Football ranking table

dr.kenneth noisewater

Great work as always Laoisman, hard to believe how low your own county has fallen. Can see them and Tipp making decent jumps back up next season

Tombo2001

Interesting, but how does it square with the fact that Dublin - to cut to the chase - are the second best team in the country, pushed Kerry to the pin of their collar while supposedly third place Derry were beaten out of sight by the losing all Ireland finalist.

laoisman11

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119849457#Comment_119849457

"how does it square with the fact that "..........I think that the answer lies somewhere between the concepts of subjectivity and objectivity 🙂

Tombo2001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119853018#Comment_119853018

Fair point, but you know what I mean.

Reminds me a bit of when Serena Williams would go into Wimbledon as unseeded but still the favourite to win.

But I guess what we are saying here is - not that this how teams are ranked (because that as you say is subjective), but this is how they are ranked according to performance.

laoisman11

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119853180#Comment_119853180

There will always be a difference between our personal opinion on where a team should be ranked, and where they are placed solely based on a mathematical calculation (and for the ranking table, the teams you get drawn to play against could potentially have a big impact on how your ratings change - example below).

Overall though, I would say that there is little difference between the strength of teams within 2 rating points of one another. And if there is any difference, it should soon be rectified once more games are played.

Scenario 1: Meath draw Dublin in Leinster SFC, and then draw Kerry in the qualifiers. They lose both games (by big or small margins, it doesn't matter), but as they are so far behind Dublin and Kerry in the ratings, they don't lose any rating points - end of year, no change in their ratings

Scenario 2: Meath draw Westmeath in Leinster SFC, and then draw Cork in the qualifiers. They lose both games by a single point, but because they are close to both in the ratings, they lose maybe 4 rating points in each -end of year, Meath are down 8 rating points

Scenario 3: Meath draw Westmeath in Leinster SFC, and then draw Cork in the qualifiers. They win both games by a single point, gain maybe 4 rating points for each win. They then lose out to Dublin and Kerry, but do not lose any rating points due to the difference - end of year, they are up 8 rating points

Cavan_King

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119849457#Comment_119849457

Dublin are a Division 2 team next year. The rankings aren’t based just on Championship form.

Tombo2001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855212#Comment_119855212

Maybe so, but if you compare to say OWGR - winning the Masters count for 100 points while winning say the Irish open counts for 28 points. So it all depends on the weighting. There are two competitions obviously in football. For some counties - Monaghan in particular - it feels like the League is more important. If they stay in Division 1, its a decent year even if they get knocked out of Ulster early. So that would make it difficult to even put a weighting on the league - the leagues importance (and therefore weighting) will be different for Dublin to what it is for Monaghan.

Anyway, not trying to derail the thing or anything, its great work and very interesting.

Tombo2001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119854577#Comment_119854577

Thats fair enough, but I think it goes beyond personal opinion - nobody in GAA thinks Derry is a better team than Dublin, not even Derry. I think thats a fair statement. And to step past that; if we were to take just the All Ireland performances then you would defo have Dublin ahead of Derry. Both are provincial winners, and while both were losing semi-finalists, Dublin put in a serious challenge to Kerry. The nature of the loss probably doesnt count for much I suppose in rankings. Also, Dublin were semi-finalists the previous year. So Dublin are where they are based solely on League performances - but they are still in the same division as Derry.

I guess - going on what you said - Derry are where they are, not just because they got to an all Ireland semi final, but because they beat (hammered) the all Ireland champions. It makes sense statistically, completely.

laoisman11

Looking forward to the league starting up again and seeing how some teams have handled the long lay off. And I am especially interested to see if Laois can crawl their way back out of Division 4.

The current rating of teams may help guess where they will finish in their respective divisions. Dublin and Derry appear head and shoulders above the rest in Division 2, and the same could be said of Westmeath and Cavan in Division 3. Who will top the other divisions, and who will finish bottom, is not so clear for the moment.

laoisman11

The 2023 NFL is upon us, and the year will be over before it has even started!

Prediction model outputs below for the first round of games, I would not be so confident of the predictions involving teams that got to the last 4 of the previous year's All-Ireland series, as their ratings can be somewhat artificially inflated.

Charles Babbage

Div 1 is hard to predict, Kerry may not feel the need to go all out for the league this year. Roscommon will find the going touch, but I expect that Tyrone will not get relegated.

Dublin and Derry must be strong favourites for Div 2 and Louth and Limerick are likely to get relegated. In Div 3 Down have been decent in pre-season competition and must have a chance of promotion. In Div 4 Laois are at an all time low and the only way is up.

laoisman11

Some minor changes to the ranking table following the first round of games in this year's NFL.

• Laois were the biggest winners gaining 3.76 rating points and moving up 4 places in the table following a bonus-point away win to Sligo
• Donegal took 3 rating points from the All-Ireland champions, but Kerry remain far ahead of the chasing pack
• Armagh move into 3rd, where they haven't been since August 2006, and Tyrone drop to 12th, a 15-year low, following a big loss to Roscommon

Charles Babbage

"Armagh move into 3rd, where they haven't been since August 2006, and Tyrone drop to 12th, a 15-year low, following a big loss to Roscommon"

If Derry or Dublin beat the likes of Louth, Limerick, Meath or Cork they still won't get many points as these teams are way down.

Armagh or Mayo can improve their position relative to these teams by beating each other.

laoisman11

Prediction model output for this weekend's games below:

laoisman11

Update after this weekend's games:

• Cork's huge win over Kildare was the standout result of the weekend; Cork jump 5 places in the rankings as a result
• An away win over Galway gained Roscommon 3 rating points, while Sligo also took 3 rating points from Wicklow
• Tyrone were the other big winner with an impressive victory over Donegal

laoisman11

Prediction model output for this weekend's games - a shock or two might be on the cards - I particularly like the look of Cork vs Dublin 😊

Blackjack

Expecting Mayo, Roscommon and Monaghan to move up the ranking table after their results at the weekend.

laoisman11

@Blackjack , yep, they all moved up, but none more than Mayo who jumped 4 ranking places to move into 2nd. There is a group of 5 that are more or less even on 100 rating points, and all are sitting behind Kerry. There is another group further back around the 90 rating point mark, a group that Roscommon are doing their utmost to leave behind!

Other big winners this weekend were Antrim and Laois, following fine victories over Tipperary and Carlow, respectively.

laoisman11

Prediction model output for this weekend's game below. I'm personally expecting a bounce out of Donegal and Tyrone......

laoisman11

Round 4 of the league and things might be becoming a little clearer in terms of promotion/relegation:

• Louth were this weekend's big winners with a great victory over their near neighbours gaining them 2.7 rating points
• Down and Wicklow also gained more than 2 rating points, with Wicklow jumping 3 places in the rankings
• No change in the top 6, although Dublin seem to have difficulty to justify their high ranking (i.e. they were predicted to win by 9, but scraped over the line)

Blackjack

Seems odd that Kerry gained 0.4 when going under the predicted scoring difference, and Mayo gain only 0.1 despite going over the scoring predictions - presumably that’s downright to the ratings of the teams they beat?

laoisman11

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120295739#Comment_120295739

Yes, the rating exchange is based on the rating difference between the teams (taking home advantage into account), with a multiplier for a bonus point win and another multiplier for championship. The predicted scoring difference is not taken into account but it does provide a nice retrospecitve look at how a team is performing.

crusd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120296810#Comment_120296810

Was going to ask the same question. What other factors into the predicted scoring difference model then and does margin of victory not also feed into the rating exchange?

laoisman11

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120297117#Comment_120297117

The prediction model takes into account the rating difference between the 2 teams, makes an allowance for home advantage, and also takes into account previous history between the 2 teams (so, for example, a 5 point rating difference does not equal an identical predicted score).

The margin of victory only feeds into the rating exchange if the bonus-point winning margin (5 points or more) is achieved.

dxhound2005

It's 9 years ago now, but unless the system has changed since, it is explained in the first post. I note that even though it started in 2014, it was based on results going back to 2008.

crusd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120297516#Comment_120297516

Interesting that the gap between the top and bottom has widened significantly in 9 years

Interesting also that Westmeath and Clare are the only counties to migrate from the bottom half to the top half and Down and Laois the only to move from the top half to the bottom half.

The question is in 5 will time will the Tailteann cup have facilitated more mobility

dxhound2005

Championship games have double weighting, so if that is applied in the Tailteann as well as the Sam Maguire, it might make no difference?

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120296810#Comment_120296810

Kerry - Armagh had an initial difference of 7.7 rating points, while Mayo-Tyrone had a rating difference of 11.1, both played at home. A minimum victory by Kerry got them 4 times the benefit of Mayo. It is a particular combination, but the scoring gap does not seem fully weighted.

laoisman11

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120297516#Comment_120297516

The system is based on all data going back to 1926, but I don't focus much on the data for the first 10-15 years, as teams were finding their level.

laoisman11

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120297912#Comment_120297912

Really nice way to visualise this, thanks. I hadn't thought of looking at the std dev over time, I will put it on my to do list! Perhaps it ebbs and flows over time, but that is a pretty big shift in a short time period.