FoG

Everyone knows what is at stake. Beat Denmark and Ireland will qualify directly, lose or draw and Ireland join the Playoffs.  There are a couple of other matches to play out tonight that will have a more subtle affect on Ireland's overall progress in Euro 2020. Ireland can avoid some of the stronger teams in the Euro 2020 draw depending on how Spain and Ireland rank among the qualifying group winners/runners up. * Spain vs Romania The best 6 group winners will be seeded in Pot 1 for the Euro 2020 draw. The next 4 winners in Pot 2. Ireland and Spain are hosts and both are already drawn together into Group E.  Spain are confirmed winners of their qualifying group.   Spain are just outside the top 6 group winners at the moment but a win here will bring them safely into Pot 1. France will be likely to miss out instead. This will mean that Spain will be the Top seed in Group E - so Ireland and Spain will avoid another top team eg Belgium, France or Ukraine. ...

My initial attempt to base some RWC Outright probabilities on something tangible like previous results fell well short. Especially when it came to South Africa. It failed to identify the improvement in South Africa since their latest Head Coach appointment. The improvement is self evident. Previously they have received routine thumpings from New Zealand for example 57-0 in 2017. Since the Head Coach replacement they've played NZ 3 times. The aggregate score is 82-82, after 1 win 1 draw and 1 defeat. It would seem that the results post March 2018 are much more relevant when assessing South Africa. This drastically reduces my sample size for them (just 12 matches vs Big 6). So although using less matches I'll use extra information from those matches. In other words instead of a binary win/defeat I will use Points Differences. This will help capture the relative strengths better and close matches will get the reward they deserve.  So here it is:  P W D...

Ireland will face the winner or runner up of Pool B. That will be either New Zealand or South Africa depending on which order they finish. It's likely to be England/Wales or Australia  in the semi final.  Then for the Final one of those five again - whichever they have managed to avoid so far. It will require beating the caliber of the Top 6 in the world, not just once, but THREE times  consecutively. So what should be Ireland's expectation? How has their win rate been in the past versus this standard of opposition? Including the 2015 RWC and all matches since Ireland have played these teams  22 times (6 vs WAL, 5 vs ENG, 4 vs SA, 4 vs AUS, 3 vs NZ) and winning 12 times. That's about a 55% win rate. If Ireland have won 55% of past meetings, then they could expect to win 55% of   future meetings. This is the same as saying they have a 55% chance of winning a single once off match. So 3-in-a-row?  The Maths would say 55% x 55% x 55% = 17%. So that...