u/statypus

Since it got a decent response last week, here's the post Round 13 update to the SRP rest-of-season simulator.

Not a great weekend for the Aussie teams. Hurricanes, Chiefs and Blues are basically locked into the top 3 at this point.

Spots 4-6 look like some combination of Brumbies (97%), Crusaders (97%) and Reds (92%). The order is up for grabs but those three have mostly separated from the pack.

Force (6%) and Waratahs (5%) would need a minor miracle from here. Not mathematically dead, but they'd need a lot of results to fall their way. And in each instance it would most likely be at the expense of another Aussie team.

If Waratahs make the finals:

Team They Bump	How often they miss out (% of sims)
Reds	37.1%
Brumbies	36.2%
Crusaders	27.2%

If Force make the finals (~5.9% chance), who gets bumped:

Team They Bump	How often they miss out (% of sims)
Reds	69.9%
Crusaders	19.0%
Brumbies	11.4%

I saw a nice post this week showing where EPL teams could end up at the end of the season, so decided to run the same thing for SRP.

After simulating the rest of the fixture 25k times (Monte Carlo simulation using a bivariate Poisson model on tries scored, for those interested), taking into account the relative strength of each team, this is where it shook out:

Pretty safe to assume Reds (95%) and Brumbies (91%) will be playing finals. Both the Force (18%) and Waratahs (16%) still have an outside shot of beating the Crusaders for that final spot. Not impossible, but they'll need some results to go their way.

But all four Aussie teams in the mix for finals with four rounds left isn't bad going.