France, England and New Zealand all lost to South Africa in the knockouts despite in some cases comfortably outperforming them on xPIreland were nearly seven points better than the All Blacks during their quarter-final, according to Opta, but still lost by four. Photograph: Inpho/Billy Stickland, France, England, Fiji and the All Blacks all have in common? A new advanced analytics tool, one that will sicken fans of those countries, has emerged as a uniting force.
“Understanding that you have a high xP but are not hitting it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re attacking badly, the other team is just defending really well. Just like in football, not matching a high xG can mean the goalkeeper is having a really good game.”France, England and New Zealand all lost to South Africa in the knockouts despite in some cases comfortably outperforming them on xP. Praise of the Springboks’ defence has been widespread across both of their back-to-back World Cup triumphs.
“The bigger thing is the historical side of it. If a team is historically poor or strong in these areas then we assume there will be some sort of an effect. We would expect a good scrummaging team is going to stay consistent as a good scrummaging team.” “We are planning to, because we realise how important that is to their game plan,” says Kane. “Comparing how differently the two of them play on the field, it’s like chalk and cheese.”
Expected points can go even further. Opta is currently working on a way of calculating the xP contributed by each individual player. They’re not ready to release that yet. Recruitment appears to be where Chi’s metric has the most untapped value. It is potentially rugby’s answer to the Moneyball phenomenon, one of finding previously unseen value in a player.