Welsh rugby and papal deaths

Rugby (the religion of Wales) and its influence on the Catholic church: should Pope Benedict XVI be worried?. This authors of this tongue-in-the-cheek article in the British Medical Journal investigated a Welsh urban legend that:

"... every time Wales win the rugby grand slam, a Pope dies, except for 1978 when Wales were really good, and two Popes died."

A graphic from the article, indicating the winners of the Six Nations Championship (its current name), grand slams achieved (winning all the games) and papal deaths.


The authors' conclusion?

"We found a borderline significant (P=0.047) association between Welsh performance and the number of papal deaths but no significant associations between papal mortality and performance of any other home nation."

They believe that the pontiff should just be a wee bit concerned, considering Wales' dominance in the Six Nations this year. Its less sterling performance against the Southern teams such as the Springboks and All Blacks was not considered.

Not to be outdone, a group of medical doctors from Italy, one of them on the Vatican medical team, commented that they were more worried about the general performance of the Welsh rugby team than about the health of the pope!

Hat tip to Dave Snowden for this story. As he pointed out, it is a satire on the old correlation proves causation fallacy.

Bringing this closer to home, with the current ascendancy of the South African rugby and cricket teams, similar correlations could "cause" a veritable massacre. The sorry record of our soccer team, however, should allow one to cherry pick suitable celebrities who should put their trust on the Bafana Bafana's continued poor performance. Their only achievement of any note was winning the African Nations' Cup in 1996. Francois Mitterrand died during the tournament, but I sure Nicholas Sarkozy will not lose any sleep about it.