Those who follow the sport of underwater rugby should be aware that tournament draws and seeding systems can at times undermine straightforward competition.
Sometimes there is a path through a draw that involves preferring a tactical loss or draw. Before you dismiss this as far fetched, consider an example from ice hockey.
The Swedish men won gold at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. It was obvious to expert observers at the time that Sweden was not trying hard in its last group play game against Slovakia. At one point, with a two-man power play advantage and 5 Swedish NHL stars on the ice, the Swedes did not manage a single shot on goal.
By losing to Slovakia 3-0 and finishing third in its group Sweden met Switzerland instead of Canada in the quarter finals. Canada crashed and burned against Russia, which had upset Sweden 5-0 in group play. The long and short of it was that while some of the strongest teams had very hard quarter final matches, Sweden could recover physically and mentally for the semi final and final.
Five years later Swedish hockey legend Peter Forsberg told a reporter that the Swedish team realized that losing their last group match against Slovakia would give them a much easier route to the final.
“We saw absolutely no reason to win, absolutely none,” recalled Forsberg.
The Canadian media picked up the story as something hockey crazy Canadians would want to know. Forsberg was forced to retract what he had said, but the television interview is on YouTube and is not going anywhere (even if you don’t understand Swedish it is amusing to watch Forsberg’s expressions).
Just so you won’t think I am singling out Sweden, another example of a group play scandal was the 1982 FIFA World Cup match between West Germany and Austria, which cheated Algeria of advancement. You can read about it and other match fixing scandals here
So what does this have to do with rugby. Has rugby had any such incidents? Not that I know of. For one thing, there is no money in rugby, so there is no corruption from gambling or prize money. But the Olympic hockey tanked match did not involve money. The Swedes, all professionals with good incomes, just wanted Olympic gold. So could an underwater rugby team trying to win end up in a similar situation?
The round robin
Tournaments in which all competitors meet once, the round robin, is one of the best ways to objectively determine the ranking of teams in a sport. But there are too many nations playing underwater rugby to consider a giant round robin in the space of a week.
“When a round robin format is desirable but the number of entries is too large, splitting the entries into two divisions is a practical solution,” comments John Byl, author of Organizing Successful Tournaments.
Byl goes on to point out that dividing the teams into two groups that play a round robin cuts the number of games in half. Once the two groups have determined the top two teams, it is easy to have the top team of each group play the final while reserving the bronze match to the two teams that placed second in group play. This approach is called the round robin double split.
Although the round robin double split allows the organizers to economize on time and venue—both of which constrain the length of a World Championship—Byl points out that if the three top teams end up in one half of the draw, the third best team is excluded from the play-offs. That is very undesirable in rugby.
CMAS rugby organizers have long been well aware of the shortcomings of having just two groups. On the men’s side the solution has been to create four groups. The name for this is the “round robin quadruple split”. Good seeding is still important, but having four groups gives 8 teams a chance to advance to the medal games.
Since underwater rugby’s major championships, the World and European, only take place once every 4 years, seeding reflects historical rather than current form. The epoch when the four Nordic countries and Germany stood head and shoulders above the competitors has passed. Not only has Colombia advanced on both the men and women’s sides of the draw, countries with enough clubs and players to create elite nationals teams, such as Australia, Turkey and the United States, may improve considerably. It is possible that historically weak or unknown teams can be crowded in one or another group. My understanding is that the CMAS seeding is that it follows the principle of forming groups by picking the top and bottom teams from the last championship in group A, followed by the silver medalists and the second from the last in group B and so on.
There is a great disparity between the strongest and bottom seeds. Some elite players wish they did not have to play “meaningless” matches and would prefer that there was some qualification tournament, so that absurdly lopsided matches could be avoided. However, participation in an inclusive World Championships is a treasured experience for many players. The knowledge that a budding nation is going to face professional level athletes is a huge motivator for training and development. Few in rugby would be happy to see that spirit diminish.
Still, the inclusion of relatively weak teams can lead to tactical play that undermines genuine playing-to-win competition. There were two instances at the Graz 2019 World Championships.
Germany and Denmark, two of the world’s strongest teams were in the same group. Both nations knew they were going to beat the Czech Republic and Great Britain, their other two group play opponents. The Czechs, though weaker, were experienced and were unlikely to lose by a large difference. The question would largely come down to the goal differential generated against Great Britain.
After Denmark pummeled Great Britain 37-0, the Danes had had 30 minutes of experience identifying the weak points of the British team, none of whom had ever played at this level. Before Germany played the UK, Denmark offered coaching to the team led by British captain Mark Price. The pointers from the Danes may well have had an effect. The next day Germany “only” managed to rack up a score of 30-0. The reliable Czechs lost 12-1 to the Germans but only 8-0 to the Danes (perhaps that green teams can improve dramatically by meeting the best).
Thus, Denmark only had to play for a tie against Germany in order to win its group. This they accomplished by holding the game 0-0. The two teams ended up with identical records, but Denmark put in 45 goals and allowed 0 while Germany sank 42 goals and let in just one.
A similar scenario played out on the women’s side of the draw in the group composed of Finland, Sweden and Canada. Like the UK, the women from the north of North America had never competed in a CMAS championship. Both the Nordic countries had to batter the Canadians to accumulate a mass of goals..
Sweden only managed 19-0. The Finns flipped the Canucks 24-0. After that the Finns, like the Danish men, only needed a tie to win their group. One might say that a team that knows it only needs a tie going into a game effectively plays as if it were protecting a 1-0 lead.
It seems odd that teams reach the semifinals of a world championship by drawing one match and crushing a team taking part in its first and second international matches ever.* This is of course not the fault of Denmark or Finland, they simply played rationally, given the circumstances.
Worse can happen. A team might see that winning their group will put them against the de facto tournament favorite while a loss or tie will send them against a rival they are more confident of beating. Why not go for the draw or loss and aim to meet the more difficult opposition in the final instead of the semis?
Am I imagining a problem where none exists? Why should rugby be different from other team sports? Can the rules be tightened? To begin with there could be a rule forbidding a team or teams from not trying or arranging a particular result. Proving misconduct might be difficult but a statement of principle might discourage this kind of gamesmanship.
A more practical measure would be to eliminate tie games through either penalty shootouts or sudden death overtime. The problem with this that they can throw the tournament schedule haywire.
*Correction, the Finnish women went to the quarter final against Australia, which they won 8-0.