Where’s Wigan’s offload gone.

[morley pie eater]

To counteract the offload argument , Wigan have made more clean breaks than any other team, I believe they've also thrown most passes. The team with most offloads is sitting at the bottom of the table.

Good post, NSDU . . . . but you'll surely get the usual "Stats don't mean anything" responses

If you looked at the top of the offloading table - which I think caused the OP to post the comments, it clearly shows at least three Toronto players in the top ten for offloading. Seeing as they are currently bottom of the table it DOES prove that stats are meaningless doesn't it? Taken into context with their missed tackles/penalties conceded/errors etc then you can see that offloading in itself is not a useful statistic to decide how well a team is playing or not

SO stats are meaningless. As the saying goes, there are lies, damned lies and then their are statistics

Slight confusion there I think, Mr Voodoo.

Your point would be a perfectly valid response to someone who claimed that the team that offloads most should be top of league. I don't think anyone has said that?

Now it could be possible that, for example, Warrington use offloading effectively, so have a high offload count and tend to finish high in the league (looking at stats over a number of years). However, a team that's low in the league, and offloads a lot, say Hull KR, may be doing so in desperation, so there would be no overall statistical link between offloads and league position.

Statisticians are careful to look at links and assess whether they are causal or not. Recent examples are smoking and cot death syndrome. Infant mortality has been hugely reduced over the past 35 to 40 years by giving advice as a result of statistical analysis, despite not finding a cause.

To say statistics are rubbish or meaningless goes against masses of evidence. But false interpretation of statistics can be dangerous or misleading.

Meanwhile a coaches job is to have the stats available, but use his/her/its/their knowledge and common sense to interpret them in a way that will help improve the team's performance.

You'll soon be getting a census form on your doormat. Maybe you should try explaining to the Office for National Statistics how they've been wasting their time since 1841?

[DaveO]

Good post, NSDU . . . . but you'll surely get the usual "Stats don't mean anything" responses

,

If you looked at the top of the offloading table - which I think caused the OP to post the comments, it clearly shows at least three Toronto players in the top ten for offloading. Seeing as they are currently bottom of the table it DOES prove that stats are meaningless doesn't it? Taken into context with their missed tackles/penalties conceded/errors etc then you can see that offloading in itself is not a useful statistic to decide how well a team is playing or not

SO stats are meaningless. As the saying goes, there are lies, damned lies and then their are statistics

Slight confusion there I think, Mr Voodoo.

Your point would be a perfectly valid response to someone who claimed that the team that offloads most should be top of league. I don't think anyone has said that?

Now it could be possible that, for example, Warrington use offloading effectively, so have a high offload count and tend to finish high in the league (looking at stats over a number of years). However, a team that's low in the league, and offloads a lot, say Hull KR, may be doing so in desperation, so there would be no overall statistical link between offloads and league position.

Statisticians are careful to look at links and assess whether they are causal or not. Recent examples are smoking and cot death syndrome. Infant mortality has been hugely reduced over the past 35 to 40 years by giving advice as a result of statistical analysis, despite not finding a cause.

To say statistics are rubbish or meaningless goes against masses of evidence. But false interpretation of statistics can be dangerous or misleading.

Meanwhile a coaches job is to have the stats available, but use his/her/its/their knowledge and common sense to interpret them in a way that will help improve the team's performance.

You'll soon be getting a census form on your doormat. Maybe you should try explaining to the Office for National Statistics how they've been wasting their time since 1841?

Perhaps Wall of Voodoo should have qualified this a bit and said (offloading) stats are meaningless in the Toronto case. Which given the comment that the top offloading side was bottom of the league, which implies a statistical link between the two facts, would be true.

As you said yourself statisticians look at the links and assess whether they are causal or not. So I am not sure why you thought the response was a good one because there isn’t a link between Toronto’s offloading and their league position. If there was then not only would Toronto be bottom but the side doing the next most offloads would be second bottom and so on until the side with the least was top.

[SJ]

Stats are a tool "pace Morley "to be interpreted appropriately.
Stat; Wigan 27 Saints 0 Result(meaning,interpretation. We win/won Simple

[Levrier]

,

If you looked at the top of the offloading table - which I think caused the OP to post the comments, it clearly shows at least three Toronto players in the top ten for offloading. Seeing as they are currently bottom of the table it DOES prove that stats are meaningless doesn't it? Taken into context with their missed tackles/penalties conceded/errors etc then you can see that offloading in itself is not a useful statistic to decide how well a team is playing or not

SO stats are meaningless. As the saying goes, there are lies, damned lies and then their are statistics

Slight confusion there I think, Mr Voodoo.

Your point would be a perfectly valid response to someone who claimed that the team that offloads most should be top of league. I don't think anyone has said that?

Now it could be possible that, for example, Warrington use offloading effectively, so have a high offload count and tend to finish high in the league (looking at stats over a number of years). However, a team that's low in the league, and offloads a lot, say Hull KR, may be doing so in desperation, so there would be no overall statistical link between offloads and league position.

Statisticians are careful to look at links and assess whether they are causal or not. Recent examples are smoking and cot death syndrome. Infant mortality has been hugely reduced over the past 35 to 40 years by giving advice as a result of statistical analysis, despite not finding a cause.

To say statistics are rubbish or meaningless goes against masses of evidence. But false interpretation of statistics can be dangerous or misleading.

Meanwhile a coaches job is to have the stats available, but use his/her/its/their knowledge and common sense to interpret them in a way that will help improve the team's performance.

You'll soon be getting a census form on your doormat. Maybe you should try explaining to the Office for National Statistics how they've been wasting their time since 1841?

Perhaps Wall of Voodoo should have qualified this a bit and said (offloading) stats are meaningless in the Toronto case. Which given the comment that the top offloading side was bottom of the league, which implies a statistical link between the two facts, would be true.

As you said yourself statisticians look at the links and assess whether they are causal or not. So I am not sure why you thought the response was a good one because there isn’t a link between Toronto’s offloading and their league position. If there was then not only would Toronto be bottom but the side doing the next most offloads would be second bottom and so on until the side with the least was top.

The eminent evolutionary biologist, Steven Jay Gould wrote a fascinating piece on our misidentification of causal relationships in his (bright) children's book "Bully for brontosaurus". He talks about the dangers of sportsmen making false causal links and ending up with habits and traditions like always wearing a particular pair of underpants for a game. As stated here it is not the number of offloads that is making Toronto so poor, it is that they are just not that good.
At the moment Wigan TV is highlighting some games from The '90s. Now there were some teams that could offload, however, you also have to look at the sheer quality on display, take into account variations in the application of laws and consider that the games shown have been picked for rebroadcast. I would recommend Wigan TV to anyone with the caveat that it is not high def so the images can be a bit soft.

[morley pie eater]

To counteract the offload argument , Wigan have made more clean breaks than any other team, I believe they've also thrown most passes. The team with most offloads is sitting at the bottom of the table.

Good post, NSDU . . . . but you'll surely get the usual "Stats don't mean anything" responses

Dave,
I said "Good post" because my understanding of NSDU's point is that he's rightly saying there is no direct link between offloads and league position. He backs this up, again quite correctly, by quoting Toronto's stats.

No-one is claiming that offloads make a team perform worse/badly. You seem to be assuming that because NSDU (and me) are saying offloading doesn't make you good, then we must believe the converse, ie it makes you bad!

My maths teacher, Bill Tomlinson used to say "The converse of a true statement is not necessarily true. 'All Boy Scouts are boys' but not all boys are Boy Scouts."

[Mind you, he also told us that Pythagoras was buried on Ince Common!]

In short, somebody says Wigan could improve by offloading more. Somebody else replies and says "Not necessarily, the team with most offloads is bottom of the league.".

What's wrong with that?

[SJ]

Nothing wrong. Just boring rugby for me ;just the expected collision with less movement of the ball ala Leeds the other day. Much more entertaining to watch for me.

[morley pie eater]

Nothing wrong. Just boring rugby for me ;just the expected collision with less movement of the ball ala Leeds the other day. Much more entertaining to watch for me.

It certainly wasn't boring rugby this afternoon v Hudds! And the nearest we got to an offload was a wild pass from French when he was part-tackled.

[Firestarter]

First 30 mins was very boring

[pedro]

we didnt have the ball due to penalties and them scoring

[Firestarter]

we didnt have the ball due to penalties and them scoring

We scored first didnt we?try wise