User talk:Alanmjohnson

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Re Otago's Forlorn Hope

Yep you're right. Northland to beat Auckland by 8 or more with neither team scoring 4 tries plus Otago getting a bonus point win over Wellington and beating Wellington by 17 points more than Northland beat Auckland by will see them there good call. Thecrystalcicero (talk) 08:44, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

To give your long way around question a short answer - don't know. There is no information on the allblacks site. Tantilisingly there is a mention in the Heartland Cup rules of the process of determining tie-breaks beyond points difference they are "mentioned further in Appendix 13 of this agreement". This mysterious thirteenth appendix of course is not on line (neither are the twelve others).So at the very least the provincial unions will know what is needed, at least you hope they would. I remember the debacle of Euro 2a last year where some Belgian officials had no idea that regardless of the result in their final match they could not overtake Germany in the table as Germany was ahead of them on the head to head aggregate. It will be either the head to head or points difference. Either way has its flaws, so there's no way to figure it out by logical fairness; head to head is flawed because it might be that in a particular case (though not in this instance) the two tied teams haven't played eachother, points diff might be flawed because teams are guaranteed to have played a different set of provinces.Thecrystalcicero (talk) 00:33, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Conjecture be gone; this is from http://files.allblacks.com/comms/mb/New_Competitions_Information_Summary_2005.pdf

tie breaks- where teams tied on competition points

1.result of most recent game between the two unions that season

2.points diff

3.highest number of tries scored

4.coin toss

Tasman and Otago drew. Tasman has not played Auckland and Otago and Auckland have not met. So under any circumstances it will go to points diff then tries which is at the moment A-17, O-17 and T-15.

 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thecrystalcicero (talk • contribs) 00:48, 3 October 2008 (UTC) 

Yep I see where you're coming from the current way of bring forward results is distortive, if it was different the current standings would be Meads; Ringies 15, Old Golds 13, Mighties 9, Smuties 7, Buller 5, Rams 0; Lochore; Poverty Bay 14, 'Nua 13, Why bush? 11, Swamp foxes 4, South Canterbury 3, Ngati porou 0.

And that seems intuitively closer to their relative strengths.Thecrystalcicero (talk) 09:33, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Mighties - contraction of the "Mighty men of mid", common nick name from the seventies less heard these days.

Ringies - don't know, other North Islanders call them that, it might come from the narrow white rings on their jersey.

Smuties - might just be the fantasy term of my west coast family but there's a link with WC's coal mining industry, and they used to have a reputation as a pretty dirty team. Thecrystalcicero (talk) 09:44, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Unofficial Rugby Union World Championships Map

Hi, I simply used the blank map that can be found at Image:BlankMap-World.png . I saved the image and opened it with paint, then filled in each country. The only change to the map that I had to make was to create boundaries between the Home Nations. Hope that helps. --Robdurbar 11:10, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Minor Nations Rugby

Hey man - good work on the ENC stuff. I'm interested in helping out. I'm in Norway, and a regular visitor to a number of sites that discuss minor nations' rugby. Though I doubt it will be all that useful, please feel free to contact me if there anything you can't track down, or if there's a more major project you'd like help with! AshleyMorton (talk) 09:27, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. If you can shed some light on some of the odd things about Division 3D, that would be great. For example:

Some of these things may be lost to the mists of time and random bureaucracy. However, one thing to keep in mind is just how "minor" some of these "minor nations" are. In some of the smallest countries, there may be only one or two functioning clubs, most of the members of which are ex-pats, and thus only eligible to play after 3 years of residency. In some countries, there can be serious problems even finding 15 bodies able to travel. One wedding in the wrong part of town, and half the Monaco team can't travel to Estonia. It's no surprise, therefore, that in 3D, the host team won convincingly - put that tournament anywhere but Cyprus, and I'm sure the Cypriot results wouldn't have been the same.

• Why did they have a different competition in both years instead of one competition spanning both?

I'm sure it was because they didn't trust the countries' national unions to hold together over 2 years. Particularly, you can't possibly trust these squads to be of similar quality year-over-year.

• Why was it a knockout in 2006-07, and a league in 07-08?

Probably just experimentation.

• In 06-07, why did Greece and Azerbaijan play twice and Monaco-Slovakia only once?
• And why did Monaco win but Slovakia advance?

I'm betting that the Monaco team couldn't field in the second half of what was supposed to be a home-and-home. Therefore, even though they had won the first leg, they would have allowed Slovakia to advance.

• Why did Cyprus sit out in 06-07 and Greece in 07-08?

Probably just scheduling difficulties. However, if you look on the FIRA page, when you go to select a division, there is 1,2,3 and "Friendlies", under which is "Mediterranean Cup" (well, they misspell it, but that's beside the point). That cup was played between Monaco and Greece in early '08. So, they're both still alive and functioning, but just couldn't make it to the Cyprus event. Also, there would be some serious political ramifications to a Greek team playing in Cyprus.

• Why did Monaco and Slovakia not play in 07-08?

I'm guessing that there was a match scheduled, but it didn't get played for one of any number of reasons - clearly neither could win any longer, so perhaps they decided on an early trip to the pub instead.

• Who will be promoted? Greece or Cyprus

Damned if I know - now that the IRB has decided to use existing ENC structures in their qualifying structure for the 2011 RWC, FIRA will be free to solidify the structure for 2008-10. However, the IRB has not included 3D in their qualifying structure, so I wouldn't be surprised if they and FIRA are treating it as an "as needed" thing.

• Maybe it would be best to promote all five teams and have no relegations this year, such that each division from 1 to 3A had 6 teams.

Maybe, but then you'd have teams who do take this stuff seriously (even if they're not that good), like Bosnia and Luxembourg playing against teams who may exist this week, but not the next.

• Why have silly subdivisions like 2A and 3C? Why not 1-7?

I think it's an issue of resource allocation, in terms of officials and other general structures. I believe that all of division 2 (whether A or B) matches have more than one FIRA official, and greater budget allocated to the event. All of division 3 only has one official, and sleeping on the floor of the local clubhouse is a completely acceptable response to a local shortage of cheap accomodation.

Cheers,

Ashley AshleyMorton (talk) 15:31, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Aha! New information. From here [1]. It seems that one nation is already promoted to 3C (my guess is Greece), because the article says that the 5th-placed in 3C will go down, while the 4th-placed will have a playoff with Cyprus. AshleyMorton (talk) 11:05, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all those answers and for that little bit of information. Kind of a shame to drop Bosnia into 3D, as it does seem to be pretty unserious (though for all I know, Bosnia might be happy about it.) A much bigger shame to potentially drop Finland or Israel as well. Alanmjohnson (talk) 17:10, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree. On the other hand, it would be a shame to keep Greece or Cyprus in 3D if they're actually trying to build the sport in their country. Maybe with the incoming more experienced countries, 3D will actually resemble a proper competition. AshleyMorton (talk) 11:03, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

--Dabackgammonator (talk) 04:46, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I would love to, but we have finals next week and I need the weekend to study.--Dabackgammonator (talk) 06:35, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Women's Rugby World Cup 2002

I note with interest the work you have done on the 2002 Women's World Cup.

While an interesting alternative to its previous organisation I am concerned with the new look for a number of reasons:

1. It is grossly misleading as to the way the tournament was organised. The format you have produced gives the impression that the pool stages (and indeed the entire tournament) was in some way a knockout, with the make up of the second round being determined by the outcome of the first round. There is no evidence that this was the case - the arrangements for the second round of games seem to have been determined from the start. After two rounds the teams were ranked 1-16 and - based on this ranking - the latter stages of the tournament was organised. This is pretty much how all four IRB WRWCs have been run (including the previous one in 1998). In addition the terms "final" or "pool final/semi-finals" or "second round losers" were not used. However graphically satisfying it may the result is not historically accurate.

2. The Women's World Cup games are not the only forum for women's international rugby. At present all of the pages on Wikipedia that provide information on the various tournaments etc. (there are 100 or more) on women's international rugby use the same format. This is no longer the case - and moreover cannot be as this format is unsuitable for most of the tournament formats.

3. You have removed all of the international match numbering that applies to all other women's internationals on all other pages, both those for the other World Cups, and in other tournaments. Each game having a unique running number as well as data showing how many games each nation had played up to that point, and how how many games between each other, allowing for effective cross-referencing and illustrating the development of individual teams. All of this data has been lost.

3. There seems to be a great deal of needless duplication with the same games listed more than once.

Could you please reconsider the applicability of your design to this tournament (and any other tournament pages you are looking at redesigning)? (Johnlbirch (talk) 20:41, 17 July 2009 (UTC))

I'm not sure how these "talks" are supposed to work, but I am replying to your reply to me User_talk:Johnlbirch&redirect=no#Women.27s_Rugby_World_Cup_2002.

1. The lack of sources (especially electronic sources) for women's rugby is a problem. I will try to get something out of the rugby museum at Twickenham who originally provided quite a lot of this information, but that will not be electronic (or, I suspect, particular speedy - and I do not have the time, at present, to go down to Twickenham again - you try going round the M25 in summer!).

However the circumstantial evidence does point against it being a knockout. First it at least apprears that the organisation of the 2002 tournament was pretty much the same as in 1998 and close to that for 2006 (taking into account that there were fewer teams in 2006) - all of which were seeded pools followed by a ranked draw (ludicrously complex system I'd agree - frankly at a knockout would be more sensible, or at least easy to follow, but that is the IRB...).

Moreover, a pure knockout would be out of keeping with any other IRB World Cup at any level (and these events are run by the IRB, not the host union - as the IRB have made very clear to us for 2010! - so any anomaly cannot be blamed on the Spanish RFU) all of which use a pool system for the opening games as it means that teams can at least theoretically recover from first round defeat. I am not aware of any other similar IRB tournament that has used a simple knockout - so I think it is reasonable that we have some hard evidence of the IRB departing from normal procedure rather than evidence that they were following it (and when it comes to accurate reporting on women's rugby, I'd trust the BBC about as far as I could throw them. I have a small pile of correspondence going as high as DG level complaining about how useless (and, at times, plain wrong) they are!).

Next - after the first two rounds a new 1-16 ranking was produced. Again its difficult to see why this would have been done if the tournament was a simple knockout.

And finally the teams were drawn in pools - again this makes no sense for a knock-out.

The problem is that the tournament was well seeded and so - in retrospect - a knockout can be imposed on the results. But that does not mean it was a knockout - rather more that the seeding committee got it right!

2. Covered above now I think.

3. There is no other listing of women's rugby internationals anywhere else other than on Wikipedia - the IRB publish no such list (though there is some pressure growing on them I gather, especially in an upcoming meeting), but even given that I fail to see why Wikipedia may not be a repository for unique information (all be it compiled from published resources elsewhere). If that were the case then almost all information on women's rugby should be removed from Wikipedia as almost all of it is original research not available elsewhere (the sevens pages being a case in point)!

And there is a relevance for information related to each country's previous rugby history appearing in the World Cup pages. World Cups - while important - are not events taking place outside of the flow of rugby history. Teams do not enter a tournament with common (or no) level of previous playing experience - some indication of a teams previous history, or the place of the tournament in the wider picture, seems to make sense.

Equally an attempt to follow the playing history of a particular team would include the 2002 World Cup and so it makes sense to allow a researcher to easily follow a team through from previous pages.

Overall I think there is a compromise we can come to that would combine your explanatory structural layout with the consistent designs used on other women's rugby pages. I'll look into it.

{Johnlbirch (talk)}

Okay - it did not take that long. Web Archive has the IRB pages from 2002 - see here

This confirms it was NOT a knockout - though equally it is not a simple pool. In theory a team losing its first game could still qualify for the cup stages if, after the two pool games, it gained a high ranking than one of the first round winners. So - for example - France won Pool B after beating USA and Kazakhstan. Both USA and Kazakhstan beat Netherlands, but USA beat them 87-0 while Kazakhstan only won 37-10 - so USA get a higher ranking than Kazakhstan.

{Johnlbirch (talk) 16:58, 19 July 2009 (UTC)}

Nomination for deletion of Template:2008-2010 ENC 1 standings

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Proposed deletion of 2003 Rugby World Cup – repechage qualification

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