Friday, September 30, 2011

Another outing for my rubbish prayer-mat

I was planning on doing another in my regular series of "how it is still arithmetically possible for Scotland to qualify" posts in honour of the Rugby World Cup game against England tomorrow, but I see the BBC have beaten me to it. There is, however, a small error -

"If Scotland and Argentina both win without a bonus point, it will come down to points difference between the three teams, though England are way out in front"

That's only true if England fail to get the bonus point in defeat - if they were to get that point, they would win the pool outright, and Argentina and Scotland would be tied on points for second place. In those circumstances, Argentina would go through automatically regardless of points difference, because they defeated Scotland in the head-to-head encounter between the two teams.

Oh, let's face it - the most likely outcome is that Scotland will lose without even sneaking a bonus point tomorrow, meaning we'll be out of the tournament regardless of the outcome of the Argentina v Georgia game. I'll naturally be getting my prayer-mat out anyway, but I must caution you that it's never worked before. That's a good point, actually - it's a truly rubbish prayer-mat.

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