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Check out the season’s highlights below:
Good Touch Kicks
We built a custom stat in Advantage to find which players were best at drilling the ball towards the corner-flag.
The criteria we set out were: a kick that goes out 30+ metres from the penalty, or a kick that puts a team within 10 metres of the try line.
Henry Slade – whose penalty kick heroics are well known in the Prem – was the standout for his ‘Good Touch Kick’ rate.
However, the Top 14 boasts several players in the top 10.
Playing From Edges
Every team has a strategy when attacking from the edge. We wanted to test which teams in Test rugby were most effective at this.
To measure effectiveness, we selected some basic attacking metrics, including attacking qualities (clean breaks and defenders beaten) and metres made. To judge each team relative to others, we used z-scores – which can be activated in Advantage with a single click. The z-score sum then allowed us to see top performers across all metrics, rather than just one. Analysts can easily apply the same method to their preferred metrics within Advantage.
To look at attacking from edges specifically, we used a couple of Advantage’s native filters: phase start location, and event (e.g. carry, break, etc.) location. For this example, we were looking at phases that started within 20 metres of the left touchline and events that occurred in the rest of the width.
The Southern Hemisphere teams dominate with their attacks from edges, with New Zealand ranking as the outstanding attacking team from the left edge.
Using graphics in Advantage, we can visualise what makes the All Blacks’ attack from left-to-right so effective.
When they have a phase on the left edge, they get the ball to the right-hand-side of the pitch over 40% of the time.
This edge-to-edge strategy not only allows them to hold possession – making more than a standard deviation more carries than other Test teams – but beat more defenders, and break the line during these attacks.
High Leverage Players
There are lots of ways to measure and visualise player quality, but fewer that can a) put this in the context of team performance, and b) break this down stylistically.
We built a suite of metrics in Advantage – fully customisable by users – to flesh out the areas of the game where players are making a difference. Here’s the breakdown:
- Power: dominant carries and tackles
- Flair: how well can a player put others into space? Includes assists, creative kicks, and offloads
- Threat: the ability to finish these opportunities, including tries, goal kicks, and clean breaks
- Contest: includes turnovers won at the breakdown, contests won in the air, and disruption at the set piece
- Grit: the number of collisions a player absorbs in the loose
Using the ‘Percent of Team’ transformation, you can identify the players that dominate these categories within their teams with a single click.
Using the z-score sum again, we found that Tom and Jack Willis are the biggest outliers in the club game across multiple facets. Tom Willis’ power, flair, and threat each account for more than 10% of Saracens’ quality in these areas. Jack Willis stands out for the power and contest he brings to the Toulouse team.
For many, pictures speak a thousand words. We visualised the varied skillsets of these ‘high-leverage’ players:
The Willis brothers make significant contributions in every facet of the game. However, Matthieu Jalibert is a great example of a player with a clear super-strength: his flair is what drives his central position in the Bordeaux-Bègles’ champion team.