We as South
African rugby supporters are so passionate about the sport, we live, breath and
eat rugby, some even say we are religious when it comes to the sport. This is
great for the game, with this passion comes great interest and investment from
fans and business alike, this investment helps to grow and improve the game, the
down side to this zealous support is that we sometimes lose objectivity when
assessing the state of our rugby and our teams.
Don’t get me
wrong, I get worked up, elated and frustrated just like most when watching
rugby, I wear my heart on my sleeve when my team takes the field, but after the
final whistle, well maybe not right after the final whistle, I like to take
emotion out when assessing the team’s performance. This is why after every weekend of SANZAR
rugby I always like to read articles by Kiwi journalist Tony Johnson, his
outside view is almost always unbiased, honest and places games, especially
those involving SA teams, into perspective for me.
Now I don’t
expect us to be void of ANY bias or emotion when discussing or writing about
our rugby, it’s the differences in viewpoints that make the braai-time banter
interesting. We all have different choices for different positions and
preferences to different playing styles, these are aspects which are subjective
and are needed to create healthy debate, to gain new ideas and to ultimately
improve.
What I do find
frustrating is when fans and rugby analysts take obvious information and twist
it to support arguments that bolster the image of our rugby, sometimes
undeservedly. I am all for backing your country, in fact I take exception to
those who do not cheer for an SA team when they play ANZAC teams, but I cringe
at the arrogance that is sometimes dished
up by people when our teams are perceived to be doing well.
The most recent
SA rugby propaganda being reported is that the South African conference in this
year’s Super Rugby tournament was the strongest of the 3, it is suggested that
because we had three teams in the top 6 and one topping the overall table that
we were better than the Australasian conferences, this argument, while on the
surface looks appealing and true, conveniently excludes the performances of the
other 9 teams. Each conference is made up 5 teams and therefore all these teams
HAVE to be included when judging the performance of the entire conference.
I am no
statistician and know that anyone can bring in a multitude of additional
figures to disprove my logic, but below I try to illustrate which was the best
conference in this year’s Super Rugby tournament by focusing simply on log
points attained. Log points are the end game to get home ground advantage,
teams can get points even when they lose if they are competitive enough, so I feel
this is an accurate gauge of conference strength.
In the tables
below I compare total maximum points available to a conference to their final
points accumulated by the teams. Each derby match provides the 2 teams to get a
combined maximum of 7 points from a game while each cross conference match
offers either team to get a maximum of 5 points. So let us get to numbers.
As we can see
from this illustration is that the NZ conference is almost 4 bonus point match
wins ahead of us in the final analysis, that is quite substantial if you ask me.
This year Australia were very poor by only taking half of their points on
offer, the numbers would suggest though that the conferences were closer to
each other when looking at the competitiveness
of the derby games, who said the Aussie conference would be easy?
I have also
added as similar analysis using the top 3 finishers from each conference, with
this graph I wanted to illustrate that although we had 3 teams in the top 6 we
ended with only 2 more points than the NZ conference top 3. Not really the
dominance some might want you to believe.
All numbers
aside the more important fact is that we had 3 teams in the finals and only
came away with that participation medal they call the conference trophy, let
anyone try argue that we are the best after that that little stat.
The addition of
ex Bok and Italy coach Nick Mallet to the SuperSport rugby panel has been great
for me to watch, his frank opinions on various rugby topics have been a breath
of fresh air and is exactly what SuperSport desperately needed as the sports
channel has become more of a pom-pom bearing cheerleader of SA rugby than
critical analysts most fans enjoy. Their pre/post match analyses have become
predictable and not even a touch screen can liven up what to me has become a
glorified post match, clichéd interview. Mallett offers us more with his insight
and thought provoking arguments than any of the player sound bites and video
clips thrown at us every Thursday night. He asks the hard questions which are
avoided by most, questions which some are too scared to know the answers to.
We need people
like Mallett and Johnson to give us perspective, to generate debate and to help
us put a spotlight on the deficiencies in our rugby, to help us remove our
green tinted dimmers, if we can’t do that, how else are we to improve?