Stats for the Zurich Serial Anoraks

By Saint Sherlock
May 27 2002

The Premiership season is over. The excitement, the triumphs, the disappointments and the heartaches are put to rest. It’s the perfect time for those of us who revel in the minutiae and the mysteries to conduct our post mortems on the season. We are the forensic scientists.

Home and Away

No need to set out the final table. We have studied that thoroughly throughout the season. Instead, lets break it down into its components and see how different the tables look, based on games played at home, and games played away.

The numbers under Actual Position show the final Zurich Premiership placings.

We know that Leicester and Gloucester are well nigh invincible at home, and a late run of results pulled Sale up the table. But the Mad Stad is hardly a fortress for London Irish.

If only Gloucester could reproduce their home form when they travel, they might mount a strong challenge to Leicester.

Best travellers are Sale, with 44% of their points coming from away games. They are followed by Northampton with 41%.

Travel sickness struck Bath this season, with only 6% of their points earned away from home. Next worst were Leeds at 21%. But Newcastle are also reluctant to hit the road, with 70% of their points coming at home.

Bonus Points

Do they make a big difference? No, not at all. Strip out the bonus points and the table looks much the same as it did before.

This time, lets look at who earned the most bonus points.

Credit to Bristol, who kept the bonus points coming right through the season.

Points Scored and Conceded

Now we’ll take a look at the average points scored and conceded per game

This should be required reading for every Coach.

Meanest defences are in the East Midlands, where Leicester and Northampton rule. But the Tigers add potent point scoring to their miserly defence. They show a points difference of two converted tries a game.

At the other end, Saracens and Leeds leak scores like rusty old tramp steamers, whilst Bath’s offence has forgotten what the try line looks like.

Tries Scored and Conceded

Who are the teams that score the tries? And whose defences are the toughest to batter down? Here’s the average number of tries scored and conceded per game.

Leicester’s attack means that they are nudging a bonus point every game, whilst conceding less than a try on average. If it’s close games that thrill you, get a season ticket at Newcastle, where it is nip and tuck every match.

But probe into these statistics and compare them with the points table above and there is much to mystify us. When it comes to points conceded, Saracens are a sieve. They give away eight more points than Harlequins on average.

Now check the tries conceded. This time it’s Quins who are the rusty buckets, at almost a try a game worse than Saracens. So it’s out with the tackle bags at The Stoop (and the Rec). But Buck Shelford had better staunch those penalties being given away at Vicarage Road.

Now we know who the prolific try scorers are, we can take a look at each team to see what percentage of their total points scored come exclusively from tries.

During the season, 560 tries were scored. Sale, Leicester and Gloucester were responsible for 37% of them. Of all the tries allowed, Leicester only conceded 3% and the next tightest try line defence was Northampton’s, conceding only 6% of the total.

Who Scores The Tries?

Traditionally, it was the task of the forwards to do the donkeywork, whilst the backs ran in the tries. So let’s look at the percentage of tries scored by the forwards and the backs.

At the top of this chart, we find the teams with the flying three-quarter lines. At the bottom of the chart, we see who has the powerhouse packs. The average is 32% by the forwards and 68% by the backs

Where are these tries scored? 57% of them are scored at home and 43% are scored away. The top team, Leicester, are exactly 50/50. The top homeboys are Harlequins, scoring 72% of their tries at the Stoop, followed by Gloucester and Newcastle with 64% at home.

Surprisingly, two teams, Leeds and Wasps have managed to score less tries at home than they have scored away.

With the onset of the squad system, and the increased mobility of forwards, we are seeing that many more players are getting their names on the list of try-scorers. On average, 19 different players touched down for each team during the course of the season.

If you enjoy scoring tries, go play for London Irish. There were 25 different names on their score sheet this season, including 14 different forwards. Bristol and Gloucester were next with 23 each. At Bath, Newcastle and Harlequins, only 15 players got on the try list.

And here are the men who get the most tries:

This is an outstanding performance by Scarborough, so potent with one of the less prolific teams.

And a phenomenal performance by Junior Paramore with 9 tries. To put this in perspective, Bath’s forwards only managed 5 tries between them.

The Magic Boots

Converting tries for the two extra points is what often brings a close victory; so let’s see who has the best conversion rates.

Anything over 70% is tremendous, but what a performance by Alex King, Braam van Straaten and Jonny Wilkinson.

And food for thought at Bath; they not only score less tries than anyone else, but also they fail to convert more than half of them!

Let’s look at penalties next. Here’s a table of teams who have kicked the most penalties. Remember I said "kicked", not "awarded". But I guess it is probably a good indicator of the number of penalties awarded.

This chart looks very different from last year, when Northampton and Leicester reigned supreme. Now, London Irish are streets ahead of the rest and should think twice before ever complaining about referees!

Finally, let’s take a look at the drop goal specialists.

Monsieur Mercier and Alex King are the drop goal princes. Between them, they have earned their clubs 69 points. It might be something for Charlie Hodgson and Paul Grayson to work on over the summer.

Earning Their Wages

Finally, let’s meet the real heroes. These are the players who, through their total points-scoring feats, both kicks and tries, make the biggest contribution to their teams. Here we see their individual percentage contribution to their team’s total points.

Honourable mentions too, for Contepomi of Bristol and van Straaten of Leeds.

Well, forensic freaks, that just about wraps up the season. Have a wonderful summer and I’ll see you all back in the laboratory next season, for more forensic science.