World Footy News

worldfootynews.com has been developing an unofficial World Rankings scheme based on a suggestion by reader Cam Homes, which in turn was based on the IRB Rugby scheme. It may replace our existing rankings. One of the issues that has been discussed on this site is what games to include. In a series of articles we will discuss what we intend to use, although we are still open to suggestions/information that might lead to changes.

The two main questions addressed here are how far back to go and what games are eligible. We intend including data way back to 1994, starting with a match between Denmark and Great Britain in which the Bulldogs won 19.15 (129) to the Danes' 6.4 (40).

A great deal of time was put into hunting down the results from games back to 1994. Based mainly on Cam Homes' initial criteria, we are currently including games under the following conditions. However, they are meant as guidelines only and we're happy to consider games under advice from the national football bodies involved.

• All regular International Cup matches
• For matches played prior to IC2002, games must have been at least 12-a-side and more than 8 players being nationals
• For matches played after IC2002 and before IC2008, games must have been at least 14-a-side and more than 10 players on each side being nationals.
• For matches played since IC2008, games must have been at least 16-a-side and at least 12 players on each team being nationals (ideally all players).

It is difficult to check the qualifications of each game and each player, especially games many years ago. But the general spirit of the system is to rank nations based on how good their national side is playing a full field version of the sport with nationals of that country. Even one or two expatriate Australians can severely skew results but we realise that many past international matches have featured a few such players, and of course they have often played a vital role in establishing the game. These guidelines are not designed to influence the rules under which internationals are played, they are simply there for us to produce, as best possible, a consistent data set and thus consistent ranking system.

There has previously been debate on the merits of including smaller field and player number matches, such as 8 or 9-a-side. This author pushed reasonably hard for some such games to be counted, but did not find widespread support. Perhaps if such matches are regularly played under strict qualifying criteria a similar rankings may be produced for those games, although currently most such matches have had a lot of non-nationals participate. The sliding scale in our criteria, becoming more demanding over time, reflects that more and more internationals are being played under rules closer and closer to what we consider the current "gold standard", the International Cups. We acknowledge that exceptions have been made even for those tournaments.

We'll now list the matches and results that have been included in our new World Rankings.

Prior to the 2002 International Cup:

Further results to follow in subsequent stories. As before, feedback is welcome. We've previously contacted officials from many nations regarding these rankings. Responses have included cautious support and suggested changes, although overall not a lot of comment either way.

Further reading and debate on our proposed World Rankings can be found here:

• Proposed World Rankings
  
• Is this the first step towards the Official World Rankings?
• Rankings scheme related comments on a poll about possible IC2011 divisions
• Debate - World footy rankings 2008 - other countries to consider

Note that some of those threads will be closed for further comments, to focus new comments to this newer series of stories.