Author: RUCKIN GOOD STATS
RUCKIN GOOD STATS
I was asked to do stats for a mate’s club rugby radio commentary - tried pen and paper then flagged it and created a programme to do all the work. I also figured doing stats would work on the wife as a good excuse to watch every game (till she reads this). Speaks Fush and Chuups. Has no opinion on Matt Giteau.
I thought that I would crunch some numbers on Bryce Lawrence, so I asked the forum members about it and they thought it was a good idea as well. I’ve been tracking every ref throughout 2011 — OK, not every ref, but the professional ones. So I have a trend of their games they have officiated this year. It means I can compare with other refs and crunch a few numbers to see if Bryce is different or not. This neither a Bryce love-in nor an anti-Bryce piece, just what the numbers say. I will be using averages and was…
Who should be kicking points for the Wallabies? JO’C, Cooper, Beale or Giteau? Request completed! I’ve applied kick difficulty because of the G&GR commenters who wanted them. I’ll dispense with all the background stuff on how this is all done as you can find it here and get into it. Just note I’ve now included all 2011 kicks (that is, Super play-offs, finals and internationals to date) so the Cooper and JO’C charts will look a little different. It does further reinforce what I said about Cooper’s ability to slot the more difficult ones. I’m pretty sure he was taking…
Despite the media lauding a goal kicker’s stats, G&GR readers often remark that doesn’t take into account difficulty. It’s a well repeated comment that hasn’t been resolved due to a lack of data, until now. I too have been frustrated, so I wrote an article applying difficulty to the comparison of two place kickers. It showed that Arron Cruden 80% kicking success record was due to 1/3rd of his Super15 attempts being in front of the posts. Dan Carter whose kicking average he was being compared to had only had 12% of his attempts out in front. G&GR spotted my…