RugbyRebels

Digby wrote:If there's an issue with discipline is Marler really part of the answer? He's lucky to still be in the conversation, even though he is a a talented lad

Has he ever got a yellow for england? I know there's the whole racial slur thing but that has been talked to death and you can come to your own decision there. Mako's a guarenteed 1/2 penalties a game whereas I'm quite suprised whenever Marler gets one.

I think we'd all been seduced by Mako being the starting LH for the Lions, accepting that he is now simply the premier LH in the World and therefore an automatic starter for Eng. I'm not sure he does have to automatically start for Eng when we have Marler firing on all cylinders. Personally, I agree with Marler starting and Mako coming on early in the second half in games where we're up against a proper pack. Marler is our best scrummager of all our likely LHs. Mako has extraordinary skills and is a fantastic impact replacement for when the game starts to loosen up.

This game has been a good reminder of Marler's value, even though we have Genge waiting in the wings. Marler needs to go home and have a good think about ditching the niggly bollocks he's been descending into this last year if he wants to fulfil his potential I do think Genge will eventually become a very good scrummager and move Marler aside in time.

Mako and Marler offer different skills basically. Both useful. Mako + Cole, Marler + Sinckler seems to be a good balance. I suspect even better would be starting Marler and Sinckler, then bringing on Mako and Williams. But Cole at the end of the last season really started to put in some big shifts for Tigers, good carries, snaffling on the floor again, so he may be making a comeback.

Raggs wrote:Mako and Marler offer different skills basically. Both useful. Mako + Cole, Marler + Sinckler seems to be a good balance. I suspect even better would be starting Marler and Sinckler, then bringing on Mako and Williams. But Cole at the end of the last season really started to put in some big shifts for Tigers, good carries, snaffling on the floor again, so he may be making a comeback.

Sinckler and Williams have had good moments and gained experience, adding to our TH options at last. I don't think they've done enough to move Cole out of the squad. I expect Eddie to bring Cole back for the AIs but at least we now know we have reasonable backup a deux. If Cole picks up a serious injury we're not in the shit now.

Beasties wrote:

Raggs wrote:Mako and Marler offer different skills basically. Both useful. Mako + Cole, Marler + Sinckler seems to be a good balance. I suspect even better would be starting Marler and Sinckler, then bringing on Mako and Williams. But Cole at the end of the last season really started to put in some big shifts for Tigers, good carries, snaffling on the floor again, so he may be making a comeback.

Sinckler and Williams have had good moments and gained experience, adding to our TH options at last. I don't think they've sone enough to move Cole out of the squad. I expect Eddie to bring Cole back for the AIs but at least we now know we have reasonable backup a deux. If Cole picks up a serious injury we're not in the shit now.

My issue is that Cole and Marler offer little effective carrying ability, it's a poor balance. Whereas matching the pairs as I've written, gives us better balance in my mind.

Could do with some help.

I'm trying to setup a measurement that basically takes a players interactions, then divides it by the total number of interactions by the pack up until that point, to give a percentage of interactions made by that player. The idea being that it's then no longer dependent on the type of game as much. So a grindfest like France can give a similar percentage to an open game like the first test, or a kicking test like the 3rd. This will only really be comparable for a single position, say 6, but it can then be used across multiple tests to see how much that individual did from the available work.

The tricky part is working out how much work has happened when the player goes off...

What I've got so far:

Tackles made - I can add up all the defensive rucks, and from that determine how many tackles were made up until that point (more or less), I have an additional column with times, for when a tackle was made in my mind, but the ball offloaded/passed of the floor, with no ruck formed. These stats do not look like they'll match up perfectly with ESPN, but I'm fine with that, I'd rather use my own.

Rucks, offensive and defensive - Easy enough now I record every ruck time. A tackler can still be involved in a defensive ruck, therefore the number of defensive rucks available to a player is not reduced by the number of tackles made. The number of offensive rucks is reduced by the number of times the player was the final carrier (my stats).

Carries - ESPN and I disagree here. However, they'll likely include carries that don't end in a tackle, like a try, pushed into touch, or an offloaded run. This is where it gets hard. Without recording every carry myself (or at least those made after the first sub), which to be fair, I almost do..., I'm left with using my stats of final carrier. Which then doesn't credit people for carries that they offloaded. Seems a little unfair. My current leaning is to go with my carries stats for forwards + offloads for the forwards. It hurts those who come off the pitch early, but unless I start recording when the offloads happen (given their paucity I probably could), I either drop them, and a few players miss out on a few carries, or I add them, and those players get their carries back, and others look "weaker". Feck it, in writing that, I'd rather the players successfully offloading are rewarded, I'll add special cases like tries also. Thoughts though?

Passes - Same as carries, but even tougher, I don't record these at all. However, for the most part I don't think they are particularly important. By passing rather than carrying, you make yourself available to ruck regardless. A number of passes aren't always a case of good work anyway, but rather neutral, and not necessarily important interactions (ignoring the likes of Sincklers lovely pass to Itoje). Given the low numbers of passes, especially in comparison to the number of rucks and tackles etc, I don't think it matters if I simply ignore passes. Thoughts?

Lineouts - I'm recording who goes up (not if they're successful or not, since I don't know if it's their fault). If someone goes up on defensive lineouts, that's also included. I'm not going to include every defensive lineout, since not every one is competed on, and that can be the strategy, rather than a player not being good enough in the lineout. It seemed a bit unfair at first to me, given that lineouts are called to certain players rather than whoever wants to work, but a good lineout operator has developed that skill and that's why he's getting lineouts, therefore it's worth rewarding.

I know it's a lot, but any thoughts would be welcome!

A) Again, wtf is the point of Sinckler

B) As someone who's tried doing this before but never got so far as articles they'd be willing to publish, massive kudos to Raggs.

C) I'm eerie on not counting passes. You're not necessarily able to attend the next ruck if, say, you get wiped out while making the pass, or if the pass ends up in the next player putting in a forward pass.

On the one hand, its a lot of work and you don't need the extra of counting passes. On the other, what's the point of putting in all that work if you're not going to get it right?

*shrugs* I dunno. Not very helpful.

D) Speaking of extra work, I'd love to see Rucks divided into (for want of better terms) Prepared Rucks (i.e. one off carrier, crash ball off of line out) and Broken Play Rucks (i.e. someone's made a break). It would be interesting to see which players were arriving and doing the work when things broken down and which players just leaned on the ruck once they could catch up with it.

E) I think lineouts should be separated from open play. But that's just me.

F) This pack would be utter crap without the locks.