The movie Moneyball tells the story of how the management of the Oakland Athletics baseball team used a matrix of statistics to transform their organisation from perennial losers into big time winners.
Since the release of Moneyball, I have been condemned to explain to several sets of bean counters that although some statistics in rugby are exceptionally important, when the concept behind Moneyball is applied to rugby, there is only one statistically guaranteed outcome: total failure.
From smart rugby balls to wearable tracking devices, over the past decade a wave of technology has produced an ocean of statistics. Unquestionably, these have provided many important statistics that demand our respect.
Is Ireland's Six Nations squad 'safe'?
The most important are often the simplest. Last season in Super Rugby, the URC, the English Premiership and the Top 14, the teams with the best defensive record finished on top of the league in every competition.
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Across the Six Nations and the Rugby Championship, France and South Africa won their hemispheres’ competitions and both had the best defensive records.
Once again, the cliche that defence wins championships is proven to be true.
However, amid the tsunami of statistics, there are fallacies peddled as dogma.
When considering statistics, we must keep in mind that they are numbers that describe what has occurred. The information is from past actions. We must take great care when blindly using them to predict the future, because if a team changes tactics and plays in a different manner they will produce a very different set of statistics.
If you watched games across the recent rounds of the Champions Cup you would be forgiven for thinking that multiple teams are being coached by the same person as so many clubs are using almost identical game plans.
The overwhelming majority of coaches are simply copying what they are watching from other teams and regurgitating it.
This is the “copy-and-paste” coaching philosophy and it is at epidemic proportions across the globe. As all of those clubs are all playing in a similar, mediocre manner, they are producing statistics that are biased towards the mediocre.
Teams such as the Springboks and Toulouse are exceptions. Both have unique rugby philosophies and game plans, so they are producing statistics unlike those of other teams.
The most misunderstood statistic that gets bandied about is the statement that teams that kick the most win.
Every winning team must implement a significant kicking game plan. What that statistic does not clarify is what type of kick is being implemented. The endless torrent of mindless box kicks, which are poisoning our game, are not the basis of a winning kicking game.
Toulouse possess a powerful kicking game because a significant percentage of their kicks are superbly executed attacking kicks that rapidly move the ball to space. That type of kicking game wins matches.
If you are watching your team’s attack and they have back rowers standing on the wing, ask yourself, why do we have forwards standing outside our fastest players? Why are so many teams across the globe, from professionals down to under-15s, using the same attacking formation, spreading their forwards across the park?
There are circumstances where this system can be justified, but in the vast majority of cases it is done because everyone else is doing it. With so many teams playing the same system, they are generating a huge number of stats, creating a bias in favour of that one attacking system. Many coaches are blindly following the numbers. Some critical thinking would tell us that a different attacking system would produce different numbers.
A few years ago, I met the coach from one of Sydney’s leading rugby schools to discuss his attacking plans. He presented a plan, like all the others, with his back rowers on the wings. He was a victim of the stats from copy-and-paste coaching.
His team was blessed with a big pack, so I told him I thought that system did not maximise the talent at his disposal.
“Why don’t you simply get your forwards to run around the corner of the ruck, with the option of running off passes from your scrumhalf or wider from your outhalf? With the size of your forwards, they will flood those attacking channels. No attack does that any more. The opposition defence will struggle.”
That attacking plan for forwards is a simplified version of the game plan the French implemented last year when they defeated Ireland at the Aviva. The French coach, Fabien Galthié, selected a giant pack with a 7-1 bench and his forwards relentlessly attacked Ireland by simply running off their scrumhalf and attacking down the same channel.
The young coach blinked at me a few times. “That’s very basic,” he said. Which was accurate. To his credit, he ran with that simple system and across the season his team scored more points than any other first XV in the school’s long history and they were undefeated champions in their competition.
While that is only a schoolboy team and coaching in the professional ranks is far more complex, France proved the principle is solid. Despite the stats, a simple attacking plan can be highly effective.
The entire point of tactics is to maximise your team’s strengths, while giving your opposition what they do not want. Different game plans create a different set of statistics and a new set of problems for your opponent.
Another example of statistical bias is the process of teams “exiting” from their own 22. Across competitions, age groups and continents, almost every team simply kicks for touch.
What coaches are ignoring is that running the ball from a set play inside your 22 remains a devastating attacking option. If the defending wingers and fullback anticipate a kick and drop back, then coaches must empower their players to make the decision to run the ball because the attacking backline now faces the very positive six-v-four situation.
There are risks. But as the Super Bowl-winning coach Bruce Arians puts it: “No risk it, no biscuit.”
If Ireland are to succeed in the upcoming Six Nations, they will have to follow Arians’s advice and be brave enough to risk creating their own unique style of play, in turn producing their own unique numbers and shattering the statistical predictions informed by their unimaginative play in November.
