Opinion - Thought the Crusaders dominated Super Rugby this year? Think again.
George Bridge was the only Crusader to be included in the Team of the Season Photo: Photosport
As rugby journalists everywhere - other than Stephen Jones - sung their praises and predicted a long reign at the top of Super Rugby, a tweet came out yesterday that seemingly debunked everything.
Team of the Year #SuperRugby
— Super Rugby (@SuperRugby) August 7, 2018
Has players from 12 of the teams and like the regular season is based on comprehensive statistics that monitor in detail every action of every match. Player of the year is @ChiefsRugby play-maker Damian McKenzie
Full details: https://t.co/9Y26bZcQvc pic.twitter.com/ZYuvKM0Rhf
An official Super Rugby Team of the Season was picked to reflect the best performers from the 2018 competition, and the result was interesting - to put it lightly. Only one Crusader made the side, winger George Bridge. To be fair, that's a worthy inclusion. Bridge was outstanding this year and is most likely going to be an All Black before long.
But no room for the actual All Blacks in the Crusaders, and there were 15 of them in the squad that played in Saturday night's final. Not even current talk of the town Richie Mo'unga, who was ironically beaten to the first five spot by the man his recent form has seen him usurp in the All Black depth chart - at least in most of the public's eyes anyway.
Damian McKenzie, who was best known for patches of brilliance tempered with moments of madness, ended up taking the 10 jersey and even the title of player of the year.
Other oddities included Michael Little of the Sunwolves at second five, Akira Loane from the Blues, and Tanieala Tupou of the Reds. Three of the worst teams with just as many players as the four semi finalists.
Like the playoff format, what a joke... Crusaders go 15 matches unbeaten, only 1 player? And they win it ♂️
— Christopher Logan (@CLCourtney82) August 7, 2018
Lol!! Where is the stats for mckenzies turn overs, missed tackles and intercepts?
— Quadzilla (@76erscuts) August 7, 2018
Stats don't make player of the year. He gets in lucky positions and looks better than he is. If you take out kicking who would have the most points? Even it out a bit more... McKenzie is not the best 10 out there
— Rachel Gilchrist (@rachgkiwi) August 7, 2018
So how did this happen? It's hard enough getting to the source of where the team came from, given that Super Rugby has several different official websites - let alone understanding the decision-making process. But buried away in there is a description of the methodology, which states that there is:
"A video analysis of every touch of the ball. Each action in the match is awarded a points value depending on the relative importance of the action. So for example, a try scores more points than a tackle, but a player loses points for a missed tackle.
The points are then weighted against the score at the time when the action took place, the time in the match and the position on the pitch where it took place."
Which means that because Tupou scored four tries, he makes the team ahead of the multitude of props who spent the year doing a better job of winning scrum penalties. Little beat 56 defenders, although he had the luxury of playing against the often tissue paper-thin defences of the Australian Conference. Lood de Jager won 63 lineouts, despite the fact that pretty much all of them inside the opposition 22 would have been uncontested. You get the picture.
The main thing these stats show is just how tricky it is to apply individual statistics to rugby union. But also, annoyingly, how half-baked the attempts are to do it after over 20 years of professionalism.
No one sits in a pub during a game and admires exactly how many metres a guy has run, like you would for the yardage of an NFL player. There is no yardstick for exactly how many tackles makes a good performance, like there is in league. Even turnovers are contentious, given how many are more due to bad decision-making by the ball-carrier rather than anything special by the defender.
A more useful rugby stat would be around goal kicking percentage from different parts of the field, given that's one of the few discrete pieces of data that the game offers. Or the likelihood of a scrum penalty with different front row combinations. Or what the average phase count of a team taking the ball into the 22 is, and what the most probable outcome will be the higher it goes.
But it's still incredibly difficult to determine just what a player's worth is based on numbers, and in rugby union, getting selected for a test side goes a long way to determining that worth. It's unlikely McKenzie will still be too stoked with this statistically-based award if Mo'unga does take his spot in the All Black squad.
We're just going to have to put up with weird anomalies like this until someone can figure out a way that at least won't get ridiculed, like this supposed 'Team of the Season' has.
Until then we can just keep on reading between the lines.
