Before the Cricket kicked off [tipped off? Bowled off? Hit off?] this week, the fellows over at Sportsfreak were focused on the All Blacks' end of year tour, and the lack of tries in their games. The print media also seem to have chosen this as their lead angle ahead of this weekend's match (exhibit a, b, c, d... need I go on?) against France.

You can see my original response over there, where I gave some stats about the tries the All Blacks have scored and conceded in the NH over the past 11 years, but it sparked something in me. At school, I didn't really pay much attention in Maths. If it was something that captured my attention (like graphs and shit) I'd do it, but as soon as I got to sixth form I dropped it. It's never been a problem in day to day life, but this week I've felt completely incompetent. I've been trying to come up with all kinds of mathmatical stats and graphs for this post, and I'm extremely lucky to have Hadyn's patient tutelage to help me. If it hadn't been for him, you'd have all kinds of data here, and it would be presented on an unreadable line graph.

Something I didn't need help for was gathering the data for this. And it's actually a new feature of the Dropkicks. You can see it here. Currently it features all international test matches from 2006-today, but I may backdate it eventually if I see the need, and I may use it for a post about the Rugby World Cup and whether the 'minnow' teams are becoming more competitive.

The first table to have a look at, because I know you want to see the stuff revolving around the All Blacks, is the 6 Nations. [if this was TV that would be a hook - You would have no choice but to stick with me to find out. But this is a blog, so it doesn't work as well... Fuck.]

Warning: This post is a not-to-subtle call to attention directed at Robbie Deans. Yesterday I tweeted this:

Can anyone guess what these numbers mean? 76, .842 24, .708 27, .519

Graham Henry has been the coach of the All Blacks for 76 matches and has a .842 win percentage. Peter de Viliers, the coach of the Springboks who copped a fair bashing last year, has been in charge for 24 matches and has a .708 win record. I think you know who the third coach is: Robbie Deans. 27 games, .519 win record. He's only just won more than half the internationals he's been the boss for.

After Hadyn's great Public Address post on the winning percentages of New Zealand and Tri Nations coaches, I was tempted to delve a little deeper and look at the winning precentages of as many teams as I could find. I was aided in my efforts by a very nifty little website. Here's the list, since 1901, in order of most-least successful teams that were available on the site.

NZ: .744
South Africa: .644
France: .551
Wales: .530
England: .529
Australia: .526
Ireland: .437
Argentina: .421
Scotland: .406

In an interesting tidbit, I found New Zealand has lost more than three games in a row twice, five times in 1998 [John Hart] and six times in 1949 [Alex McDonald].

There is a new site called StatPlot where you can go and make really frickin cool graphs. Like this one:

­­­It took me no time at all to put this together and was (in a geeky way) really fun. At the moment it's American sports (though not all American sports) but they promise more data and soon.

"That's pretty average" is a common call from your 'average' TV or radio commentator to describe something that is usually pretty poor; ie. less than average.

New Zealand's batting in the 1st Test against the Indians has been described thus (well, probably, but it hasn't been praised to the high heavens, so I'm taking a leap of faith), but, was it?

If this test line-up scored their actual test averages, what would the NZ total be...?

• Jamie How - 23
• Tim McIntosh - 41
• Martin Guptill - 31
• Ross Taylor - 32
• Jesse Ryder - 51
• Brendon McCullum - 31
• James Franklin - 19
• Daniel Vettori - 28
• Iain O'Brien - 4
• Jeetan Patel - 13
• Chris Martin - 2

TOTAL: 275

Which is scarily close to the 279 we scored in both innings in the first test*. So, New Zealand were average in the that test. Go figure.

Which All Black has scored the fastest number of tries per test?

If you answered Sitiveni Sivivatu with 23 tries from 23 tests, you'd be very wrong, and we'd be forced to shake our heads with contempt and turn our backs on you.

Although Sivi has maintained a perfect 100% ratio since his four-try debut, it's acutally "Smoking" Josevata Rokocoko who has the best ratio (at the same mark) with 27 tries from 23 tests.

Christian Cullen was also on 23/23. Kirwan was 20/23 and Umaga on 19/23.

The 23 tries puts Sivi ninth on the All Blacks all-time tries list (just behind Justin Marshall) and only 26 tries behind Doug Howlett's 49 try mark, set last year.

Danica Patrick’s recent struggles for victory in the IRL caused some people to call her the “Anna Kournikova of racing”. Now that she has won a race the moniker has been removed.

But was it fair in the first place? And how does Patrick and Kournikova compare to other big-name SCYSFs*?

*So Close Yet So Far

Well the Dropkicks are not the type to shy away from such hard-nosed investigative questions, so we set our Research Department to work. They scoured the internet for ages sifting through many hundreds of photos of Danica Patrick in bikinis before finally being yelled at to "get back to work!"

And here's what they came up with (obviously comparisons across sports are slightly silly but let’s have a look anyway):

It’s interesting to note that Jenson Button made some rather nasty comments about the possibility of Patrick racing F1 cars. Obviously now she can tell him to go fuck himself.

So as you can see Danika Patrick was no Anna Kournikova. Kournikova herself is no Buffalo Bills (despite how bad they were). Patrick may well become Jack Nicklaus, probably not,  who knows.

I can’t believe its Thursday already and I haven’t put up anything about the other two non-upset quarterfinals.

South Africa – Fiji

What we said:

South
Africa is not Wales and Fiji have little chance of an upset... South
Africa dominate all of the important stats especially the forward-based
ones…Fiji will go out and do what they always do: play sevens.

The numbers (updated after the last table showed Fiji won!):

 *minute of possession

Apart from the lineout
and the kicking South Africa seemed to run the show. What I don’t have
here is the fact that at 60mins the scores were equal at 20. Fiji
didn’t show any respect and really did back themselves to win.

This does not bode well for South Africa. They are due to face a very confident and well rounded Argentinean team.

Argentina – Scotland

What we said:

Only
four weeks ago people would have said that this match-up between
Argentina and Scotland would be close but that the Scots would win.
It’s amazing what a victory over France and Ireland can do for a team.
Not to mention hard and fast defensive rugby, good kicking, smart
tactics and a winning attitude

It seems though, that the Argentineans are better at getting the ball back off you and I am a strong believer that turnovers win games

The Argentineans are the only team I have seen so far that has the overall pace that matches the All Blacks.

Argentina look the business and are my “Lock of the Week”

The numbers:

*minute of possession

Well a 19-13 isn’t really “Lock of
the Week material. But they did enough for victory. I think perhaps it
was actually Scotland playing better than Argentina playing worse. Then
again Argentina’s no-tries-against record is in tatters.

Scotland
has kept their 0.30 rate of handling errors going, which is not so good
to see. But they did well in the lineout snaffling 15% away from the
Argentineans. Still turnovers once again tell the story. Argentina won
the ball in the ruck and maul every three and a half minutes that
Scotland had it. Scotland only got the ball back every 10 minutes that
Argentina had it.

This is where Argentina won the game. They
only had 51% of the possession but it was their ability to get the ball
back off Scotland that enabled the victory. I don’t have the breakdown
but I imagine that a lot of Scotland’s penalties would have come from
holding on to the ball.

Scotland can be congratulated on playing better than they have so far but Argentina are fast becoming the team to beat.

Didn’t the refs suck?! Just kidding, this is not a sour grapes post. Especially given the amount of comments here and on other sites about how New Zealanders are bad losers. This is an actual post-match stats breakdown with the intent of giving fans some more info about the matches they have just seen. Let's call it "closure".

Australia – England

What the Dropkicks said:

Looking at the top table of results from pool matches (and with all caveats noted) this looks like another close game. Remember that Australia did not have to face a resurgent Tonga or a Samoan team seemingly out for blood.

I still back the Wallabies though. They have it over the English in the lineouts, the turnovers, the tackles and territory. The only way England can win this game (based on the crude stats above) is to play incredibly good forward rugby and let Johnny keep the scoreboard ticking over

The numbers:

*per minute of possession
**rounding

Not the first “upset” of the tournament but still a shock. The stats above show that England clearly dominated the set pieces and the tackle-ball area with roughly one turnover every 8 tackles.

Solid English forward pressure and an unwillingness by the Aussies to put their brilliant back line to the outside gave the English the victory.

We have to say though, to the Australian press, lay off the Wallabies! (and the All Blacks for that matter, we’ll handle that).

New Zealand – France

What the Dropkicks said:

“Now, if you ignore the “points for” (and the implied try-stats), not a lot separates us from the French. And lets be honest, we played some terrible teams while France had to face the best defence in Argentina.

… both teams had roughly the same amount of points against. This is perhaps more telling…

…We also gave up less penalties than the French, which means cool heads under pressure, which is what you need when it comes to the final…

Let’s just hope (or pray) that we are not the Fish n Chip-Eating Surrender Kiwis.

The numbers:

*per minute of possession

It is quite obvious from these stats that New Zealand actually won this game and that some sort of error has occurred.

The All Blacks dominated possession (71%) and territory (63%). We camped ourselves in the French 22 with some very long sets, sometimes 15 phases. And our forwards were grinding them into paste at the set pieces (Ali Williams deserved Man of the Match for his lineout work alone, but it was given to Luke McAlister).

There are some, desperately seeking a figurehead upon which to pin the blame, who will single out the referee, and some of the stats bear this out. The two penalties conceded by the French were the lowest of any team at this World Cup. Also the French spent the second largest amount of time in their own 22 of any team this weekend (only 17 seconds less than the Fijians), a large proportion of this was during the second half during which they committed no penalties.

Prior to this game the team that had conceded the least penalties was New Zealand with roughly 5 per game, while France were 8th with roughly 7 per game. You could argue that France decided to play clean for this game, but it’s more likely that some calls weren’t picked up.

There are some, desperately seeking a figurehead upon which to pin the blame, who look to our loose forwards as not doing much, but with New Zealand turning the ball over once every seven tackles (the highest of the quarterfinalists) that seems a little harsh. And France were only able to manage a turnover once every 25 tackles (the worst of the quarterfinalists), so our ball retention at the ruck and maul was good too…why did we lose again?

I believe that the reason New Zealand was beaten can’t be seen in these numbers. It was an intangible quantity. The All Blacks lacked pace in the final quarter. In the first quarter when we had momentum and looked good we got caught in a kicking match.

With France’s low turnover stats (despite their good tackle percentage) we should have been running it early and often. And while we did one in three of France’s lineouts we just weren’t finding touch. The midfield combination didn’t look connected when running close but out wide we were doing well.

France finished the game with all the momentum and in the end that is what gave them the game.