If you want to improve things get your coaching staff to understand that Super Rugby is not just about forwards battering the hell out each other and that continually kicking away posession is not a good idea.

As for the Waratahs, well, it is unfortunate and perhaps even cruel that they went 9-4 and didn’t make it BUT they were the architects of their own destiny. Had they not spent games 2 through 10 (ex-the Blues) playing a bland, uninspiring (ex-defence), indecisive style of footy they would have cantered into the finals. Basic skills went missing. With the four point for-and-against differential in mind it may be somewhat ironic to look back at the Crusaders ‘home’ game that they butchered. In isolation Sam Norton-Knight’s woeful behind-the-man pass to an unmarked Lachie Turner for what would / could have meant a semi-final spot effectively summed up their season – a glaring opportunity missed. The Waratahs failed to get themselves into the finals. It had nothing to do with the structure of the bonus point system.

Sore losers springs to mind – & yes I’m coming on a bit strong but I’ve been reading this rubbish all week. For the Waratah supporters who’re complaining – toughen up princess !

“I thought there were some ignorant people in other blogs but you certainly rank uo there with them.”

Right back at you mate! Again the post is about aflawed system, NOT ABOUT THE TAHS!! THEY WERE JUST USED TO PUBLICISE IT!!! I agree that the teams you have mentioned do not deserve to be in the finals under the system in play. I disagree that your precious and soon to be beaten kiwi teams would have wiped the floor with them as you put it.

At the end of the day, you need a scoring system that is simple and to the point. Sure the current one is not the most accurate, but fans do not want to have to open up an excel spreadsheet to work out which team is leading week in and week out. Fans have enough trouble with the refs. Lets worry about fixing the reffing first.

The Tahs were not cheated, they failed to make the finals under the same rules as everyone else was playing. They blew it against the lions.

Thanks for that last post (and the previous ones). It explains the analysis you used in your research. One query.

I don’t know how all of the matches in the S14 progressed to their final scoreline. So did the team that went ahead first in the meatch, remain ahead? Or was there a context where the lead was exchanged one or more times? And in a tight game, where a team lost by seven points or less, did they lose, because they were overtaken by a final score? I ask this because in your writing and your posts, you posit the losing team as being in the position of playing catch-up, when in reality this might not be the case.

And one final request, since other leagues operate on the same bonus point system e.g. Magners League, could your analysis/methodology be simply be applied to the final table, or would it need some tweaking to take account of other factors?

Oh I don’t know. If there is one group of academics nowadays whose analyses ought to be taken with a large dose of salt, it’s economists. They like to think of themselves as scientists, but they’re not. It’s partly the fairy stories they’ve been teaching for the last 30 or 40 years (market equilibrium, rational actors, the focus on inflation rather than debt, et al) that have landed us in the GFC.

Present company excepted of course Niven! I do think your system warrants consideration. It does seem silly for teams to advance with less wins than others.

To use an example, predictions based on a model where, in each contest, the team with the best mascot is awarded a bonus are likely to be less accurate than predictions based on a model where a bonus is awarded to the team that scores the most tries. So, we would conclude that awarding a bonus to the team with the best mascot is not good at revealing strong teams.

The analysis works at finer level than the example above. Specifically, we compare predictions when a narrow-loss bonus is awarded for, say, losing by seven or fewer points to predictions when a bonus is awarded for losing by, say, six or fewer points. If predictions under the six-or-fewer bonus are more accurate than predictions using a seven-or-fewer bonus, we conclude that a bonus for losing by six or fewer points is better at revealing strong teams than a bonus for losing by seven or fewer points. By varying the bonus threshold and making multiple comparisons, the analysis is able to determine the narrow-loss bonus that is best at revealing strong teams.

I wonder if you ever think or read anything before you fly off the handle with your rants and your obvious disdain towards me. Your posts are nothing but unsubstantiated drivel towards me and once again you try to twist the facts to suit your argument and somehow turn me out to be a bad person.

Everytbing I put in that first post is valid and has to do with the subject. I’m trying to establish a rationale for why people like you and the Professor think your way his way is the right way and only way?

Something it seems you fail to do.
Also I see other posters have similar views and also have questioned the Professor yet you don’t seem to be taking them to task. Please explain. Or are you just hell bent on trying to discredit anything I say and paint me out to be an Aussie basher?
I thought there were some ignorant people in other blogs but you certainly rank uo there with them.

I meant merit, not impact.

There have always been blowout scores in Super rugby. This dates back to the first season.

Random example — Round 3, 1996

Brumbies/Blues 40-34
Hurricanes/Transvaal 32-16
Highlanders/Western Province 52-25
Northern Transvaal/Waratahs 32-29
Reds/Crusaders 52-16
Natal/Chiefs 63-25

Most of the other comments have wandered off in other directions.

My thoughts exactly. The research here is not wrong, but it’s irrelevant because the purpose of having bonus points is not to reflect teams’ strengths in the final order – otherwise there would be a fine argument for scrapping bonus points altogether. The four try bonus point rule encourages teams to continue to attempt to score tries, even when they’re losing or have the game in the bag, and that is the point. I don’t know whether or not it’s been fully effective, but it does please me to have the teams that score lots of tries rewarded so I’m all in favour of keeping the rule.

The seven point margin was also chosen for other reasons than ordering teams by their strengths at the competition’s end. All teams strive to win, but when the possibility of winning looks like it’s slipping away it’s desirable IMHO to offer some benefit in continuing to struggle. The reason why seven points looks to be the correct value is that, in the situation where the losing team is more than seven points but less than fifteen points adrift of the winning team, and scoring twice in the time remaining is becoming an impossibility, there is something still left to strive for (most notably even after the siren has sounded). If the margin was five then we would be giving teams who are over five points and under thirteen adrift instead something to continue to play for – but teams who are a mere six or seven points adrift are within a converted try of a draw anyway so simply don’t need that encouragement! Therefore all that reducing the margin to five would do for the competition would be to remove a reason to continue striving for teams that were thirteen and fourteen points shy of their competitors, thereby reducing the impact of keeping the bonus point at all.

One related issue I’d like to mention is that teams that draw are actually disadvantaged over those that don’t. A team that beats another by a single point gets four points (plus a four try bonus if applicable), and the loser gets one (plus a four try bonus if applicable), for a base total of five points to share between the two teams. However a draw ensures that each team gets two points (plus four try bonuses if applicable) for a base total of four between the two teams. Basically that means a team that drew twice during the competition would end up a point behind another team that had a narrow win and a narrow loss instead, all other things being equal. For this reason it seems to me that 2.5 points would be a fairer result. There isn’t any reason why we couldn’t award half points if we wanted to is there? If we had done this in this competition the Crusaders would have scraped over the Tahs by a half a point and points differentials would not have needed to be considered. OTOH it’s not all about fairness and perhaps we do want to slightly penalise teams that draw! I’m interested in hearing others’ views on this.

Finally, and while on the subject of draws, a lot has been made of the fact that the Tahs got one more win than the Saders and that perhaps they are more deserving of a semi-final place because of it. I think it’s worth remembering that that difference was only one point in the Saders/Force game. The bottom line is that their results were very very close and the Saders took the split above the Tahs only by a hair, with the extra bonus points they won offsetting that sole draw. Obviously you Tahs fans wanted the Tahs to win and were unlucky this time, but don’t you also want them to play more attacking rugby (BP1) and put up a good fight even when they lose (BP2)? Just my 2c.

In that Reds/Chiefs game, the Reds scored two first half tries. At that time, the score was 19-12. The Chiefs then rattled off 18 points to take a 37-12 lead into half time. The Reds effectively *won* the second half, 14-13. They outscored the Chiefs by two tries to one. The game may have been over by half time, but there’s still 40 minutes to play

The Waratahs of all teams should know how important the second 40 minutes are, because it was their second half against the Lions that cost them a spot in the semis.

It’s a bad example if you ask me. It’s not like the Reds scored three late tries in the final quarter.