Get the stats story: Women's Six Nations and your team
Sam Larner is back and brings us some tips of what to look out for in the upcoming Women's Six Nations, plus some tips on using data in your grassroots team.
Sam Larner, analyst, coach, author and journalist, is back ahead of the Women’s Six Nations to highlight what stats to look out for. Sam also discusses what stats grassroots coaches might want to track and how:
The Women’s Six Nations
Coming off the back of probably the best World Cup ever and a sensational men’s Six Nations, I am really excited to see the crowd take this tournament to their hearts.
England are the overwhelming favourites but I think the other five nations will have competitive matches against one another and I’m not ruling out someone pushing England close either.
Overall though, the women’s game is in healthy shape and I can’t wait to see it take another step forward and for new stars to be born.
Stats to look out when watching matches
The one stat I pay most attention to is 22 entries - both total entries and points per entry. This is similar to shots on target in football. It shows how many opportunities you had and what did you do with those opportunities.
Both parts of this stat matter; total entries and points per entry. Look for teams to have twelve or more entries in a match and 3pts or more per entry. It’s very hard to win when you score a low number on either.
However, sometimes teams can win with a very high number of points per entry but that’s generally not sustainable for a long period of time, like a tournament. If you want to take it one step further, look for the difference in entries between one team and their opponent.
For example, if you have 10 entries and your opponent has just 5 then you 22-entries difference is +5. The bigger the difference in your favour, the more likely you are to win.
The key stats for each team will depend on what they want to achieve from their game plan.
In recent years, kick metres have been a big measure of success. In general, if you kick for more metres than your opponent then you have a higher chance of winning. For some coaches that will be a key stat.
Others will be more interested in what they do with lineout possessions. That starts with the lineout win % but can extend to success from lineout attacks; do you gain metres from your attack?
Other teams might want to limit their mistakes and so they would have a focus on turnovers conceded or error count. Ultimately, as a coach, you need to decide how you want to play and then what stats are illuminating.
It’s also important to understand the bigger picture and make sure what you are measuring actually matters when it comes to winning matches.
It can be easy to assume that a stat tells you anything about how likely you are to achieve a victory, but that’s not always the case and sometimes what you think matters just doesn’t.
The key Six Nations stats
Although possession isn’t useful as a metric for telling us which time will, or should, win it does tell us what the game looked like. Often a team like England will have a relatively low possession as they can score quickly. Whereas their opposition might go through multiple phases and get nowhere.
That will be shown in their possession stat. Another stat like this is offloads which tell us how much risk a team has been willing to take on. Stats like these should match what you saw on the pitch and shouldn’t be all that surprising.
From England’s perspective, their kicking stats can be key. They are unique in how often and how far they kick. That allows them to play fair from their line and then try and turn their opponent’s over.
That is unique to England but other teams are trying to move towards that direction with mixed success. Another area where teams will try and copy what England have done well is the set-piece.
A lot of England’s success has been built on a relentless lineout and scrum. These are great skills to be good at because if you gain the advantage you can win penalties and if you win penalties you can advance down the pitch without risk.
A team like Ireland want to run at their opponent’s and so expect to see them performing well when looking at metres made, defenders beaten, and clean breaks.
Ultimately though, the keys will be minimising the mistakes for everyone bar England if they’re going to run the World Champions close.
Collecting data as a grassroots coach
As a grassroots team, it’s important to consider two things; can you measure it and can you fix it?
For example, you might want to see how far your players run in a match. That is a helpful thing to know but unfortunately you’re not going to be able to measure it.
Equally, it’s quite easy to measure how many kicks your team makes but what would you do with that information? I would encourage you to think where you might have room for improvement and then collect data about that.
For example, maybe you worry how effective your attempts to turn the ball over are. Do you think you give away more penalties than turnovers you get? If so, you can measure that. How many times does your team go for the turnover, how many times do they win the turnover, how many times do they give away a penalty?
Make sure you collect a few games worth of data before you make any drastic changes to your approach.
Always be aware of what you can control and what matters and don’t try and collect everything all at once.
It is easier to collect data if you film your games. But most grassroots teams don’t. In that case, just use a pen and paper. Decide what you want to collect and prepare to collect it in advance.
This doesn’t need to be super complicated. For example, if you want to collect your 22-entries then you will want to collect just the total number in some part of the page then in a different part of the page collect the outcome.
That could be as simple as positive or negative or you could do; Try, Pen Won, Pen Conceded, Turnover, Other. That gives you more information but always link it back to what you will actually do with that extra data. If you just find it interesting, it might be better to just collect the most basic information.
I wrote a book calling Attacking the Space. It’s the book that I wish existed when I was a young rugby obsessed kid. I love the sport of rugby and it brings millions of fans in for World Cups, Six Nations, and Lions tours.
Fans love the surface of the game; the big hits, the fancy footwork, the big names but if you look below the surface it’s even more attractive.
Attacking the Space will take you beneath the surface and show you what is actually happening in the game.
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