Crunching Numbers: Putting on My Thinking Cap...

Buddha the Bulldog with his RWC Cap....

The Great thing about a tournament like the Rugby World Cup is that gives some us who not ordinarily numbers crunchers the chance to have some fun-maybe not as much fun as rugby songs, but still fun....

My good friend Lu-and Ferdy's partner in crime on the blogosphere over at http://ruggerblogger.blogspot.com/ had put out an interesting colored graph showing the nations from quarterfinals to champs. It gave me an idea to try to figure out who has been the most "Successful" team in Rugby World Cup history. The obvious way is to count trophies, which give the Wallabies and Springboks the lead with two apiece. But what I decided to do was backtrack from 1987-2007. I gave each team who was a losing quarter-finalist 1 point, losing Semifinalists 4 points, losing finalist 8 points, and the RWC champ 12 points. One thing that should be remembered, is that South Africa was not invited to the competitions in 1987 and 1991 because of it's Apartheid policies....

With that in mind, here is what my numbers came up with:
1. Australia-38 points
2. England-34
3. New Zealand -33
4. A draw with South Africa and France both with 29 points.
6. Scotland-9
7.Wales-6
8. Argentina-5
9. Ireland-4
10. Tie, Fiji and Samoa-2
12. Canada-1

With Wales, France, New Zealand and Australia all still playing at this RWC 2011,  Wales will leap-frog past Scotland, and France will at a minimum take sole possession of 4th place. If the All Blacks can beat Australia this weekend, they will pass England, and if they can win it all, they will lead the hit parade at the RWC- and equal their Tri-Nations partners by winning the Webb Ellis Trophy for the second time-and adding some more memorabilia at the New Zealand Rugby Museum in Palmerston North.