Ireland welcome England to Dublin in their opening fixture, looking to avenge their defeat in Twickenham last year. They’ll be looking for a big win this weekend to set a market, dust off the Autumn cobwebs and get their title defence off to a strong start.
Below shows the predictions from the Rugby4Cast’s Algorithm for the opening weekend of the Six Nations. It has Ireland to (relatively) comfortably get a win over the English at home. Surprising?

Broadly speaking, the predictions model works off a proprietary rankings system (which you can see on the various events pages), but it also looks at other things like rest periods, home advantage and scoring patterns in historical games – both in head to head matches and overall – to work out an expected score for each team based on location and current ranking.
More accurately speaking, this means that each predicted score is actually a metric to describe the relative historical strength of the two teams, based on their performances over previous years. However, we think it is more fun to think of them as predictions. At the very least, it certainly serves to provoke the trolls lurking online. You know who you are … !
You can check out the rest predictions and the betting analysis below.
Irish Strength in Dublin
Can England turn over Ireland in Dublin? It’s possible the Algo is slightly overrating the Irish at the moment, and given Andy Farrell’s Lions-induced absence is unlikely to increase the Irish chances, it’s fair to say the English could be given more than their current 18% chance.
However, Ireland’s run at home is formidable. In the last 10 years they have lost 5 times in the Aviva – twice to New Zealand, and once to France, England and Wales. England are up against a near 90% win ratio, but they know how to do it, as they showed in 2019. The sheer length of the image below is a testament to the Irish success at home, apologies.

Woof. That’s a long list. Sorry.
England close … but no cigars.
England’s 2024 has been well documented – winning only 5 from their 12 matches, and those included 2 against Japan, Italy and Wales with perhaps the memorable win over Ireland the only one of note in 2024.
However, they were very close in plenty of them, losing 3 matches to New Zealand by a combined margin of just 10 points. They were 2 points off beating France in France last year, and a last minute try for Australia broke English hearts in Twickenham. They’re not far away. Can they get over the line in Dublin?

It could be tricky. Ireland are heavy favourites in Dublin and their record is formidable. However, give the above and Ireland head coach Farrell’s Lions induced absence, it might be closer than the Algo thinks.
What do the bookies say?
The bookies are bullish on Ireland as well, but not as much as we are. An average of the major bookies out there gives them a 73% chance of winning – along with a 30% chance of an English win (welcome to the bookies overround everyone!).

Based on this, the Algo recommends a bet on Ireland. The ‘fair price’ for Ireland is thought to be around 1.36, and given the 1.43 available on the Exchange this looks like an opportunity. However, it’s close and given the above, I’ll leave it to you to decide!
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