Greater UK Derby Chart, 11-November

The rankings presented here are in accordance with the rules and consider Rollin News as the authoritative source for bout scores concerning UK & Ireland teams.  If a score is not listed as open or public on that source, it will not be included in this ranking.

Disclaimer aside, here you go.

Women's UK & Ireland derby chart 28-Oct

The rankings presented here are in accordance with the rules and consider Rollin News as the authoritative source for bout scores concerning UK & Ireland teams.  If a score is not listed as open or public on that source, it will not be included in this ranking.

Disclaimer aside, here you go.

UK & France men's chart, 20-Oct

The rankings presented here are in accordance with the rules and consider Rollin News as the authoritative source for bout scores concerning UK & Ireland teams.  If a score is not listed as open or public on that source, it will not be included in this ranking.

Disclaimer aside, here you go.

WFTDA's new playoff structure

Let me open by saying like like like like like.  I really like the idea of 4 1st round playoff tournaments, rather than regions.  Some of the regions are weaker than others, and it makes sense to take the top 40 worldwide, rather than the top 10 from some geographical and uneven regions.


What did they mean by S-Curve seeding?

Well, simple seeding's easy to conceive of, but a 40 team tournament makes things complex.  The theory is that the total rank of each "branch" of the tournament be equal, and to do this one fills in the chart below in an S-curve type manner.  Each team is represented by its rank, which becomes its "seed."  Follow the counting numbers in order, and you'll see.

A	B	C	D
1	2	3	4
8	7	6	5
9	10	11	12
16	15	14	13
17	18	19	20
24	23	22	21
25	26	27	28
32	31	30	29
33	34	35	36
40	39	38	37
Total
205	205	205	205

So this way, each of the four 1st round tornaments have a total seeding strength of 205.  Thus, the four tournaments have been seeded equally and there is no bonus to being in any one in terms of ease of reaching the final.

So it's more fair in theory, but what are the risks?

--First off, rankings are a bit questionable.  Glasgow have a 40% chance of beating LRG, and Montreal are one of several teams in the East Regional who were not as highly favoured.

European teams are undervalued, as teams vote for rankings.  With the exception of LRG, only Euro teams watch other Euro teams play, and thus they are less likely to be highly voted by North American voters.

This effect is not so great when considering only one region at a time.  Voters outside the East region need not concern themselves with Europe.  However, when all leagues are grouped together in one ranking, this effect will manifest itself much more strongly.  

This, to me, suggests either the computer poll or the DNN power rankings.  The first, like the one I run, has no problem ranking large numbers of teams who play unbalanced schedules.  The second is totally done by human intuition, but by the intuition of "professional pickers," those who are focussed solely on determining which teams are ranked where.  These pickers see every result publicly listed, which are the only ones that should ever count, and thus should have no bias towards one continent or another.  Either one eliminates the bias of having open voting.

--Second off, there is a likelihood bordering on a guarantee that some teams will have to travel much further to their 1st round tournament.  Right now, a similar structure is used by the NCAA basketball tournament in the USA, where the top ranked teams are assigned to the location nearest them, and teams seeded further down must play where their rankings assign them.

This system would work in derby, but so would an adjustment to what's been discussed above.  If a human poll were used to determine the rankings, everyone would acknowledge that there is some uncertainty between who's picked at 8 versus 9, etc.  Thus, a selection committee could "fudge" the seeding a little bit to ensure that LRG don't play in California, for example, or Rat City in London.

Another answer would be to choose the four locations spread throughout the USA.  Let's say the tournaments are in four cities: Charlotte, NC; Little Rock, AR; Indianapolis, IN; and Portland, OR.  The four tournaments are then seeded according to A, B, C, and D in the chart above.  After the four tournaments are seeded, they're connected with the four locations, using an algorithm to minimise total mileage travelled.  Thus, LRG would likely play in Charlotte, unless they were in the same tournament with Victoria.

And those that weren't selected?

This is one of my favourite parts of the announcement!  Instead of simply calling their season over, they'll be introducing a Division II tournament so there'll be more silverware.  I'm not the only person who's been suggesting that the WFTDA institute tiered structure like the football league, and now that seems like a more distinct possibility.  I'd like to see it expand to 40 if successful, but it's a great move for the WFTDA.

Final verdict?

Very yes.  There are still questions which require answering, but this (and the impending rule change) is an opportunity for the WFTDA to make a massive step forward towards making the whole system run more smoothly, evenly, and fairly.  I hope, hope, hope that they take the bull by the horns here and help organised derby live up to its expectations.

Read more?

Windyman explains a possible structure in more detail

DNN's power rankings explained

Women's UK & Ireland derby chart, 30-Sept

The rankings presented here are in accordance with the rules and consider Rollin News as the authoritative source for bout scores concerning UK & Ireland teams.  If a score is not listed as open or public on that source, it will not be included in this ranking.

Disclaimer aside, here you go.

Blokes' rankings

I had ranked women's teams and national teams, so why not the men's teams?  Here we go:

Rank	Team	Rank Pts	Bouts	W	L
1	Quad Guards	197.3	9	7	2
2	Southern Discomfort	192.1	8	8	0
3	Rolling Thunder	128.3	2	2	0
4	The Expendables	107.7	8	4	4
5	Tyne & Fear Roller Derby	107.6	9	6	3
6	New Wheeled Order	84.7	12	4	8
7	The Inhuman League	71.1	11	3	8
8	Crash Test Brummies	59.4	6	0	6
9	The Jakey Bites	20.3	3	0	3

So, the MERDC contributed the majority of bouts to the ranking, and I added the Quad Guards in just to make sure we could feature a larger number of bouts.  Turns out, the championships were an upset!  Who knew!

There are 34 bouts in the system, 5 are upsets.  That's 15%, and a darn good upset rate.  Otherwise, now I know just how exciting the Lincolnshire Rolling Thunder can be!


Alright, so now we've got three derby charts: UK & Ireland women, nations, and UK & France men.  Keep in mind, the Rank Pts mean different things in each table.  They cannot be compared one-to-one between different tables.

Explanation of calculations here.

Roll on!

Women's UK derby chart, 17-Sept-2012

In the weekly chart that follows:

• Only bouts with public scores between rankable teams within the last 12 months are counted for this chart.  As mentioned before, every other sport's ranking scheme has an expiry date for results, and it's time for derby to have the same.
• Only teams from regular bouting UK and Ireland leagues are eligible for ranking.  Due to the sheer number of leagues, I had to exclude continental Europe from the chart.
• A team with fewer than 2 rankable bouts is excluded from the chart.  As well, a team that has only played bouts against unrankable teams is excluded from the chart.  Both are due to the need for viable data.
• Arrows represent change from the previous week's ranking.  ⇏ indicates a previously unrankable team's début on the chart.  For the sake of this, I ran the rankings for the 10th of September as well.

The Nature of Rankings

I was doing some research last night, and read a number of academic papers on the ranking of sports teams where there is no balanced schedule.  (Balanced schedule meaning that each team plays each other team, like in the Premiership.)

The thing that the articles made me realize is that there is no such thing as a "perfect" ranking scheme.  What would "perfect" mean?  No upsets, maybe?  Well, there will always be upsets in sport, so that really won't work.

England v USA stats

So, let's take a look at some numbers, shall we?

Team		Score	LJs	LJ ppj	PJs	PJ ppj	Short PJs	Stops	1Pass
3	England	70	7	5.7	4	11.0	1	7	14
1	USA	296	32	9.2	5	15.6	0	31	4

About the bout: 

USA of course outscoring England and winning the battle for Lead Jam status.  With lead jam, USA doing a little over 50% better than England.  Interesting to note here is that both teams were recording 2-pass derby with lead jam status.  The defence-offence transition was apparently a bit weak for both teams.

Both teams had a handful of power jams, but USA was better able to make use of them.  I, personally, attribute that more to the difference in the pack than that of the jammers.  The USA blockers were quite adept at getting a shoulder or a hip in the way, and then never breaking that contact.

Often the USA power jam defence was based on only one or two blockers engaging the jammer--the others simply made sure those two stayed in play.  The two who were engaging were often grabbing the far sides of each others' bodies, to make sure that wall stayed tight.  The amazing thing was that this was only done on the side opposite the jammer.  When the jammer tried to go through there, all the grabbing ceased, so that a devastating muliplayer block major was avoided!

USA able to keep England from scoring almost every time they had lead, but the Roses (it just felt right to call 'em that at the bout) able to prevent USA from scoring every lead jam.

One deciding factor was that Team USA were able to hold Team England scoreless the first 11 jams of the second half.  The lead was only 71 points coming back from the break, so that  jump provided the proverbial icing on the cake.

And the world? 

Team England showed their world-class power last night.  Canada were beaten by USA in the world cup 336-33, so the Roses out-performed the World Cup silver medallist side.  Canada recorded 9 LJs to USA's 25 in that bout, but that's within the margin of error of England's 7 LJs.

The USA showed their strength against the Scandinavians on Saturday, and defeated Finland on their home soil by a massive margin.  The tourists here did not bring their B-list skaters, they came to roll over the opposition wherever they went.

Nonetheless, little old England, that plucky little island country that has consistently punched above its weight this summer in Stratford, did so again in Newham.  The Roses taught the Americans that derby over on this side of the pond is not to be underestimated.

--[Edit: I am aware that Team GB is not equivalent to Team England.  However, English athletes were part of the team that punched above their weight in the Olympics, so I took a bit of artistic license.  I did have to take a moment in the broadcast to explain the nature of the UK as a union of countries to the US viewers.]--

Therefore, I think England should be considered the world #2 nation for roller derby.

What do you think?  Take a moment to fill out a simple poll and tell me where you think England, USA, Canada, etc. stand in the world of International Roller Derby. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YNXJV5H


Roll on Roses!