Hi Fatcat and all,

I don't have any national team ratings of my own to use for The Rugby Championship. I have looked at the World Rugby (used to be IRB) ratings. For 5 Rugby World Cups and 204 matches, their higher-rated team (including their home advantage) won 86%. Pretty darn good. The system is intended to give the probability of the higher-rated team winning, after adding three rating points to the home team.

Thanks to your question, I used World Rugby ratings for New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Argentina to calculate the probability of the home and away teams winning and then the fair odds from that probability. I am attaching the odds for the 12 matcups.

I have never looked at the accuracy of the win odds against the bookies, but if the higher rated team wins 86% of the time, that's encouraging.

According to the World Rugby ratings, New Zealand would win all 6, Australia and South Africa would each win 3 and Argentina would be shut out.

I will still be rooting for the Wallabies, ratings or not.

Ray

Attached Files

Rugby Championship Using World Rugby Ratings.docx (13.7 KB, 477 views)