Ireland Team Talk/Gossip/Rumour Thread IV

10-02-2015 11:30AM

total former wrote: »

Oh yeah? What if Kearney, Jones, Henshaw, Payne, Zebo and Bowe all get injured? Who plays full-back then? Hah?

Murray played there at AIL :rolleyes: Do you even watch Rugby?

awec · 10-02-2015 11:32AM

Micky Dolenz wrote: »

What boils my piss is pointless uncontested box kicks to counter attacking teams. I'm from the school of, if we have the ball they can't score.

Thankfully Ireland have moved on from aimless kicking, by and large.

We are still prone to stupid and pointless box kicks.

total former · 10-02-2015 11:38AM

Deleted User wrote: »

Murray played there at AIL :rolleyes: Do you even watch Rugby?

I think we should pick Boss ahead of Murray given his Super rugby experience at full-back. Paul Marshall to bench for his ability to cover the wing.

Micky Dolenz · 10-02-2015 11:53AM

awec wrote: »

We are still prone to stupid and pointless box kicks.

True, but remember TOL. Every kick drove me mental, for country and province. Something to look forward to next season

.ak · 10-02-2015 12:00PM

awec wrote: »

We are still prone to stupid and pointless box kicks.

Are we? Only one I thought was poor was Boss's one, and we still won that.

Micky Dolenz · 10-02-2015 12:05PM

.ak wrote: »

Are we? Only one I thought was poor was Boss's one, and we still won that.

Under Joe's watch, nearly all box kicks are weighted to be contested.

b.gud · 10-02-2015 12:08PM

Another fantastic article today by Murray Kinsella which is relevant to the conversation about kicking

http://www.the42.ie/ireland-six-nations-game-plan-analysis-1929325-Feb2015/

aimee1 · 10-02-2015 01:23PM

total former wrote: »

Oh yeah? What if Kearney, Jones, Henshaw, Payne, Zebo and Bowe all get injured? Who plays full-back then? Hah?

POM

10-02-2015 01:44PM

b.gud wrote: »

Another fantastic article today by Murray Kinsella which is relevant to the conversation about kicking

http://www.the42.ie/ireland-six-nations-game-plan-analysis-1929325-Feb2015/

There is some decent stuff there below a thick layer of bad science.

Consider two teams.
Team 1 kicks the ball every second opportunity they have (50%)
Team 2 kicks the ball one in ten times (10%)

After the game, Team 1 has kicked 22 times, Team 2 has kicked 21 times.
What can we infer from those raw numbers?
What could we infer from them without the previous information?

Ireland actually kicked the ball a pretty tiny percentage of the time compared to the rest of the competition this weekend.

Kicks Passes Runs Possessions K% p% R%
Wales 32 121 109 262 12% 46% 42%
France 23 94 84 201 11% 47% 42%
England 32 118 132 282 11% 42% 47%
Scotland 26 117 102 245 11% 48% 42%
Ireland 28 192 158 378 7% 51% 42%
Italy 15 144 110 269 6% 54% 41%

Kinsella shouldn't be reading the raw "kick number" as anything at all, and it's certainly wrong to present any stats on it. Disappointing, as usually he's spot on.

irishbucsfan · 10-02-2015 01:55PM

Agreed with that. The decision to kick is based on triggers which are almost always based on field position, phase count and what happened on the previous phase. I'd be much more interested in an analysis of the game state during each of our kicks.

10-02-2015 01:57PM

irishbucsfan wrote: »

Agreed with that. The decision to kick is based on triggers which are almost always based on field position, phase count and what happened on the previous phase. I'd be much more interested in an analysis of the game state during each of our kicks.

€€€€ please

MJohnston · 10-02-2015 02:02PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Kinsella shouldn't be reading the raw "kick number" as anything at all, and it's certainly wrong to present any stats on it. Disappointing, as usually he's spot on.

In fairness, he says exactly that:

"The real problem with crude data like those above, and any statistics used to suggest kicking or anything else as an indicator of success, is that they simply aren’t qualitative in any way. What do these numbers actually look like on the pitch?
Just because successful teams in the modern game, such as the All Blacks, kick the ball regularly does’t mean every team should go out and begin to kick the ball whenever possible. It’s about kicking intelligently and chasing the kick expertly."

10-02-2015 02:07PM

MJohnston wrote: »

In fairness, he says exactly that:

"The real problem with crude data like those above, and any statistics used to suggest kicking or anything else as an indicator of success, is that they simply aren’t qualitative in any way. What do these numbers actually look like on the pitch?
Just because successful teams in the modern game, such as the All Blacks, kick the ball regularly does’t mean every team should go out and begin to kick the ball whenever possible. It’s about kicking intelligently and chasing the kick expertly."

Yes, I noticed that, but he's made tenuous links to spurious correlations all over the article. He's done exactly what he's warning people not to, by invention or otherwise.

It's bad practice, and like I said, disappointing from him because he's usually spot on.

MJohnston · 10-02-2015 02:11PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Yes, I noticed that, but he's made tenuous links to spurious correlations all over the article. He's done exactly what he's warning people not to, by invention or otherwise.

It's bad practice, and like I said, disappointing from him because he's usually spot on.

I think you're being a bit overcautious tbh - the main thing I took from his quoting the statistics is that (a) kicking isn't necessarily bad and (b) what makes or breaks it is the follow-up. I never got the sense that he was suggesting a correlation between amount of kicks and winning games.

rrpc · 10-02-2015 02:15PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Yes, I noticed that, but he's made tenuous links to spurious correlations all over the article. He's done exactly what he's warning people not to, by invention or otherwise.

It's bad practice, and like I said, disappointing from him because he's usually spot on.

Not sure what you're referring to here. The bulk of his article deals with very specific plays and in great detail. I'm not seeing the tenuous links.

total former · 10-02-2015 02:21PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Yes, I noticed that, but he's made tenuous links to spurious correlations all over the article. He's done exactly what he's warning people not to, by invention or otherwise.

It's bad practice, and like I said, disappointing from him because he's usually spot on.

I think what Kinsella has tried to do is to take the raw stats and make sense of them by giving examples of where kicking benefited Ireland on Saturday.

Unfortunately, by only taking a small sample of them, he's just reinforced the point that you can't really read anything into it.

But then I don't like Kinsella's articles; I think he confuses minute detail with insight and there is generally nothing too revelatory in them.

10-02-2015 02:22PM

rrpc wrote: »

Not sure what you're referring to here. The bulk of his article deals with very specific plays and in great detail. I'm not seeing the tenuous links.

Murray Kinsella wrote:

Ireland were indeed top of the table in terms of kicking the ball, but they were also top of the actual table as champions. Many of you will have noticed already that the kicking stats above also tell us exactly the finishing position of each team in the 2014 standings.

Italy kicked the least and finished bottom, Scotland kicked the second least and were second from bottom, France kicked the third least and were third from bottom, and so on.

That's the exact paragraph that spurred me into debunking it. 'All over the article' was exaggeration, but that there paragraph is a prime example of bad data science.

10-02-2015 02:29PM

That's an horrific correlation

MJohnston · 10-02-2015 02:35PM

Ah come on now, the very next paragraph is this:

It is worth pointing out that if you delve back even as recently as the 2013 championship – as we did – it’s possible to disprove Gerrard’s point. France kicked the most of anyone in that Six Nations [145 times] and finished bottom of the real table.

10-02-2015 02:38PM

I admit that it's hyper critical, but I hold Kinsella to a high standard.

I expect him to keep bad science out of his articles.

rrpc · 10-02-2015 02:40PM

Deleted User wrote: »

That's the exact paragraph that spurred me into debunking it. 'All over the article' was exaggeration, but that there paragraph is a prime example of bad data science.

To be fair to him, he's commenting on work done by another journalist and he goes on to say that the stats are meaningless without seeing what actually happened on the pitch. It merely serves as an introduction.

He then goes on to look at some of the kicks and show how effective they were. It's a useful article because there were a lot of complaints on here about Ireland's kicking when by and large it was quite successfull.

10-02-2015 02:42PM

rrpc wrote: »

To be fair to him, he's commenting on work done by another journalist and he goes on to say that the stats are meaningless without seeing what actually happened on the pitch. It merely serves as an introduction.

He then goes on to look at some of the kicks and show how effective they were. It's a useful article because there were a lot of complaints on here about Ireland's kicking when by and large it was quite successfull.

"The stats" aren't meaningless.

The stats he chose to examine weren't significant or relevant. That's an important subtle difference.

The article was good (which I credited in my original post) save for the bad science (which I debunked and explained in my original post).
Again, maybe others feel it's nit picking, but personally, I don't like bad science creeping into analytics and reserve the right to debunk/call bull**** when it needs doing. That's how science works.

rrpc · 10-02-2015 02:47PM

Deleted User wrote: »

"The stats" aren't meaningless.

The stats he chose to examine weren't significant or relevant. That's an important subtle difference.

Let me rephrase it so...

The conclusions drawn from the stats can't be sustained because the data is too crude.

Would that be less offensive to your statistical sensibilities sir?

Clearlier · 10-02-2015 02:49PM

Deleted User wrote: »

"The stats" aren't meaningless.

The stats he chose to examine weren't significant or relevant. That's an important subtle difference.

The article was good (which I credited in my original post) save for the bad science (which I debunked and explained in my original post). Again, maybe others feel it's nit picking, but personally, I don't like bad science creeping into analytics and reserve the right to debunk/call bull**** when it needs doing. That's how science works.

I completely agree with your analysis. I think that the article is an example of journalism wanting a good story getting in the way of science wanting an accurate one. The amount of kicking = position in the table correlation was just too juicy to turn down I think.

If he had critiqued it even a little further perhaps making the point that you made about % of posession kicking being a more relevant/interesting stat then I think that it would have been a good intro. by way of illustrating the aphorism regarding 'lies, damned lies and statistics'.

jacothelad · 10-02-2015 02:53PM

total former wrote: »

Oh yeah? What if Kearney, Jones, Henshaw, Payne, Zebo and Bowe all get injured? Who plays full-back then? Hah?

Are Earls, Gilroy, Fitzgerald, Hurley, Leader and Dave Kearney also injured?

accidentprone1 · 10-02-2015 03:34PM

jacothelad wrote: »

Are Earls, Gilroy, Fitzgerald, Hurley, Leader and Dave Kearney also injured?

In that case, sup?

Utah_Saint · 10-02-2015 03:56PM

Former Ireland and Lions player Stephen Ferris:

"What England did at the Millennium Stadium was to beat Wales at their own game...Everyone likes to see England lose but I like to see Warren Gatland lose even more."

God i miss big Ferris....!

thomond2006 · 10-02-2015 03:59PM

Ferris has some kind of beef with Gatland?

Utah_Saint · 10-02-2015 04:01PM

thomond2006 wrote: »

Ferris has some kind of beef with Gatland?

Doesn't everyone....;)

awec · 10-02-2015 04:31PM

Here's the source btw: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/31327141

Ireland Team Talk/Gossip/Rumour Thread IV

Comments