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Tigers Benji Marshall (centre) gets a pass away during the NRL Rugby League, Round 16, Penrith Panthers V Wests Tigers game in Sydney, Saturday, June 24, 2006. AAP Image/Action Photographics/Jonathan Ng
Every time I see commentators or panellists break down the statistics of an NRL game, it reinforces for me why people have a natural mistrust of statistics.
Men who are very knowledgeable about the game refer to such stats as the difference in offloads and hold this nugget of information forth as if were a piece of pure gold.
I’ve built a small database of every team’s stats over the period of 2006 to 2008 and tried to see which stats actually seem to matter. And the award for most glaringly overrated stat is the offload.
The offload has a -0.003 correlation to how much a team outscores its opponents by over the course of the season.
For those without much background in stats, that is so low that there is the distinct possibility that the number of potatoes I buy that week has a stronger correlation to my team’s fortunes than how many offloads they had.
On NRL tactics, a show that should be commended for digging deeper into the structure of play of each team, the team of analysts wowed us with Parramatta’s superiority in offloads.
Yes, in the land of the blue and gold it truly is the year of the Offload. But before thanking which ever deity you follow for bestowing upon your team the gift of the single handed pop up, consider these two pieces of information:
The Eel’s have had 20 or more offloads this year seven times for three wins, three losses and a draw. Hardly a dominant display when they offload the ball alot.
They’ve also had more offloads than their opponent for, I think, fifteen times this season for only five wins, nine losses and one draw.
Once again, hardly an indicator of success.
What this tells me is that the number of off-loads the Eels have is a meaningless stat in trying to tell us why they are playing so well. Kind of like it is a meaningless stat for the past three years.
Now in fairness to the NRL tactics crew, they may not actually be aware of what constitutes an offload, as two examples they highlighted during the show were actually just draw and pass moves.
Maybe next week they can pick out one or two of my other favourite meaningless stats to wow us with.
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