Saturday, October 06, 2007
Stats for the Quarterfinals
A few possible pointers for you.
The favourites for the 4 games are NZ, Australia, South Africa and Argentina.
Reasons are obvious. They are all unbeaten whereas their opponents have all lost a match already. No team has ever gone on and won the World Cup after losing a pool match. In fact the only time a team has dropped a pool match and even made the final was in 1991 when England lost the opening game to NZ but went on to make the final where they lost to Australia.
Combined the finalists at every world cup have had 30 pool wins, 1 draw and 1 loss and it's hard to see any of those second qualifiers from any of the pools taking the title this year.
Other reasons to be worried if you are fans or Scotland, England, France or Fiji. The opposition has won more historically against your teams (Argentina 5 Scotland 1, Australia 20 England 13, New Zealand 34 France 10 and South Africa 1 Fiji 0) and also the favoured teams all won the last encounter between the two sides. In the case of the All Blacks they have gone 10 matches v France without defeat and Scotland have not defeated Argentina since their first encounter 17 years ago in 1990.
I would be surprised if there wasn't one upset from the four games but for the life of me I just can't see which game it would be.
God help us if it's at 8am tomorrow morning. But I am tipping the ABs by a comfortable margin. In other words I don't think we will be needing a late winner or to defend our line against a barrage of attack.
And a few words on the minnows. Get rid of them. They stretch the comp out and don't have a shit show of winning anything significant. Contrary to a lot of what you have heard in the media the likes of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa ARE NOT minnows. They would all easily qualify for a 16 team world cup. It's the Portugals, Namibia's and Japan's that need to jump through more hoops to make it.
The IRB needs a better qualifying system in place where more teams are involved and the weaker teams get more matches against better sides. Not one game every four years v class opposition. In 4 years time people in Portugal will still be none the wiser that they have an international rugby team unless they are actually knocking teams over. It's a little like our mens basketball team going to the world champs and coming 13th or whatever. Most people on the street in NZ would have no idea they are there, but when they come 4th....
The favourites for the 4 games are NZ, Australia, South Africa and Argentina.
Reasons are obvious. They are all unbeaten whereas their opponents have all lost a match already. No team has ever gone on and won the World Cup after losing a pool match. In fact the only time a team has dropped a pool match and even made the final was in 1991 when England lost the opening game to NZ but went on to make the final where they lost to Australia.
Combined the finalists at every world cup have had 30 pool wins, 1 draw and 1 loss and it's hard to see any of those second qualifiers from any of the pools taking the title this year.
Other reasons to be worried if you are fans or Scotland, England, France or Fiji. The opposition has won more historically against your teams (Argentina 5 Scotland 1, Australia 20 England 13, New Zealand 34 France 10 and South Africa 1 Fiji 0) and also the favoured teams all won the last encounter between the two sides. In the case of the All Blacks they have gone 10 matches v France without defeat and Scotland have not defeated Argentina since their first encounter 17 years ago in 1990.
I would be surprised if there wasn't one upset from the four games but for the life of me I just can't see which game it would be.
God help us if it's at 8am tomorrow morning. But I am tipping the ABs by a comfortable margin. In other words I don't think we will be needing a late winner or to defend our line against a barrage of attack.
And a few words on the minnows. Get rid of them. They stretch the comp out and don't have a shit show of winning anything significant. Contrary to a lot of what you have heard in the media the likes of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa ARE NOT minnows. They would all easily qualify for a 16 team world cup. It's the Portugals, Namibia's and Japan's that need to jump through more hoops to make it.
The IRB needs a better qualifying system in place where more teams are involved and the weaker teams get more matches against better sides. Not one game every four years v class opposition. In 4 years time people in Portugal will still be none the wiser that they have an international rugby team unless they are actually knocking teams over. It's a little like our mens basketball team going to the world champs and coming 13th or whatever. Most people on the street in NZ would have no idea they are there, but when they come 4th....
Labels: rugby world cup
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