World Cup Draw - very strange

[JohnM]

2 hours ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Can you inform her that Tesco underwear is far too expensive?

Do you find it chafes?

[tim2]

1 hour ago, N2022 said:

I'm surprised she was surprised. I though it was a very 'tennis' thing to make a draw in a set format, so the top 2 seeds were guaranteed not to meet each other on the route to a final. Mixed feelings about it myself. In team sports it's sometimes a bit different with a view to making any final pairing possible depending on how results pan out and I can see benefits and drawbacks of either model. I think this seems strange to us now, as Samoa have done something no other second placed team in beating group winners in the QF. Had it been Eng v Tonga we'd have thought less of it, but now we are faced with the prospect of a repeat of a game that's already happened. I do think the attendance might not be quite what it would have been for Eng Tonga, partly for this reason, whilst I acknowledge one game was Newcastle and the next is London, and some will have bought tickets earlier or be happy to see whoever,

Most adult and older junior tennis tournaments are knock out, but at junior level they're often in groups. Because the rankings are not always 100% up to date or accurate, the seeding can be incorrect and you can sometimes get the best 2 players in the same pool. I guess that's not happened here; the main problems are:

1. It's obviously fixed to avoid a Aus-England semi-final. (why?)

2. We get a repeat game - actually if Samoa had met NZ I think they'd have beaten them too but ended up with Aus in the semis. Tonga-Fiji may have been interesting.

[Madrileño]

5 hours ago, tim2 said:

My wife's a tennis tournament ref/organiser and was very surprised they'd done it like this.

There was a chap on here the other day saying the international game should follow the format of a "squash ladder" (WTF?!) so if anyone else has any utterly irrelevant sporting comparisons please feel free to post them below:

[tim2]

Just now, Madrileño said:

There was a chap on here the other day saying the international game should follow the format of a "squash ladder" (WTF?!) so if anyone else has any utterly irrelevant sporting comparisons please feel free to post them below:

It's not irrelevent when most of the junior tournaments use 4 pools of 4 followed by a knock out.

[SUPERSTUD]

Wasting your time pointing out the obvious on here like things being rigged. 

[Niels]

6 hours ago, tim2 said:

It's OK to seed the top 4 so that it's 1v4 and 2v3, if you have some justification for the ranking. My argument here isn't with that, it's the QF draw that's wrong.

The difference is that usually the group winner and second placed team in the same group, proceed into different halves of the draw. 

Here, the draw was made so that sides in different halves couldn't meet until the final. 

 

Edited November 6, 2022 by Niels

[tim2]

1 minute ago, Niels said:

The difference is that usually the winner and second placed teams proceed into different halves of the draw. 

Here, the draw was made so that sides in different halves couldn't meet until the final. 

 

Yes, I accept it and will  gracefully bow out now. Another one of the great mysteries of RL and how it organises itself. Or doesn't.

[Wellsy4HullFC]

I'm guessing they've gone with a 2 halves of the draw type booking. But really they've just done it to guarantee England play at Emirates.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

1 hour ago, JohnM said:

Do you find it chafes?

No not at all, I find it very comfy, like I say just expensive. 

[N2022]

1 hour ago, tim2 said:

Most adult and older junior tennis tournaments are knock out, but at junior level they're often in groups. Because the rankings are not always 100% up to date or accurate, the seeding can be incorrect and you can sometimes get the best 2 players in the same pool. I guess that's not happened here; the main problems are:

1. It's obviously fixed to avoid a Aus-England semi-final. (why?)

2. We get a repeat game - actually if Samoa had met NZ I think they'd have beaten them too but ended up with Aus in the semis. Tonga-Fiji may have been interesting.

1. Because Aus haven't missed a final since the first edition 60-odd years ago, so meeting them before that is basically odds-on you're out.

2. Yes - I don't think anyone likes to see a repeat game before the final.

[Sports Prophet]

55 minutes ago, N2022 said:

1. Because Aus haven't missed a final since the first edition 60-odd years ago, so meeting them before that is basically odds-on you're out.

2. Yes - I don't think anyone likes to see a repeat game before the final.

I don’t mind it happening at Semi Final stage. Gives England the best chance possible to make the final and that almost needed to be a minimum requirement to maximise the success of this tournament.

[Adelaide Tiger]

6 hours ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Quite frankly these days anyone's underwear coming down for me would be a God send. 

Sometimes I fail to pull down my own underwear in time ……. 

[Adelaide Tiger]

3 hours ago, Madrileño said:

There was a chap on here the other day saying the international game should follow the format of a "squash ladder" (WTF?!) so if anyone else has any utterly irrelevant sporting comparisons please feel free to post them below:

When I started work in the Council there already was a Squash Ladder in place with about 20 colleagues listed.

So as I wanted to take part my name was added to the bottom of the league.  The rules were that 1) you could only challenge someone up to three places above you.  If you won you swapped places.  2) You could not refuse a challenge and the person highest in the league had one week in which to organise the game or they forfeited and swapped places.

Ruddy Flexitime killed this and the epic two hour boozy lunchtime sessions every Friday!

As for other utterly irrelevant ‘sporting’ comparisons why not use the format from Only Connect?  I consider that program a sport!

[RayCee]

15 hours ago, tim2 said:

My wife's a tennis tournament ref/organiser and was very surprised they'd done it like this.

My dog thought it was a howler. But then again it could have been the police siren. 

[tim2]

5 hours ago, Adelaide Tiger said:

When I started work in the Council there already was a Squash Ladder in place with about 20 colleagues listed.

So as I wanted to take part my name was added to the bottom of the league.  The rules were that 1) you could only challenge someone up to three places above you.  If you won you swapped places.  2) You could not refuse a challenge and the person highest in the league had one week in which to organise the game or they forfeited and swapped places.

Ruddy Flexitime killed this and the epic two hour boozy lunchtime sessions every Friday!

As for other utterly irrelevant ‘sporting’ comparisons why not use the format from Only Connect?  I consider that program a sport!

You can all shut up now. I've already admitted that this draw was brilliantly done and the way everyone else does it is obviously wrong.

[gingerjon]

7 minutes ago, tim2 said:

You can all shut up now. I've already admitted that this draw was brilliantly done and the way everyone else does it is obviously wrong.

Yes. You should learn your lesson.

(It is obviously a fix. I mean *obviously*. But it's been known for ages and nobody is really pretending it isn't a fix.)

[GUBRATS]

1 minute ago, gingerjon said:

Yes. You should learn your lesson.

(It is obviously a fix. I mean *obviously*. But it's been known for ages and nobody is really pretending it isn't a fix.)

Exactly , but no more of a fix than a super group of 4 that only ' loses ' one team 

[StandOffHalf]

Cooked the draw to do everything possible to get England to the final against one of the big two from the Southern Hemisphere.

Shabby and embarrassing stuff really.

[tim2]

Just now, GUBRATS said:

Exactly , but no more of a fix than a super group of 4 that only ' loses ' one team 

They only did that because people complained about blow-out scores and to be fair it stopped that happening. Then they complained about the super group so it changed, and now they're complaining about blow out scores again. I hope they don't reduce it again....

[StandOffHalf]

PNG 4-day turnaround in the QF; Samoa coming off a war and with a day less.

England definitely have a few helping hands behind the scenes. The draw is part of that.

They've played great football and have been fantastic to watch, so it's understandable that those facilitations aren't highlighted.

Edited November 7, 2022 by StandOffHalf

[gingerjon]

19 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

Exactly , but no more of a fix than a super group of 4 that only ' loses ' one team 

Aye. I've said before that pretty much every RLWC has a weird and/or fixed set-up.

[GUBRATS]

11 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

Aye. I've said before that pretty much every RLWC has a weird and/or fixed set-up.

I'd expect France to be ' helped ' in 3 years time 

[gingerjon]

1 minute ago, GUBRATS said:

I'd expect France to be ' helped ' in 3 years time 

Either by a set up that means they can get deep into a tournament or one that guarantees them big pay days with games against England, Australia and A N Other.

I suspect for France we will see a massive push on packages for touring fans to mitigate the likelihood of France not being particularly good in big games.

(But that's just a hunch, I could, and probably will be, massively wrong).

[Spidey]

Just one point, the current international rankings were

1 New Zealand, 2 Tonga 3 England 4 Australia

So the seedings totally matched that

[tim2]

15 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

Either by a set up that means they can get deep into a tournament or one that guarantees them big pay days with games against England, Australia and A N Other.

I suspect for France we will see a massive push on packages for touring fans to mitigate the likelihood of France not being particularly good in big games.

(But that's just a hunch, I could, and probably will be, massively wrong).

No, I think you could put a bet on this now.

Here are my group predictions:

Group A                  Group B                             Group C                           Group D

France                    England                              Australia                           NZ
PNG                        Fiji                                       Tonga                              Samoa
Wales                     Ireland                                 Italy                                 Lebanon
Brazil                      Cook islands                      Jamaica                          Greece

Groups A and B in one half, C and D in the other