Close game stats - interesting

[2041]

Interesting interpretation of stats. I am still great believer in most of the time you make your own good luck and good sides can use bad luck and turn it into a positive. Also looking at one year to another so many things change like coaches and players.

Anyway you put a hell of a lot of work into your post and maybe you are onto something

Not to start a fight, but I think it's an interesting discussion…

The thing is, the data doesn't back up the idea that teams make their own luck - because there simply isn't a team that consistently outperforms in close games. Granted, what I have is a small sample size - three seasons of data - but the overall results are pretty close to random.

For instance, I bet you that if you asked the average NRL fan to name a team that is really good at winning close games, more often than not they'd guess the Storm. They'd remember Cronk and Smith field goals, the after the siren try against the Dragons last season, and the general air of a well-drilled team that 'knows how to get over the line' or whatever. And yet, if you look at the Storm over three seasons they have barely won more than they've lost in close games. They outperformed this season, but they don't do so consistently.

Is it true that the Storm are a very good side that rode a relatively lucky season in close games to the minor premiership, or is their record in close games this season something they have been able to do themselves to improve on their 2015 record? I'd say almost certainly the former. If you look at other recent top-two sides, actually they don't tend to have especially good records in close games. In both 2014 and 2015, the Roosters came top but actually lost one more close game than they won. The Broncos came second last year with a 2-2 record in close games, while Manly came second in 2014 with a (good/lucky) 6-2 close game outcome.

Granted, none of these teams won the grand final: the Cowboys won last year after a 7-2 record in close games BUT Souths won in 2014 after going 1-5 in close games during the season.

All this tends to support the view that once you get a game to +/- six points either way it is more or less a lottery which team wins. And the useful takeout for, say, punters is that if a team does especially well or badly in close games in a season the likelihood is they won't be able to repeat it the following year.

 

[Magpie_Magic]

Trouble for us is we lost many by wide margins.

Didn't win any by wide margins.

All things are not equal that's why as a betting man or Stockmarket man discretion is important.

Teams consistently winning close ones often have a good goal kicker and FG kicker.

We don't.

East side lost many this year that were close no coincidence they lost Maloney.

 

[Pokies]

Really interesting research 2041, thanks for sharing.

 

[2041]

Trouble for us is we lost many by wide margins.

Didn't win any by wide margins.

All things are not equal that's why as a betting man or Stockmarket man discretion is important.

Teams consistently winning close ones often have a good goal kicker and FG kicker.

We don't.

East side lost many this year that were close no coincidence they lost Maloney.

The idea behind the theory is that if you take a team's comfortable wins and comfortable defeats, that's probably more or less it's true talent level - because it 'should' win about as many close ones as it loses. So the fact that the Tigers have been pumped a few times doesn't really matter in this context - we already know that they were a relatively bad team in 2016 because they came 9th with a bad for and against. All this analysis is trying to show is which teams got *relatively* lucky or unlucky. So see the comments on the Knights: they were a dreadful team, of course, but they also probably got a bit unluchy. Maybe their true talent level was of a team that won three games - hardly a massive ray of sunshine.

There are plenty of other factors at play, which this theory doesn't try to account for. For instance, If a team loses 60-0 twice and wins 10-0 twice, it might be a worse team than its ladder position in a way that results in close games don't show. With the Tigers, I'd be tempted to think that playing a relatively weak schedule more than offsets the fact that they were slightly unlucky in close games. As I say, close game luck doesn't account for everything.

Also, I'm just not sure you're right about kickers, for two reasons:
- A team with a bad kicker playing a team with a good kicker is just as likely to lose by eight instead of six points as it is to turn a draw into a two point defeat. Goal kicking isn't functionally any different from, say, having a winger who is good at catching high balls: everything else being equal, having players who are good at tasks in the game will make a team score more points, but it won't make them more likely to win games that are already close - because team B's amazing fullback or dynamic half has as much chance of settling the game as team A's great kicker or succession of favourable ref decisions.
- There simply isn't any sign that any team is, as you put it, "consistently winning close ones". As I said in a previous post, the team that is always held up to be the best in golden point situations is the Storm, yet the Storm's three-year record in close games is barely better than average (and was helped by a single very good season in 2016).

My guess is that having a good field goal unit is probably a very small real factor that improves some teams' record in close games. This is because field goal kicking is a skill that largely only gets used in close games - unlike normal goal kicking, which gets used all the time. So if a team is good at setting up for and converting field goals this will give it a specific edge in very close games that doesn't apply to other skills, which get used throughout close and not close games alike.

 

[TCL]

I wonder what it would look like for state of origin??