SportingCrunch
20-03-14, 01:28 PM
http://sportingcrunch.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/remember-the-titans-and-forget-about-the-eels/
Overrated and underrated NRL sides (2008-2013)
There are few topics which bring up such entertaining debate amongst NRL supporters (or any sports fans, really) as the topic of overrated/underperforming sides. Many an hour of pub debate has been spent recalling and laughing at incompetent sides packed with huge salaries and huge egos. It’s a great leveller to see players immeasurably more talented than the rest of us tripping over their own feet or failing to control simple passes that we could handle ourselves. Call it Tall Poppy Syndrome if you will, but seeing Billy Slater’s World Cup Final brainsnap is somehow inherently more entertaining that seeing the same mistake from some poor 18 year old kid drafted into first grade and reacting like a deer in the headlights. On the flipside of this, most supporters have a soft spot for the exact opposite – teams with minimal hype or expectation who put in week in, week out and ground out good results.
For our first project on this SportingCrunch blog, Iggi McBride and I posed two simple questions:
Who has been the most overrated/underperforming NRL side of recent years?
Who has been the most underrated/overperforming?
Rather than simply piling into a bar, recounting hilarious tales of highly-paid screw-ups and drinking until we reached an agreement (or forgot what the questions even were) we thought there must be a better way to address the topic. We could have asked a dozen different rugby league supporters to answer this, but we’d just have got a dozen different views. These would have been coloured by whatever allegiances/biases/mental illnesses the people we’d spoken to had, but they’d all likely have one thing in common; they’d simply be individual opinions without any real statistical basis. We wanted something a little more rigorous and justifiable with solid evidence to support it. We instead narrowed our possible approach to one of two options.
Option one: Find a few ex-pros and inflate their superannuation accounts in exchange for an opinion plucked from nowhere, based on no real evidence at all and with no accountability when wrong (this is the option favoured in certain media circles.)
Option two: Find some data, define what it means for a team to be overrated or underperforming and let the facts speak for themselves.
As appealing as a long bar room argument might have been, as maths graduates, option two seemed the most constructive and reasonable. Sure, everyone’s entitled to his/her opinions on any aspect of the game. Many Souths fans believe that this will be the year their 43 year premiership drought will end. Many Parramatta fans believe this is the year their 2 year wooden spoon evasion drought will end. Some people think the shoulder charge ban is good for the game, others think it’s the worst rule change of all time. Darren “The Gazelle” Hibbert clearly believes his haircut looks stylish*. Each of these things could easily be wrong, though. What we sought, however, was a clear definition of what we were asking and the statistics to provide the answer.
Pictured: Darren “The Gazelle” Hibbert, a man whose opinions on style may differ from your own. (source: James Brickwood/smh.com.au)
http://sportingcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/art-20wide-20gaz_20131211193015607317-620x349.jpg?w=553&h=316
Before we could begin to answer these questions, we needed a clear definition of how we would define a team as failing to meet expectations. We decided to use historical data from bookmakers (Thanks, http://www.aussportsbetting.com/data/ !)for all NRL games from 2009 to 2013 inclusive.) Bookies’ odds are a pretty good measure of how each team was expected to perform. Before each game, bookies first run some prediction model of their own to decide upon a starting price and this is adjusted upwards or downwards depending on how much money is placed for or against each possible outcome. As such, each final pre-match price is a balance between expert and popular opinion. Note the prices are not truly probabilities, as they are rounded a little to try and ensure a profit margin for the bookies. Little Tommy Waterhouse needs to earn himself a little pocket money, it seems. They do, however, reflect “relative probabilities”. Two teams paying the same price are assessed as equally likely to win. Likewise, a team paying $4 is thought to have half the chance of winning that a team paying $2 does. An outcome assessed as truly a 50/50 split between two possibilities will pay typically around $1.90 returns, ensuring around 5% profit for your friendly neighbourhood TAB , assuming roughly equal money is placed on both options.
From this dataset, we decided that the best metric of a team’s performance relative to expectation was to record how much money a punter would have won had he bet an equal amount on every game that team played. We calculated the average for each of the 16 teams over each of the five seasons individually, and aggregated over the full timespan of the dataset. In theory, if the pre-match odds for each team were an accurate representation of their performance then, averaged over a whole season, each team should provide a similar return. This should be something around 90c-95c per $1 bet i.e. pretty much your money back, minus the bookies’ standard profit margins. Weaker sides would win less frequently, but pay higher returns when they did, whereas stronger sides would win often, but for smaller profits. We identified overrated and underperforming teams by those who consistently returned well below $1 per $1 gambled and underrated and overperforming sides by those on whom it would have been profitable to bet.
The results speak for themselves. The table below shows the average return per $1 if each team had been backed with an equal bet on each of its games during the 2009-2013 period. The ten best single season returns are highlighted in red and the ten worst are highlighted in green.
http://sportingcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/blogfig13.jpg?w=1078&h=163
Sorry to pile on my poor unfortunate partner in this SportingCrunch venture, but it’s pretty clear that, between 2009 and 2013, no side chronically underperformed even nearly as badly as the Parramatta Eels. Their average return of 72c per $1 was far worse than the second and third biggest underachievers, the North Queensland Cowboys and New Zealand Warriors, who returned a 86c on average. Despite being expected to struggle in recent years, the scale of their problems was clearly underestimated. In each of the past four seasons, the Eels have actually been overrated! It’s quite an achievement to be widely regarded as a strong wooden spoon contender and slip below those levels, but the bungling Eels pulled it off. Bravo. In fact, 2013 was their most overrated season of all, with Ricky Stuart’s much-heralded arrival raising hopes and expectations without any improvement in on-field results. On the topic of Sticky himself, he’s got a lot to answer for. His 2009 Sharks side were the biggest flops that year and, on his return to NRL coaching, he took the most overrated tag again at the Eels. I hate to dispense betting advice, but I’d keep this dubious record in mind if you’re ever considering punting on Stuart’s Canberra Raiders this season.
The news that might makes our northern neighbours sit up and listen is that the single most underrated team over the past five years has been none other than the Gold Coast Titans. Not content with leading the league in players with questionable facial hair, they are also the clear leaders in slipping under the radar. The Titans performed above expectations for four of the past five seasons and only slipped below the mark in 2011. A punter who bet an equal amount each and every Titans game would be 6 per cent in profit over the period of the study. Maybe their status as the newest team, or perhaps being away from the Sydney media, has led to their avoiding some of the media hype that leads to inflated expectations relative to what the sides can achieve. The only other side it would have been profitable to have backed each and every week was the South Sydney Rabbitohs, who returned just over $1.03.
When it came to identifying the performance of teams over a single season, it seemed that the 2009 Sydney Roosters have a lot to explaining to do. The men from the east were the most overrated team of any in the past five years. From expectations built on a run to the 2008 semi-finals they slipped to the wooden spoon the following year. Sadly for Bondi-backing punters, they lost their hard-earned cash quicker than Brad Fittler lost his coaching position. A $1 on each of their games that year returned less than 37c on average. I guess that’s what happens when you have a coach who thinks Braith Anasta might be the answer at fullback…
Pictured below: The 2009 Roosters contemplating their own awfulness (source: Hannah Johnston/Getty Images AsiaPac)
http://sportingcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/braithanastawilliemasonnrlrd6warriorsbozhn4zefj2l. jpg?w=524&h=354
* If anyone does have any statistically sound methodology to prove that “The Gazelle” looks a complete tit, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.
Overrated and underrated NRL sides (2008-2013)
There are few topics which bring up such entertaining debate amongst NRL supporters (or any sports fans, really) as the topic of overrated/underperforming sides. Many an hour of pub debate has been spent recalling and laughing at incompetent sides packed with huge salaries and huge egos. It’s a great leveller to see players immeasurably more talented than the rest of us tripping over their own feet or failing to control simple passes that we could handle ourselves. Call it Tall Poppy Syndrome if you will, but seeing Billy Slater’s World Cup Final brainsnap is somehow inherently more entertaining that seeing the same mistake from some poor 18 year old kid drafted into first grade and reacting like a deer in the headlights. On the flipside of this, most supporters have a soft spot for the exact opposite – teams with minimal hype or expectation who put in week in, week out and ground out good results.
For our first project on this SportingCrunch blog, Iggi McBride and I posed two simple questions:
Who has been the most overrated/underperforming NRL side of recent years?
Who has been the most underrated/overperforming?
Rather than simply piling into a bar, recounting hilarious tales of highly-paid screw-ups and drinking until we reached an agreement (or forgot what the questions even were) we thought there must be a better way to address the topic. We could have asked a dozen different rugby league supporters to answer this, but we’d just have got a dozen different views. These would have been coloured by whatever allegiances/biases/mental illnesses the people we’d spoken to had, but they’d all likely have one thing in common; they’d simply be individual opinions without any real statistical basis. We wanted something a little more rigorous and justifiable with solid evidence to support it. We instead narrowed our possible approach to one of two options.
Option one: Find a few ex-pros and inflate their superannuation accounts in exchange for an opinion plucked from nowhere, based on no real evidence at all and with no accountability when wrong (this is the option favoured in certain media circles.)
Option two: Find some data, define what it means for a team to be overrated or underperforming and let the facts speak for themselves.
As appealing as a long bar room argument might have been, as maths graduates, option two seemed the most constructive and reasonable. Sure, everyone’s entitled to his/her opinions on any aspect of the game. Many Souths fans believe that this will be the year their 43 year premiership drought will end. Many Parramatta fans believe this is the year their 2 year wooden spoon evasion drought will end. Some people think the shoulder charge ban is good for the game, others think it’s the worst rule change of all time. Darren “The Gazelle” Hibbert clearly believes his haircut looks stylish*. Each of these things could easily be wrong, though. What we sought, however, was a clear definition of what we were asking and the statistics to provide the answer.
Pictured: Darren “The Gazelle” Hibbert, a man whose opinions on style may differ from your own. (source: James Brickwood/smh.com.au)
http://sportingcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/art-20wide-20gaz_20131211193015607317-620x349.jpg?w=553&h=316
Before we could begin to answer these questions, we needed a clear definition of how we would define a team as failing to meet expectations. We decided to use historical data from bookmakers (Thanks, http://www.aussportsbetting.com/data/ !)for all NRL games from 2009 to 2013 inclusive.) Bookies’ odds are a pretty good measure of how each team was expected to perform. Before each game, bookies first run some prediction model of their own to decide upon a starting price and this is adjusted upwards or downwards depending on how much money is placed for or against each possible outcome. As such, each final pre-match price is a balance between expert and popular opinion. Note the prices are not truly probabilities, as they are rounded a little to try and ensure a profit margin for the bookies. Little Tommy Waterhouse needs to earn himself a little pocket money, it seems. They do, however, reflect “relative probabilities”. Two teams paying the same price are assessed as equally likely to win. Likewise, a team paying $4 is thought to have half the chance of winning that a team paying $2 does. An outcome assessed as truly a 50/50 split between two possibilities will pay typically around $1.90 returns, ensuring around 5% profit for your friendly neighbourhood TAB , assuming roughly equal money is placed on both options.
From this dataset, we decided that the best metric of a team’s performance relative to expectation was to record how much money a punter would have won had he bet an equal amount on every game that team played. We calculated the average for each of the 16 teams over each of the five seasons individually, and aggregated over the full timespan of the dataset. In theory, if the pre-match odds for each team were an accurate representation of their performance then, averaged over a whole season, each team should provide a similar return. This should be something around 90c-95c per $1 bet i.e. pretty much your money back, minus the bookies’ standard profit margins. Weaker sides would win less frequently, but pay higher returns when they did, whereas stronger sides would win often, but for smaller profits. We identified overrated and underperforming teams by those who consistently returned well below $1 per $1 gambled and underrated and overperforming sides by those on whom it would have been profitable to bet.
The results speak for themselves. The table below shows the average return per $1 if each team had been backed with an equal bet on each of its games during the 2009-2013 period. The ten best single season returns are highlighted in red and the ten worst are highlighted in green.
http://sportingcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/blogfig13.jpg?w=1078&h=163
Sorry to pile on my poor unfortunate partner in this SportingCrunch venture, but it’s pretty clear that, between 2009 and 2013, no side chronically underperformed even nearly as badly as the Parramatta Eels. Their average return of 72c per $1 was far worse than the second and third biggest underachievers, the North Queensland Cowboys and New Zealand Warriors, who returned a 86c on average. Despite being expected to struggle in recent years, the scale of their problems was clearly underestimated. In each of the past four seasons, the Eels have actually been overrated! It’s quite an achievement to be widely regarded as a strong wooden spoon contender and slip below those levels, but the bungling Eels pulled it off. Bravo. In fact, 2013 was their most overrated season of all, with Ricky Stuart’s much-heralded arrival raising hopes and expectations without any improvement in on-field results. On the topic of Sticky himself, he’s got a lot to answer for. His 2009 Sharks side were the biggest flops that year and, on his return to NRL coaching, he took the most overrated tag again at the Eels. I hate to dispense betting advice, but I’d keep this dubious record in mind if you’re ever considering punting on Stuart’s Canberra Raiders this season.
The news that might makes our northern neighbours sit up and listen is that the single most underrated team over the past five years has been none other than the Gold Coast Titans. Not content with leading the league in players with questionable facial hair, they are also the clear leaders in slipping under the radar. The Titans performed above expectations for four of the past five seasons and only slipped below the mark in 2011. A punter who bet an equal amount each and every Titans game would be 6 per cent in profit over the period of the study. Maybe their status as the newest team, or perhaps being away from the Sydney media, has led to their avoiding some of the media hype that leads to inflated expectations relative to what the sides can achieve. The only other side it would have been profitable to have backed each and every week was the South Sydney Rabbitohs, who returned just over $1.03.
When it came to identifying the performance of teams over a single season, it seemed that the 2009 Sydney Roosters have a lot to explaining to do. The men from the east were the most overrated team of any in the past five years. From expectations built on a run to the 2008 semi-finals they slipped to the wooden spoon the following year. Sadly for Bondi-backing punters, they lost their hard-earned cash quicker than Brad Fittler lost his coaching position. A $1 on each of their games that year returned less than 37c on average. I guess that’s what happens when you have a coach who thinks Braith Anasta might be the answer at fullback…
Pictured below: The 2009 Roosters contemplating their own awfulness (source: Hannah Johnston/Getty Images AsiaPac)
http://sportingcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/braithanastawilliemasonnrlrd6warriorsbozhn4zefj2l. jpg?w=524&h=354
* If anyone does have any statistically sound methodology to prove that “The Gazelle” looks a complete tit, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.