World Footy News

Campbell Homes recently contacted WFN with his proposal for a world ranking system, similar to that used in rugby union by the IRB. These rankings are dynamic and are continuously revised whenever a test match takes place.

His current rankings (March 2010) follow, along with an explanation of his proposed method, and criteria of which games are and aren't considered in the calculations.

Nations marked in grey have played less than five matches under our criteria, and currently hold a provisional ranking, but are not yet officially ranked.

Rank		Country	Points
1		Australia	N/A
2		New Zealand	51.57
3		PNG	51.10
4		USA	44.69
5		Nauru	44.20
6		Ireland	43.81
7		Great Britain	42.19
8		Samoa	41.72
9		South Africa	41.61
10		Denmark	41.27
Prov.		Peace Team	39.86
11		Canada	38.92
Prov.		Germany	38.22
Prov.		China	35.43
12		Sweden	35.21
13		Japan	34.21
14		Finland	32.92
Prov.		India	32.00
15		Spain	31.05

How Campbell Homes' System is calculated

The proposed World Rankings will be a “Points Exchange” system in which sides take points off each other based on match results. Whatever one side gains, the other loses.

The points exchanges will be based on the match result, the relative strength of each team, and the margin of victory, and there will be an allowance for home advantage.

Points exchanges will be doubled during the International Cup, in its present form, so as to recognize the importance of the event. All other ‘International’ matches will be treated the same.

Any match that does meet the proposed criteria (see below) will not count for ranking.

All ranked teams will typically have points between 0 and 100.

For each match there are only five possible outcomes that can affect point exchanges, either side winning by more than 40 points, either side winning by up to 40 points, or a draw.

All countries will start with a rating of 40, and their rating will be treated as provisional until they have played 5 matches.

The ratings in this type of scheme are responsive to match results, however, there will be a maximum that any side's rating can move, either up and down, based on one match result, to ensure the system will not over-react to a ‘freak’ result.

There will be no particular advantage playing more matches than another team. Under this system, a country has a certain rating, which will stay the same until they play their next match. Although matches will usually result in points exchanges and will lead to very minor changes, losing to a side many points above it will incur no loss and vice versa no advantage will be gained by defeating a much lower team.

The system is designed to produce an accurate picture of current strength, based on actual match results. The importance of past successes will fade into history and be superseded by more recent results.

Some research has been done on matches played as far back 1994 so that a reasonable measure of accuracy and reliability will be built into the system.

Home Team Advantage

When calculating points exchanges, the home side will be treated as though they 3 (three) rating points better than their current rating. This will in effect be ‘handicapping’ the home side as they will tend to pick up fewer points for winning and giving more away for losing. In this way, the advantage of playing at home is cancelled out.

Margin of Victory

We believe that match results are more important than margins of victory in producing accurate rankings. Whether a team wins by 80 pts or 110 pts against a much lower-rated team is not a good indicator of future performance. However we believe it is significant whether a side wins relatively comfortably- that is with something to spare- so a weighting of exchange points x 1.5 will be applied to teams winning by more than 40pts.

Criteria for a match to be included in rankings calculations

IC matches - IC rules.
Matches played prior to IC 2002: At least 12-a-side and more than 8 players being nationals.
Matches played since IC 2002: At least 14-a-side and more than 10 players on each side being nationals.
Matches played from 2010: At least 16-a-side and at least 12 players on each team being nationals. Residency period for Ex-pat Aussies = 5 years living permanently in adopted country.