Intersting stats from last season

[deancartwright1990]

wigan had a completion rate worse that salford, both home and away, despite us finishing second and salford finishing 11th.

Wigan home - 74%
away - 72%

Salford home - 76%
away - 75%

In addition, the draw between Widnes v Wigan has located a few points where Wigan was extremely poor.
Metres made fromm scoots and 1st tackle carries were alot less than Widnes.

Wigan also had two more sets than Widnes but Widnes had 29 more play the balls despite Wigan's error count only 3 more than Widnes'

Just some information i got sent and thought i would post it so others could have a look through it.

[Wiganer Ted]

Some years ago following a game verus Australia, England had far better stats than the Aussies except the one that mattered, the final score!

[cpwigan]

Stats can be misleading and yes the one truly important one is the score (final) but I do think those are indicative of he bad decision making being made on/off the field. High risk gambling can pat off fantastically occasionally but week in week out it is prone to breaking down particularly when it matters. We should leave the utopian RL to Leigh and Rangi Chase.

[deancartwright1990]

I dont remember suggesting that any stat is more important that the final score.

Was some information that i was sent, especially the completeion rate stats of Wigan and Salford shocked me a little and i thought some fans would enjoy a little skim over the stats.Cannot just be me that was surprised by this stat

chill your beans chaps

[No straw damn us]

How did Wigans completion rate compare to the other Super League teams especially the likes of Leeds, Saints, Hudds, Catalan and Wire who I expect to be our main rivals this season?

[markill]

I dont remember suggesting that any stat is more important that the final score.

Was some information that i was sent, especially the completeion rate stats of Wigan and Salford shocked me a little and i thought some fans would enjoy a little skim over the stats.Cannot just be me that was surprised by this stat

chill your beans chaps

Everyone knows I like stats and they can be a really good tool for gauging performance.

It is a little surprising that poorer team has a lower completion rate on face value - but then you'll ask the next question to drill down what that actually means I suppose.

CP is suggesting a style of play factor I think - i.e. do the poorer side play a more limited style of play due to having inferior skills/talent? A more limited style with fewer risky plays will likely mean a higher completion rate than an expansive team that takes risks.

My follow up though instead would be on the numbers underpinning the completion rate, which are total sets and sets completed. If the higher ranked team are (as you'd expect) getting a much larger number of sets that the poorer side, you would expect the better side to still score more points and so win more games than the poorer side. If the poorer side are having as many opportunities to possess the ball as well as having a better completion rate then it would be very surprising.

One thing I'm not sure on, but I believe to be true, is that errors on the last tackle and errors in a possession turnover (e.g. you try to intercept and it results in you knocking on) would not be counted in completion rate figures. Those errors at those times might be a big difference between better and poorer sides.

p.s. I don't think anyone was being personal when they make statements about the final score being the only stat that matters, don't take it to heart, as I liked your post and would enjoy more of that type of input.

[markill]

Wigan also had two more sets than Widnes but Widnes had 29 more play the balls despite Wigan's error count only 3 more than Widnes'

What play were tries scored on and errors made on? They would probably answer that difference.

If we scored on play 1 or 2 but they scored on play 5 or 6 each time then you can put half the extra POTBs down to that. Same thing with errors, and even more scope for an impact from this as there will have been about twice as many errors as tries in this game.

[cpwigan]

It would be interesting to see how Wigan's stats improved as the season progressed? We seem to have a better style as we approached and in the 8's. I think our decision making tends to suck (for me it lost us the GF) and our approach to sets when we have possession particularly the early sets. I am guessing our defence normally as good / better than anybody BUT we lose control of games more when in possession than defending.

[DaveO]

I like the stats as well but what I always try and do is put them into some sort of context. If you don't they can be very misleading.

Most of the time this involves looking at the opposition faced if you can. So a player may look brilliant on a particular stat v another until you realise one was facing Leeds, Saints and Wire but was rested for games against Wakey, Salford and Hull if you see what I mean.

As to this particular stat v Widnes I don't think you can explain it away by us scoring earlier in the tackle count etc. We only scored so many tries so what happened for the rest of the game?

I think this particular statistic from that one game just reflects badly on Wigan that day which ties in with how people viewed how Wigan played. So there is correlation between the perceived performance (pretty rubbish!) and the stats.