Looking past the 'smoke and mirrors'
rugby365.com reader, turned columnist, Anton van der Merwe takes a closer look at the much talked about breakdown, or tackle area, and ask if the game has really improved?
A lot of fanfare and smoke and mirrors accompanied the first half the Super 14 season, around the new application of existing laws. ELV's are passé; the referees now knew exactly what to do to make the game that will be played in heaven, flow.
In this addition of Statistically Speaking we provide you with some data from the first nine weeks of the Super 14 for an area of the game singled out for most of the attention - the tackle. You be the judge!
The first graph shows the number of tackle penalties every week vs the tries scored:
Keep in mind that Week Five was somewhat of an aberration with the Waratahs-Lions game (13 tries) and Bulls-Highlanders game (12 tries). Is there a correlation between tackle penalties enforced and tries scored?
Next, let's take a look at how the individual referees are doing. This graph shows the average number of tackle penalties per game each referee awarded:
Bryce Lawrence (New Zealand) with an average per game of 7.8 penalties in his four games is the most lenient at the tackle. Stuart Dickinson (Australia) with an average of 15.5 is the strictest and double Lawrence's average. An issue with interpretation and overall consistency here?
Which country's referees are the most consistent? South Africa refs all come within 50 percent of Jonathan Kaplan's lowest South Africa average of 9.2. The Australian refs' spread is not much different, coming in at 55 percent of Paul Marks' low average of 10.0. The New Zealand refs spread come in at a whopping is 80.6 percent of Bryce Lawrence's 7.8 average.
If one eliminates the most wayward stat for each country things look a little better. Eliminating Craig Joubert brings all the South Africa refs to within 27.7 percent of Jonathan Kaplan's low. Eliminating Stuart Dickinson brings all the Australian refs to within 30 percent of Paul Marks' low. While eliminating Keith Brown brings all the New Zealand refs to within 35.5 percent of Bryce Lawrence. Overall, clearly some consistency issues. Also, keep in mind that lower is not necessarily better, stricter enforcement of the tackle penalty is supposed to result in a more flowing game. Hence, the low-ballers can also be considered wayward. If they are eliminated South Africa refs has a spread of 43.8 percent, Australian refs 47.6 percent and New Zealand refs 55.6 percent.
What does the averages per country look like? The graph below provides the average number of tackle penalties awarded per game based on the nationality of the referee.
Statistically significant? Look at it this way: we have had 57 Super 14 games. The difference between Australian refs and New Zealand refs (i.e., 1.9 per game) would mean a total of 108 penalties. Would that influence the way players behave? It should be noted that Stuart Dickinson single-handedly ups the Australian referee average. Without him the Australian referee average is much closer to the other two at 11.2.
Finally, what have the tackle penalty trends per week been by the ref's nationality over the first nine weeks of the Super 14 competition? That information is provided in the next graph. (Note, there was no Australian ref active in week 2 of the competition, hence the spike down to zero.)
Two things that catches the eye on this one. First, the Stuart Dickinson effect. He was in action in week 1, 7, 8 and 9. Is Stuart on a lone crusade as the only referee trying his heart out to make the game flow?
The second thing to note is the way New Zealand refs apply tackle penalties. As shown in the previous graph, New Zealand refs have the lowest average of all three countries. The low-ballers among all referees are two New Zealand refs, Bryce Lawrence (7.8 ave) and Chris Pollock (9.0 ave). From the graph above it is also clear that New Zealand refs twice (Week Three and Week Nine) bottomed out (by some margin) on the very low average of only 5 tackle penalties per game. Moreover, New Zealand refs have topped the charts in enforcing tackle penalties for only one of the nine weeks of the competition (i.e. Week Five). Would one not expect the country who always emphasises running rugby and laments too much kicking in the game to have their refs be the most diligent in making the game flow?
What do you make of all that?