World Footy Rankings - the inaugural list

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World Footy Rankings - the inaugural list

Authored by: Ash Nugent
on Saturday, September 11 2010 @ 10:33 am ACST

Remember, it's an Australian Football ranking system. According to your statement any country with international class sportsmen could put them through an intense training regime and beat anyone but perhaps Australia at Australian Football. But only after (and if) these sportsmen actually start representing their country at Australian Football will these results filter through. Australia on the other hand sets the standard for Australian Football. Whilst the AFL's best mightn't have competed against other (amatuer) national sides, other Australian representative sides i.e. the Boomerangs and AIS have proved that Australians remain in a league of their own when it comes to Australian Football. The WFN Homes system is based on results bar one very educated assumption in Australia. It is not a hypothetical.

World Footy Rankings - the inaugural list

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Saturday, September 11 2010 @ 12:19 pm ACST

Yep, exactly what Ash has said. We have had some debates on this in the past too but the only real conclusion we could come to was to do it this way. I'm sure if the American NFL and NBA decided to send their guys into a 2 month camp they could come out to the International Cup and rank #2 as well.

Whereas Australia, right now, could field its All-Australian side and win every game by 300+ points. But the reality is that in the present state of international football the fully professional players will not play. And the same goes for Ireland's AFL players. But Australia could easily field an All-Australian State league side and still win easily, or an All-Australian amateur side or country side.

The results we present are based on actual performances of actual Australian Rules football players, not theoretical players, the only exception being Australia, but they are not theoretical players, they exist, it's just that the AFL does not allow any form of Australian team in the International Cup etc, out of fairness to the other teams, not because they are shirking the challenge (although I personally would like some kind of All-Australian Under 19 amateur side compete at the next IC).

Perhaps in even as little as 10 years those assumptions might be challenged, but not now. And the reality is that PNG will start to have its best players unavailable too, as they feed into the AFL. A statistical based system like this can only judge on the actual data, or in the case of Australia we make the very obvious judgement they are #1, which is well informed by the dominant performance of their youth sides even e.g against South Africa's senior team.

It may be that at some point we declare this to be the amateur rankings only, but there is no clear line between amateur and professional these days. For now we just make what we think are sensible rules and the results should be viewed in that context. The alternative is to imagine how could every country COULD be, which means it would have nothing to do with the actual matches played, or we exclude Australia, so we'd be saying here is the list of best Australian football nations in the world, and Australia isn't one of them. To the bulk of the general public taking just a mild interest that just doesn't make sense.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN