Statistics you'd like to see

Stats, stats and dam lies. What statistics would you like to see.

Personally I'd like to see how many TV official decisions go for the home team. My feeling is there is probably a bias.

I'd like to see a good site that has stats. At the moment there are one or two but they don't go into much depth.

There are a few refs I would like to see the number of pens given to a home side, and given against teams from certain nations etc.

Watching the Rabo this season there have been a number of refs, that IMO, seem to have a habit of favouring the home side, or favouring teams from one nation over another. And to be fair I noticed it when it was happening to other sides than my own, so it is not just blaming the man in the middle.

The number of pens suddenly given to the losing side who are now out of sight of their opponents thanks to dire reffing in the first 60 mins

Number of pens and/or final warnings before a yellow card is shown.

Some more breakdown stuff, which I know would be difficult to obtain. Something like, number sof turnovers won per competed for? Or number of balls slowed down? I know they'd be reeeeeally hard to get, and the slowing of the ball would be hard to quantify, but some more stats detailings the real sublties of the game would be great.

I'd like to see stats on the veracity of opinion based analysis

But more seriously, like profitius says, I'd like one dedicated site to take care of all my needs when I go looking for stats.

I don't use them often but when I do I tend to have a requirement for a lot of them, based on long time frames, using multiple cross referencing. I find it torturous the way I do it now with four or five sites only giving me little bits of what I want to know, and then having to tie it all in with generally gaping holes in some detail that I can't find on any of the sites.

Maybe such a site Does exist already but I haven't found it. All stats on all Professional players: International records PLUS club records that can also be continuously broken down into smaller parts from an overall tally to a seasonal one to specifics of each game.

Okay, maybe a perfect world doesn't exist.....

Number of people who use stats as a cover for having little understanding of the game or what is going on.

Pretty high number I'm guessing

My favourite stat came in Gareth Jenkins post match analysis after England had put 60 points on his team. He said and I quote, "we made more gain line breaks from midfield than the opposition"

A few years back on boards.ie someone from UCD (or some other college) came on and said they had a load of rugby data and were looking for ways to use it. They asked us our advice about the best use of the data and promised to come back in a few months with some data or links or something.

I asked was the data available online and they said no. I asked could I pay a small fee to see it and they said no. They said they were going to sell it to bookmakers or some professional teams! Of course as someone who likes a bet I didn't give them much after that. It would be like the turkeys voting for christmas.

And did the fcuker come back like they/he promised... nope.

If all ESPN Scrum stats were made available you could have a handy little database that would tell you some useful things. But the real genius use of stats would be things that ESPN don't show, like how many tries are scored off first phase, how often the 12 and 13 change as second/third receiver, from what position on the pitch are dead ball kicks taken, how many grubbers/garryowens etc.

Unfortunately, even if these stats did exist (which they probably do) someone will be able to make money with them, so they won't be for public consumption.

I tried to pull together the basic stats from the Pro12 this year, spend a bloody age creating a database, but once ESPN missed out on a single game, that was the whole thing down the jax. Frustrating stuff...

Mickado - Get that OCD seen to

Sounds like someone has OCD at UCD

RubyGuby wrote:Mickado - Get that OCD seen to

Sounds like someone has OCD at UCD

Ah, sure whatever keeps me out of trouble!

Maybe we should set up a stats thread. Everyone try to chip in with useful info.

dragonbreath wrote:Number of people who use stats as a cover for having little understanding of the game or what is going on.

Pretty high number I'm guessing

only 23% actually.

There's a 95.87% chance that all statistics are rubbish.

RuggerBoy wrote:There's a 95.87% chance that all statistics are rubbish.

Including this one

No Kiwi that was after much research and analysis - honest!

A few easy ones I'd like to see would be the penalties for and against at scrumtime for each teams front row options ( I'm sure the pro teams have this), I'd also be interested to see if there is a correlation between the length of time to take a penalty kick and the success rate.

Bath coach Gary Gold is big on stats, and will happily tell you about how often a up and under resulted in a turnover/penalty for hanging on etc. So I imagine that pretty much any stat you want exists, sadly it is paid for information so I guess the likes of us wont be seeing it anytime soon.

% of penalties awarded against England by Steve Walsh

RubyGuby wrote:% of penalties awarded against England by Steve Walsh

and the number of times he checked his hair on the big screen

I'd like to see stats for:

1. The number of times in any international or club game with nothing whatsoever to do with Jonny Wilkinson the Sky commentator squeaks the words 'Jonny Wilkinson'.

2. The number of times in any game that Richard Cockerill tacitly threatens violence towards any of the 3 'on field' officials.

3. The number of times Cian Healy has eaten salad.

4. What percentage of any interview given by Will Greenwood the relevant interviewee finds completely incomprehensible.

5. The average number of times in any ten minute unit that John Inverdale is condescending about Scotland in any single 6 Nations game.

6. The number of pencils Jiffy snaps in anger whilst watching any Wales international match.

7. What percentage of Austin Healey's fashion choices are unequivocal disasters.

8. The number of times Geoff Parling's wife has told him to shave off that bloody ferret on his face.

Gosh, there are probably even a few more.