Greetings. The Rugby Africa Cup returns to Uganda for the 2025 edition. This year’s edition also doubles as a World Cup qualifier, with the winner guaranteed a direct spot whereas the runner-up will face off against United Arab Emirates for a spot in the November final qualification tournament.
We shall be covering performance analysis of the games during the
tournament, with features on aspects of game play.
On the eve of the tournament, we make bold predictions, and as such
putting our reputation (and patriotic duties) on the line. The criteria
followed for predicting the quarterfinal outcome focused on three key factors; (i)
a team’s performance from last year’s Rugby Africa Cup (or Repechage for
Morocco), (ii) the opponent the team is facing in a particular round and their
history with that team, and (ii) the team’s ranking before the beginning of the
2025 tournament. The subsequent predictions for reaching the final and winning
the final are conditional upon the team’s chances at the quarterfinal stage and
the likely opponent in their path after the quarterfinal. It is important to note that Morocco's wins were "discounted" in the computation due to playing in the Repechage division whereas the rest of the teams were in the topflight division.
As a result, Zimbabwe and Namibia, the only participants ranked in the
top 30 according to World Rugby rankings are the favourites to lift the trophy.
There is a 55% chance that one of those two teams will be crowned champions at
the end of the tournament.
Zimbabwe won all 6 of their test matches played last year, and recorded
a first victory against Namibia in 20+ years. They have a winning record
against all the teams on their side of the bracket, and if they lose the final,
they are likely to encounter a familiar opponent in the playoff, having played
tests against South Korea (currently second in the ARC) and UAE (currently
third in ARC) last year.
Namibia has been to the last 7 World Cups, and have a winning record
against all the other nations at the tournament, except against Algeria which
they have never played, and are likely to meet at the semifinal if they win
their quarterfinal. Their experience against Tier 2 and Tier 1 nations will
serve them well in the Repechage playoff.
The rest of the nations have to go through the top 2 in order to have a
shot at making the final.
Uganda faces a familiar foe in Kenya, a team they only managed to beat
once in their last 5 meetings. In the Rugby Africa Cup fixtures, Uganda last
beat Kenya in the 2012 semifinal, losing 3 subsequent games and drawing the
2017 encounter, 33-33.
Ceteris. Paribus.
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