Forsyth Barr says the All Blacks have a 41 per cent chance of victory at the Rugby World Cup - ahead of the home team England at 16 per cent. Photo / Dean Purcell
PROBABILITY OF WINNING RWC:
New Zealand 41%
England 16%
South Africa 13%
Australia 12%
Ireland 8%
France 5%
Wales 3%
Everyone else 1%
The All Blacks are more than twice as likely to win the Rugby World Cup than the next best team, according to analysis from Forsyth Bar.
While local fans might take heart from this number crunching, the brokerage firm also points that no team has ever successfully defended the Web Ellis Cup and that New Zealand has never won it away from home.
Blending together five different methodologies, Forsyth Barr says the All Blacks have a 41 per cent chance of victory, ahead of the home team England at 16 per cent.
"Heading into the tournament, New Zealand is being led by arguably one of the best players ever to play the game. Richie McCaw has played more tests than anyone (142), captained more than anyone (105), and has a staggering 88% win ratio," the firm said.
This year's probability for the All Blacks to win is slightly lower than in 2011, when Forsyth Barr proffered that team had a 43 per cent chance of winning.
The five methods used to come to its prediction include world rugby rankings, historic head-to-head results, past cup performance, bookies' odds and a Forsyth Barr survey.
"Like when valuing companies, we prefer forward looking or recent form based approaches and hence we have weighted the World Rugby Ranking and bookies odds approaches ahead of past performance based methodologies," the firm said.
'Colesworth' is a blended word used to reference the country's supermarket duopoly.