Waratahs face losing out in a battle of snakes and ladders

I had an awkward moment this morning. Idly fiddling with some random stats over a coffee, I had the awful realisation that if the Waratahs lose this weekend, then it is very likely that their season is over – at least in terms of defending their title.

If that seems like a needlessly hysterical statement, let me tell you, I checked it twice.

The thing that jumped out at me was this. While Super Rugby might seem like it is about wins and bonus points and calculations, in reality it is much simpler than that. It’s about losses. The competition isn’t a group fighting to climb the ladders – it’s a whole lot of teams trying to avoid the snakes.

The stats bear out the story. Since the advent of the conference system in 2011 there have been six finals spots up for grabs each year, so a total of twenty four. In that time only one team has ever made the finals with more than six losses, and that is the Highlanders in 2014 with eight.

Every other finals team had six losses or less, so clearly the benchmark for being certain of making the finals is six losses. So, stat A – six losses to make the finals.

In practice, it means that with 18 rounds in this season (two byes), a team can afford to lose one game every 2.6 rounds and still probably make the finals.

Now that’s just to make the finals. To be certain of finishing on top of their conference, they would need to do much better than that. Previous conference winners tell us that they’d have to limit the damage even further to only four losses for the season – one every 4 rounds.

As you can see, a championship winning team hardly ever loses. Four losses or less for the year virtually guarantees you will win your conference and have a shot at the title. Stat B – every one of the four ‘modern’ champions have lost four matches or less.

What about bonus points? In most cases, they don’t appear to make a massive difference except when teams are evenly matched on points and need to be split. When those teams are even on four or five losses, all the bonus point does is sort them out between themselves – it is having more losses that pushes other teams back down the table.

Also, while there are a lot of teams jostling around on six or seven losses, there are very few on four or five losses. Limiting the damage lifts you out of the snakepit.

About this time you will be saying ‘Aww c’mon. Losses are just the flipside of wins – all this talk of losses is just semantics’.

Perhaps. I’m no statistician. But looking at the tables for the last three years shows something else which bears out the point. This is that there is a slight decrease in total number of wins for the top six finalists, and a slight increase in wins for the bottom four teams. The wins are being more evenly spread across the competition, ideally because the bottom teams are getting stronger.

This means there are more banana skins – more potential losses – and when stats clearly and unequivocally show that you need four losses or less to win the comp, potential losses are a problem.

The good news for some teams is that they face less banana-skins than others. The Reds, for instance, don’t play the Blues or the Stormers in the regular rounds – two teams that on current form would beat them. For their part the Brumbies are also fortunate, not playing the Hurricanes or the Sharks.

This is where the Waratahs could steal back a tiny advantage in that they avoid both the Bulls and the Chiefs. The Bulls in Pretoria are a nightmare assignment for any visiting team, and the double champion Chiefs look like they will be serious contenders in 2015, so a couple of potential losses are avoided for Tahs fans.

But before they start breathing a sigh of relief over that, the Tahs have to get over a hot Rebels outfit. The Rebels will be brimming with confidence at home after an away win over the Crusaders and have had two more days recovery than the Waratahs.

It’s an ugly situation, because should the Waratahs stumble at this hurdle, they leave themselves with two impossible options. Either they get through the final 16 rounds (14 matches) of the competition with only two further losses, or they become the first team to ever win the competition without first winning their conference. Neither are particularly likely.

A few losses damage a team more than a long string of wins lifts them up. If the Waratahs lose their first two in a row, they will need to win the next eight or so games straight to get back into contention.

Because why? Because of maths. A championship aspirant starts the season being able to give away one loss from every 4 games to win their conference and be in the top three finalists.

Lose your first game, and you suddenly can only give away one loss every 5.3 games. Lose your first two games in a row and suddenly you only have one loss in hand for every seven games to win your conference – not where you want to be when you’re defending a title.

The Waratahs may have won eight straight en route to the title last year, but doing it under pressure off the back of two consecutive losses to start their season would be a notable feat.

Let’s hope the Rebels don’t force them to take up the challenge.