European OnRugby Ranking: al via la nuova stagione con Tolone davanti

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The Eurotable, a computer-generated ranking of Europe’s top rugby clubs, is based on each club’s performance over its past 30 games (domestic and European). It was first launched in April 2000 and indeed is a prototype of a pan-European football ranking system that was published in the Wall Street Journal Europe between 1995-2000 (known as the Eurofootsie).

Updated every Monday evening, the Eurotable aims to provide an invaluable form guide for those wishing to compare the best teams in Europe. Eurotable covers Europe’s top clubs/provinces (1) playing in France, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Italy.

Each week, the results of all domestic league and cup games (2) as well as European ties are fed into the computer. As with any league, points are awarded to teams for winning or drawing a match. The Eurotable, however, takes account of many other factors:

Points scored and points conceded (the points system encourages attacking rugby but it also rewards sides who lose a match by a narrow margin.).
Whether the game was played at home or away (bonus awarded to the away team).
Strength of the opponent (more points are awarded when playing against a top-ranked opponent as opposed to a weaker one).

Strength of the domestic league (Account is taken of the differences in playing standards of the various domestic leagues by applying coefficients for each country. These are based on the performance of each country’s clubs in the Heineken Cup (and to a much lesser extent, the European Challenge Cup) over the previous three seasons. The approach is similar to that used by UEFA to calculate their football rankings for each country.
Importance of the game (more points are awarded for European Cup games and at the latter stages of all cup competitions).
Recent form feature (a unique weighting of the results ensures that a team’s more recent performances are given more credit than those of earlier games. As a result, the rankings will usually reflect current form rather than a team’s standing over its last thirty games.

The number of points credited to each team over their last 30 games (3) is summed up and teams are then ranked from top to bottom. Each team’s rating is expressed as a percentage of the top-ranked team.

(1) The Eurotable covers all teams competing in the English Aviva Premiership, the French Top 14 and the RaboDirect Pro 12. At the beginning of the season, teams that are newly-promoted into the ‘premier’ leagues have to prove themselves before they are included in the Eurotable. A team has to play 10 games before it is given a provisional Ranking.

(2) Included are all games in the English Aviva Premiership, the French Top 14, the RaboDirect Pro 12 and the LV= Cup as well as the Heineken Cup and European Challenge Cup. Friendlies and games against touring sides are also excluded.

( 3) On certain occasions, a team’s total ranking points may fall despite winning a match. In such cases, the match is ignored for the particular team and the previous 30 games are used to calculate the ranking. Such games are denoted by a ‘*’. When does this arise ?

– One example is where a team has already won its national league or is guaranteed to qualify from its Heineken Cup or European Challenge Cup pool in first place, then any subsequent results (in that particular competition) that would result in a fall in their total ranking points are ignored.
– Another example is when a team wins a cup match against one of the weaker Italian, Spanish or Romanian sides in the Challenge Cup (fewer points are at stake for such cup matches) or when a team’s recent record is so good that, say, a low-scoring home win against a low-ranked team will not increase their total ranking points.