The movie Moneyball tells the story of how the management of the Oakland Athletics baseball team used a matrix of statistics to transform their organisation from perennial losers into big time winners.
Since the release of Moneyball, I have been condemned to explain to several sets of bean counters that although some statistics in rugby are exceptionally important, when the concept behind Moneyball is applied to rugby, there is only one statistically guaranteed outcome: total failure.
From smart rugby balls to wearable tracking devices, over the past decade a wave of technology has produced an ocean of statistics. Unquestionably, these have provided many important statistics that demand our respect.
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The most important are often the simplest. Last season in Super Rugby, the URC, the English Premiership and the Top 14, the teams with the best defensive record finished on top of the league in every
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