A much improved weekend all round for Irish provinces, the model and my pocket! Irish teams went four from four in the Pro 12, the Crystal Egg correctly predicted the outcome of ten from twelve games and all four of my bets (on Ospreys, Munster, Gloucester and London Irish) went the right way, to see me tip into profit (a glorious 96p on £12 of bets so far).
Speaking to some friends recently, they have been confused as to why Glasgow aren’t expected to do better in my league predictions, given their impressive showing last year and kicking off the season by toppling the champions. I suspected this was due to the way I calculated weights for games – previously this was done in a linear way, so a game two years ago would have half the weight of a game played today. I’ve now moved to an exponential model, which gives much more importance to games played recently and hopefully captures form a little bit better.
So what does this mean for this week’s league predictions? Unfortunately for Glasgow fans, not a huge amount! While their expected points have risen and they are a solid 60%, they are still in 5th place, just barely behind Munster in expected points tally. Ospreys meanwhile have leapfrogged Munster to an expected third position following a strong start to the season. Overall, the big five still account for the vast majority of probability of qualifying for the play-offs, with Scarlets having just 11% of a chance.
Looking at the Premiership, Harlequins’ expected points tally has taken a hit since last week following their incredible defeat by Saracens on Friday night, though are still just about expected to nudge out Bath for fourth position. The race for the playoffs looks more certain in England, with fifth place Bath given just a 33% chance of qualifying for the playoffs compared to 60% for Glasgow in the equivalent position (maybe the Pro 12 is more competitive now!). One area where the Aviva appears to be more competitive is in the fight for last place, with London Welsh and Newcastle Falcons continually scrapping to avoid relegation – while Newcastle were favourites to finish last before the season began, some poor results for London Welsh has seen them drop to a predicted last place for the season.
Full predicted tables and probabilities for finishing shown below. I’ll be back on Friday with more predictions!
| 1 | Leinster | 78.8155 |
| 2 | Ulster | 70.7795 |
| 3 | Ospreys | 68.021 |
| 4 | Munster | 66.6124 |
| 5 | Glasgow | 65.72 |
| 6 | Scarlets | 54.449 |
| 7 | Cardiff Blues | 47.8269 |
| 8 | Edinburgh | 42.2533 |
| 9 | Connacht | 41.9651 |
| 10 | Dragons | 37.3601 |
| 11 | Benetton Treviso | 33.5862 |
| 12 | Zebre | 21.2181 |
| 1 | Saracens | 79.9146 |
| 2 | Leicester Tigers | 74.1863 |
| 3 | Northampton Saints | 70.2665 |
| 4 | Harlequins | 60.9563 |
| 5 | Bath Rugby | 58.5338 |
| 6 | Exeter Chiefs | 53.4738 |
| 7 | London Wasps | 50.7506 |
| 8 | Gloucester Rugby | 49.4118 |
| 9 | London Irish | 46.6565 |
| 10 | Sale Sharks | 40.4562 |
| 11 | Newcastle Falcons | 26.0045 |
| 12 | London Welsh | 25.4545 |
Premiership probabilities of placing
Pro 12 probabilities of placing
96p on £12 = 8% return. That’s much better than having that money arse about in a savings account anyway. Better return than many investments actually.
Indeed. If I compound that over the next twenty years at 8% every two weeks, I expect I’ll be sitting pretty on something of the region of £600 trillion.
Let’s see how I’m doing next week though – I was down £2.40 last week!
Round 3 Predictions - Baldo
[…] The only difficult one of the weekend according to the model is Dragons home to Glasgow, but the model still thinks it will be a Scottish win (despite its peculiar anti-Glasgow bias). […]