Archive for February, 2010
Inside The Numbers: Week 1
Posted by: | CommentsThe first Wednesday of the 2010 Super 14 season means it’s time for my first Inside The Numbers column of the year. Since the major talking point of week one was the much harsher refereeing of the breakdown area, I’ll be taking a look at how this has affected scoring in the competition.
Two of Fairfax’s star rugby writers, Toby Robson and Duncan Johnstone, penned stories noting that try scoring is down on week one in 2009. They are, of course, correct but perhaps taking too narrow a view of the stats.
Week one of 2010 produced 30 tries, while week one of 2009 gave us 45, a drop of 33%! But the full story is, week one of the 2009 Super 14 was a blip with only week 13 producing more tries (46) and only four weeks out of 14 producing more than 40 tries.
The average number of tries scored in a week in 2009 was 35.57 and three weeks actually produced fewer than 30 tries, so perhaps the drop in try scoring during the first week can be put down to another statistical blip.
So while the esteemed rugby writers of the world pen their editorial columns bemoaning the lack of attacking rugby and claiming that the tough new breakdown interpretations have failed to achieve their goal of more running rugby, because it’s too early to make that kind of comparison yet. One round does not make a season, and the final judgment can really only be made at the end of the round robin.
And here’s an interesting little anomaly: there were actually more points scored in week one of 2010 than in week one of 2009.
Is the media mature enough to interview referees?
Posted by: | CommentsIn an effort to be more open with the media and public, SANZAR are now allowing match referees to front the media before and after games. While this will hopefully give fans an incite into how a referee goes about one of the toughest jobs on the pitch, will the notoriously fickle media be able to hold back some of their less warranted criticisms of the match officials?
Unfortunately it would already appear that 3 News have shown they lack restraint and a little maturity with their first piece of the season about referee Stu Dickinson.
The introduction to the story contains the claim that Dickinson racked up one of the highest penalty counts in Super rugby history. Now claim reeks of a lack of fact checking and reporter putting their own spin on a story with no regard for facts.
Firstly, with the new interpretations of the tackle ball law coming into effect and players reverting to bad habits as they tired, the penalty count was always going to be higher than usual. And that doesn’t even take into account the participants, the Blues and Hurricanes, are not exactly known for their discipline.
Secondly, I seriously doubt that 25 penalties (yes, that’s how many Dickinson gave out, some of us were counting) is “one of the highest penalty counts in Super rugby history.” Just a quick look at some of the other games from this round, Craig Joubert also dished out 25 penalties, while Keith Brown gave out 23 and Jaco Peyper blew 21, yet somehow I don’t see Brooke Sabin doing a story about a record number of penalties being given in the opening round.
Sabin then asks the viewer if Dickinson was refereeing a game of rugby, or trying out for an orchestra followed by a montage of Dickinson blowing his whistle. Another element carefully chosen to portray Dickinson in a poor light.
The claim of blowing his whistle more than 30 times baffles me a little, we know there were 25 penalties, so were there only a few scrums and lineouts in that game, or did Sabin pick “blowing his whistle” as an expression in an attempt to have the view believe that the penalty count was higher than it was (25).
But once again, I come back to my old adage that if the players don’t infringe, the referee won’t blow his whistle. Even Dickinson himself said, “I don’t like blowing a lot of penalties but if it has to be done, it has to be done.”
Referee Dickinson set his standards early on in the game as to what he expected at the tackle, as the referees have been asked to do by the coaches themselves, but the players failed to adjust, yet TV 3 decide to run this thinly veiled hit piece on the referee rather than asking the coaches and players why they did not heed the warning.
Fortunately other media outlets were a little more restrained in their coverage, with Sportal noting that the tackle ball interpretations were known to all Super 14 teams and players would need time to adjust to the way it was being refereed.
So TV 3 and Brook Sabin, you win the first ever Sports After Dark yellow journalism award for intentionally fueling the perception that Dickinson performed poorly, and was to entirely to blame for the somewhat high penalty count on Friday. Perhaps a review of the facts before putting that sort of story to air could be in order…
UPDATE: Having checked up on this story further, it appears TV 3 trimmed a quote from Blues’ coach Pat Lam to suit their agenda on this story.
TV 3 quoted Lam as saying, “I know there were some frustrations on behalf of the players on some of the calls made.” He did say this but added in the same sentence: “but we’ve got to take responsibility. At the end of the day 27 points [from penalties] and an intercept try speaks for itself.”
Disgusting
