Some stats are simply codswallop... not these
Some years ago, a small group of Twickenham modernisers introduced a trendy statistical software package designed to identify the chief “influencers” in England games. Invariably, this oval-ball algorithm ended up highlighting the wrong blokes. Which is what we’ve come to expect from algorithms.
Sports statisticians often make themselves out to be new Messiahs, but all too often they are Messiahs without a message. Or, even worse, Messiahs with a misleading message.
Far from being cutting-edge, it is an age-old story going all the way back to the end-of-season averages in county cricket, which told you all you needed to know about Geoff Boycott’s contribution to the Yorkshire cause except the context in which it was made.
Did he win games by crushing the spirits of opposition bowlers with his obduracy, or lose them by scoring at the pace of a superannuated snail? This was something the numbers never divulged.
World Cup rugby is especially prone to statistical interpretation, some of it utter codswallop. For instance, the pointy-heads never tire of insisting that defence is the most important indicator of success at global level: that the meanest-minded, least porous teams are inevitably the winners-in-waiting.
Except they aren’t anything of the sort. Not always. While the Springboks were more parsimonious than anyone in claiming a third triumph in Japan last year – they conceded only four tries all tournament at a Scrooge-like average of 0.57 per match – the so-called “rule” did not apply in any of the previous four competitions.
It didn’t apply with a vengeance, if such a thing is grammatically possible, when the New Zealanders won in 2011.
They finished up seventh on the defensive chart, low enough to be charged with profligacy in the first degree.
Those All Blacks compensated by scoring more tries than the rest of the field, just as they did four years later in retaining the title and had way back in 1987, when they cleaned up in the inaugural competition.
But attack is not a reliable guide either. No country other than New Zealand has topped the try table in securing the Webb Ellis Trophy. Not even the Wallabies, who tend to fancy themselves as an all-singing, all-dancing attacking unit.
Any lessons we can draw from World Cups past are woollier and more abstract than the mathematical kind, rooted in instinct and judgement rather than objective fact.
Almost all winning teams over the last 30-odd years have been superior – not marginally, but comprehensively – in at least one unit.
The ’87 All Blacks were miles ahead of the opposition in any number of areas, but the back row combination of Wayne Shelford, Michael Jones and the less celebrated but equally sensational Alan Whetton was infinitely better than anything else in the mix.
We can say the same for Australia’s decision-making axis of George Gregan, Stephen Larkham and Tim Horan in 1999; the England loose trio of Richard Hill, Neil Back and Lawrence Dallaglio in 2003; the All Black holy trinity of back rowers – Jerome Kaino, Richie McCaw, Kieran Read – in 2011; and the New Zealand midfield of Daniel Carter, Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith four years later.
In both 2007 and 2019, the Springboks lorded it in the engine room of the scrum: Bakkies Botha and Victor Matfield in the earlier tournament; Eben Etzebeth and Lood de Jager, supported by RG Snyman and Franco Mostert, in the latter.
We can even argue that their predecessors in 1995, significantly less stellar individually, had a pair of halfbacks in Joost van der Westhuizen and Joel Stransky who, at that precise moment, were out on their own as game managers.
Which leaves the outliers. The 1991 Wallabies had Horan, Jason Little, John Eales and Phil Kearns in their line-up, but these players were legends in the making rather than fully-fledged greats who had grown to their full height.
England, more experienced and probably better in the man-for-man department, should have won that final at Twickenham. But they didn’t. So much for indicators.
In last week’s issue, Nick Cain went all Nostradamus on us with his England prediction for the 2023 gathering in France.
He pushed the claims of a handful of newcomers – the Gloucester wing Ollie Thorley, the Exeter lock Jonny Hill, the Harlequins No.8 Alex Dombrandt – while arguing persuasively that the existing double openside axis of Sam Underhill and Tom Curry and a front row trio of Ellis Genge, Luke CowanDickie and Kyle Sinckler might be equipped to seize the day.
The question is whether any of these units can make enough of a difference against all-comers to give England something more than a marginal gain.
At this distance, those front rowers are the ones made of the right stuff, especially as Maro Itoje, an unalloyed genius of a lock forward, will be with them at the sharp end. If their collective potential is fulfilled, anything will be possible.
But then, England had the tight forwards to smithereen their Wallaby opponents at Twickenham in ’91, yet chose a different tactical approach and paid for their folly in the bitter currency of defeat. Which says everything about theories of probability, statistical or otherwise.
“In both 2007 and 2019, the Springboks lorded it in the engine room of the scrum”