "the pressure cooker atmosphere" the IRB Rankings are an unreliable guide (especially considering the magnitude of some of the shocks).

I don't think there were any other shocks in terms of the IRB World Rankings (Argentina were ranked above Ireland by the time the two met in the final match of the pool stage).

its nice to see how people think wales will struggle yet S.A will sail through, i think wales may come out with all guns blazing, espicially after all the problems that they have faced and they will shock people with their skill.

(and welshy wakes up)
oh yeh...

Pull the other one

robbo277 wrote:
So in terms of IRB World Rankings, the biggest shocks were:

Argentina beating France (in the pool stages: 9.12 rating gap)
France beating New Zealand (8.87 rating gap)
England beating France (7.67 rating gap)
England beating Australia (7.66 rating gap)
Tonga beating Samoa (7.37 rating gap)
Argentina beating France (in the Bronze final: 4.74 rating gap)
Fiji beating Wales (3.82 rating gap)

Robbo you must have had a lot of time on your hands to go digging for that. Good effort anyway.

Point 1 is that off those IRB upsets above only 3 occured in the group stages, which suggest that as far as the groups go they tend to go with the rankings and form. Once you reach the KO stages ranking tend to be less relevant but not completely so.

Point 2 is that you are adjusting the points as the tournament goes on. This is fine but not relevent here as we are discussing pretournament form. Obviously the rankings may change slightly as the tournament goes on.

Therefore my orginal point still stands that pre tournement form and rankings are very much related to WC performance and that most "upsets" tend to occur between teams which are fairly close on the IRB rankings.

It took about 20 minutes, but yeah, I don't start work until 7pm tonight, so I'm just killing time till then!

Looking at only the Pre-World Cup rankings then, the only surprises in the Pool Stages were Argentina topping their group (France should have comfortably topped it, with either Ireland or Argentina finishing second), Fiji pipping Wales to second place in Group B and to some extent Scotland finishing above Italy (although not as huge a shock). Tonga beating Samoa to third (and therefore automatically qualifying for 2011 as a third seed) was also a shock.

If France had beaten New Zealand in the final, with both teams having won all their matches, then France beating New Zealand in France wouldn't have been a shock, but considering they lost to Argentina and New Zealand swept their group it was a shock in my opinion.