I don’t want to bring back lockdown memories, but who recalls Jelle’s Marble Run?
If you don’t, it was one of those inexplicable lockdown triumphs. A Dutchman had set up enormously intricate marble runs in his house and, millions of us, it turned out, watched different coloured marbles run down them. Jelle now has 1.4million subscribers to his channel who regularly tune in to watch the entirely random results of these races.
That’s unusual for a number of reasons. One is that we generally don’t care about sports which are entirely random. Nobody bets on competitive coin tossing. We might have loved Leicester City winning the Premier League, but if all 20 sides had an equal chance of victory each season, it wouldn’t be that enticing. We like the fact that, in rugby, skill wins out over luck more often than not.
More often than not – but not always. Clever analysts over in football predict that 20% of the points awarded are down to luck, with the other 80% down to ability. The numbers are probably lower slightly in rugby because there are more tries than there are goals in football, so a flukey try has less of an impact than a flukey goal would.
That being said, luck undeniably plays a part in rugby, even if it might be taboo to admit it. We want to assume that over the course of a game, and certainly a season, the best team will win and the worst team will lose. I’m sorry to say, that’s not true.
Even in matches with two equally talented teams, it’s perfectly possible for the team with the worse performance to walk away with the result thanks to the guiding hand of luck.
We probably have to cover off what ‘luck’ actually means here. There are two different things happening in a rugby match: the team’s performance and the result. There is obviously a link between the two and a better performance will win more games than a weaker one. But we will all be able to bring to mind games where our team played poorly but won, or brilliantly, and didn’t.
Even in matches with two equally talented teams, it’s perfectly possible for the team with the worse performance to walk away with the result thanks to the guiding hand of luck. Even across an entire season, luck still heavily influence events.
Back in the 2017-2018 season, Newcastle Falcons finished the Premiership season in fourth place. They won 14 games, the third most of any team in the league. The season ended with a hefty 36-5 loss to Exeter Chiefs in the play-offs, but still, surely this was the sign of a team building towards something? It turned out not to be – they were relegated the next season. Who could have predicted this? Well, it turns out, all of us.
The best predictor of league finishing position is points difference. That season, Newcastle’s points difference was -51, worse than fifth-placed Leicester Tigers, Bath in sixth place and Sale Sharks in eighth. They did that by losing games quite heavily, earning no losing bonus-points and winning seven matches by three points or less. Great, you might say, they have the skill of winning close matches. Except it looks like a team’s ability to come out on top in these narrow results is not entirely, but largely, random. Research in baseball suggests teams can’t consistently produce success in narrow games year on year.
None of this is a criticism of the Falcons of course. Every team benefits from a certain amount of luck. However, it does show the danger of purely relying on league position rather than looking at the underlying performances. The underlying performances suggested the Falcons were a team in the lower half of the table. The next season, they scored 2.7 fewer points per game and conceded just 1.6 points more. But that minor slide was enough to drop them all the way to 12th and out of the league.
It can work in reverse as well. Dan McKellar was let go by Leicester Tigers after a disappointing last season where they only managed to finish eighth. They finished with nine wins and nine losses with a points difference of +27, one higher than third-placed Sale. They scored, and conceded, the exact same number of tries as the Sharks – 55 and 51 respectively. The Tigers played in four games decided by fewer than three points and lost them all. That was undeniably a worse season than they had enjoyed the previous year, when they came third, but it wasn’t an eighth-place finish looking at the underlying performances.
That’s not to say that there aren’t other reasons for coaches being fired. Lots of things happen behind the scenes which we aren’t privy to. But it does suggest that as well as deciding on game plans, choosing who to sign, and trying to build a winning culture, coaches also have to try to get lady luck on their side as well.
What might you do with this information? The first step is to accept that rugby, and all sports, are impacted by luck. They are influenced more by the skills of the players, unlike the marble runs, but they are not immune to luck changing results. That doesn’t make it less enjoyable to watch, in fact it makes it more enjoyable. If luck didn’t exist in rugby, then we could just work out which collection of 23 players was better and wouldn’t have to bother actually playing the game.
We might want to pretend it doesn’t exist, but luck is lurking in our game. The only thing to do is accept that, and hope it influences your side favourably.
The second step is to understand how to spot luck. The most obvious way is by looking at a team’s points difference. If your side is high up in the league table but doing so with a negative points difference, don’t expect them to ride that lucky wave all the way through the season. Equally, if they’re threatened by relegation but rocking a positive points difference, then maybe give the coach a chance to let their luck change.
If you want to look deeper, then 22 entries is a good place to start. In football, shots on target and expected goals (xG) are the measures of the number and quality of chances. In rugby, that job is done by 22 entries. On average, teams will score a try with around 33% of their 22 entries and get a try or a penalty on around 55%.
What is confusing is that the very good teams will only be successful on about 5% more entries and the worst on 5% fewer. What separates the best and worst teams is the number of 22 entries they generate and the number they allow. If you suddenly find that your team are generating tries on 50% of their entries, or 10%, then it’s likely that is due to a hefty dose of luck and might well change.
We might want to pretend it doesn’t exist, but luck is lurking in our game. The only thing to do is accept that, and hope it influences your side favourably.
step forward the winners of the LOTTO Cup, 2023.