Dog Days

What it's like to be a Dogs fan

LB is not ashamed to admit that we agree with the common perception that the Dogs are the greatest club in the history of rugby league. But something disturbing has happened in recent years. Something that threatens to, nay that has already begun to rub some of the shine off a beautiful and thick, lustrous coat of classiness that has accreted through almost three decades of the Winfield Cup.

From the late 70s, through to the early 2000s, the Dogs were the classic perineal contenders. They may have missed the semis a few times, but they won a stack of comps and excelled for extended periods of time. Nadirs were brief, ascensions lasting. It meant something to speak of the Dogs' proud and winning culture (on the field).

Now? All that has changed (on the field).

Let's take a look at their record since their famous grand final victory in 2004. This is also a decent marker for a transition between eras (the end of Dogs and Roosters dominance, the start of the Storm and Sea Eagles rise. Incidentally, are we on the cusp of a new era?).

2005: Never got going, threatened to make a run for the semis at the end of the year but died in the arse (interestingly the same fate befell the team after the previous premiership in 1995).

2006: Very strong year, ended by the horrific Broken Axle defeat to Brisbane in the GF qualifier.

2007: Constantly threatened to fade out or climb the ladder, finished middle of the top eight, season ended with three straight defeats, including two playoff losses.

2008: Wooden spoon.

2009: Surpassed all expectations, a legal interchange away from the minor premiership, went out in the GF qualifier giving their best to a superior Parra team.

2010: Struggled to get going, threatened to make a run at the playoffs, died in the arse (or so LB is predicting).

The Nostradmii among you might point to this as reason to predict a) a resurgence in 2011 or b) a sharp spike in the price of pork bellies next September. But LB has another point to make.

The Dogs have no form carryover from year to year.

This is a terrible fate to befall a franchise, although considering all the other crap that's happened around the league it's not so bad I suppose. Anyway, what of the other teams over this same stretch?

Average performance over this time period, measured in ladder position, sees the Storm clearly on top, followed by Manly and the Broncos - three teams that have made the semis each year and will do so again this year, massive salary cap breach penalties aside. The Dogs rank sixth.

A high (or low) average ladder position tells you something about form carryover, but not a lot. What about our old friend standard deviation, a measure of the how far a team's ladder position strays from its long term average?

The most consistent team is now the Broncos, followed by the Panthers (consistently shite and the jury still out this year), Storm and Manly. The Tigers are next up, models of consistency in just missing the eight. The Dogs rank?

Dead last. And by a fair bit too. Other teams with a massive spread are the Cowboys, Knights and Sharks.

You get similar results if you take the difference operator - this tells you how much each year varies from the last. Since 2005, the Storm, Broncos, Manly and Panthers have never moved more than five spots on the ladder in one year. Manly's never moved more than three spots. That is the magic of Desce.

The Dogs, meanwhile, are dead last on this measure too, having moved 10 spots twice and 14 once. This year is shaping up as a move of 10 or more spots.

LB is struggling to think of an appropriate metaphor to describe the Dogs on again, off again culture. The Canterbury Lightswitches? The Binaries? The Jude Law-Sienna Millers?

LB has submitted this study to the prestigious journal Nature Rugby League and is awaiting comments from reviewers.

2 Lose 1

As Eels players and fans drown their sorrows, they may be cheered by the indisputable fact that You Gotta Lose One To Win One. But is this really the case? Looking back at the last three years we see that yes, it is! Melbourne, Manly and before them Melbourne all lost the previous year's grand final decider before winning the following year.

Going back to the start of the NRL though, how many teams were powerfully buoyed by grand final defeat within the last, say three years?

Year YGLOTWO?
1998.....NO
1999.....NO
2000....NO
2001.....NO
2002.....YES (2000)
2003.....NO
2004.....NO
2005.....NO
2006.....NO
2007.....YES
2008.....YES
2009.....YES
2010..... ???

So that’s 4/12 YGLOTWOs, one of which was a loss more than one year ago. Eight times, ascent to the NRL Throne was unpropelled by previous pain. And eight times, the fiery flames of Grand Final failure were never to be doused. Only 33% of positives means League Blog says a big fat no to this theory. However, if it consoles the losers, so be it.

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We’ve had six semi-finals games, and while they’ve been peppered with brilliance and intensity, they haven’t been fully and overwhelmingly lathered in them. The picks so far would probably be the Titans-Broncos and St George-Eels games, because they at least maintained interest up to the last ten minutes or so. But they weren’t undecided going into the last five minutes, and more’s the point, they didn’t have that gripping semi-final intensity the whole way through.

We can only hope the situation will be rectified now it’s grand final qualifier time. That’s right, we’ve whittled away the Fancy Fifteen featuring the Roosters (formerly the Sweet Sixteen) to an Elite Eight, the Super Six and now the Final Four. For these to be truly great games, the Dogs need to win, and the winner of the Storm-Broncos game should have half their team injured and the other half suspended for chicken wings. Failing that, I’d settle for games that truly go Down To The Wire (DTTW).

So, getting onside with the oversponsorship and constant plugging of Sportsbet, League Blog thought that we had better calculate the odds these two will be great games. Please gamble responsibly.

Dogs v Eels

There’s a 50% chance the Eels will power past the Dogs on the back of Jesus Hayne, and a 10% chance the Dogs will shock the Eels and win by 13+. That leaves a 40% possibility of maxmimum closeness at the end of 80 minutes, or DTTW odds of 2 in 5.

Storm v Broncos

The Storm are a 35% chance of blowing the Broncos off the park, and the Broncos themselves would trample the Storm in 15% of grand final qualifiers between these two teams. That leaves a 50% chance of a tight one, or DTTW odds of 1 in 2.

Overall, we can see through elementary probability that the DTTW odds for both games combined are 1 in 5, which is a lamentable position for the NRL to be in at this end of the season.

David Gallop gets it wrong again.

Returntomeanology

There is a statistical concept known as the return to mean. It is a little counter-intuitive, in that it says that when you have two tall parents, you should expect a shorter kid, not a taller one (and vice versa). In other words, when you’re at the extremes of a given distribution, you’re more likely to return to the average than drift further out. I sometimes find myself wondering about this in the context of the great game of league.

Are the Titans/Dragons/Dogs really that good? Or will they regress a little during the playoffs? Are the Eels really in comp-winning form or will they return to a slightly less stellar mean, as the pathetic Tigers recently have? Are the Broncos as bad as their mini-train wreck a few rounds back suggested, or are they more like a top 5 team? Are the Sharks and Roosters really that bad? Yes, they really are.

Even statistics have their limit.

Underneath all the noise of attitudinal corrections and injury crises, kind draws and away ground hoodoos, can we discern an underlying trend in a team’s performance? And what’s the proper time period to understand a team’s form? 10 weeks? One season? Several seasons? Who could be the judge of a team’s ‘true’ trajectory anyway? And is that what coaches really get paid for? To change their team’s mean and understand the other team’s? Of all these deep thoughts, one spoke loudest in my mind: why spend time working it out myself when I can hire a consultancy to do a worse job for more money?

Ike Arnby Levitzer Consultancy’s report has just landed on my desk, complete with a summary of the key findings. (Tell me this, why should a study have ‘key’ findings? Can’t they all be key? Why should there be something that ‘it all boils down to’? Maybe when you boil it down it just burns and gets stuck to the pan, isn’t that possible? As humans, we love seeking the ‘essence’ of things, but sometimes, as when I was trying to bake a vanilla cake on the weekend, there just is no essence.)

Key findings, based on where team sits on ladder (ie not based on any recent winning/losing streak): Teams performing above their mean include the Dogs, StGeorge (just), Penrith and the Knights. Teams performing below their mean are Sea Eagles and Warriors. Titans, Storm, Broncos, Eels, Tigers, Cowboys, Souths and Raiders are all sitting about spot on their mean. I couldn’t get a read on the Sharks or Roosters, the consultancy wanted extra money to sit through their games.

What do I make of their analysis? What does it tell us about the semi-finals? Or season 2010? Unfortunately I ran out of money to pay a consultancy to answer those questions, so if you have any idea please drop us a comment.

Love, damned love and statistics

If my readers know anything about me, it’s that I have a deep and abiding love of sports statistics. Like all good scientists, I pursue what to me seems interesting, and as soon as it get's difficult I give up.

So what do you get when you sum up the results of all current NRL teams since the comp's "inception" in 1998? Something like this:

Team	Titles	GFs	Semis	%
Brisbane	3	3	11	0.595
Melbourne	2	4	9	0.616
Sydney	1	4	8	0.557
Bulldogs	1	2	7	0.581
Manly	1	2	5	0.516
Newcastle	1	1	7	0.547
Penrith	1	1	3	0.450
Wests Tigers	1	1	1	0.419
Parramatta	0	1	8	0.554
St. George Illawarra	0	1	8	0.533
New Zealand	0	1	5	0.453
North Queensland	0	1	3	0.384
Canberra	0	0	7	0.488
Cronulla	0	0	6	0.498
South Sydney	0	0	1	0.291
Gold Coast	0	0	0	0.493
	11	22	89

I had to put the teams in some order, and after spending a few months trying to figure out how to put the Dogs first, I gave up and removed the total points docked column and ranked them first by number of grand final wins, then number of grand finals made, then number of semis made, then total winning percentage. Winning percentage shows the number of wins as a percent of all regular season games played, including this season up to last round.

I find it very revealing, the amount of rugby league history that can be crammed into a little table like this. What follows is a running commentary on things that jump out at me from this table.

Dang it, there's no way around it, the Broncos have been the best side over the last 11 years. The Storm might argue the point based on winning percentage or number of grand finals made, but you can't argue with number of titles. The Broncos' record in grand finals is pretty good too. I'd been sleeping much better at night since their mid-season form slump (once great, meet Broncos etc) but now they look like they're going to keep their amazing record of semifinal appearances in tact as well. If it's any consolation, we can all reminisce on the eight (soon to be nine) times Brisbane made the semis and utterly, humiliatingly bombed out. Moving right along...

I expected the Storm and Roosters (aka Sydney) to sit near the top, but with the laughable record of multiple grand final losses. Then I remembered the Storm's victory in 1999, which comfortably puts them in second. I was surprised to see they have the second most semis appearances, but not surprised that their winning percentage is the best. The Roosters are third largely due to their golden run from 2000-2004, which seems a distant memory now. I expect Brian Smith to take them back to the semis within three years, before taking over the rebuilding job at Cronulla after Lancen Juodo retires.

The glorious Dogs are next, edging out Manly based on number of semis made. Moving down to the bottom of this table, Gold Coast won't be there long, given their imminent semis appearance and far superior winning percentage to the Rabbitohs. And if they have a good September/October, they could shoot right up. Just look at the Tigers. I find it amazing that they've made the semis just once in 11 years (probably soon to be 12) but went all the way when they did.

Take a look at Canberra and Cronulla in comparison. Seven and six semis appearances, no grand finals. Canberra haven't even made a grand final qualifier. I might poor scorn on them, but I feel the real scorn should be reserved for Parramatta and StGeorge (based purely on first principles, but also on this table as I'll shortly explain). Eight times, they've strode confidently into the playoffs, eight times they've left empty handed. Only one grand final, which they each lost as favourites. Here's hoping it's not a StGeorge-Parra grand final this year.

Finally, the observant may notice that we're one semi final appearance short. Number 90 comes from none other than the Bears (RIP), back in 1998. They were reincarnated as Northern Eagles, but lucky for them and Manly their record isn't included in this table.

Returngameology

I found myself noticing, as this glorious season unfolded, that teams that have played each other twice often seem to split the games, one win apiece. Was this intuition correct? Could it be backed up by rigorous, PhD-worthy analysis? I think you, dear readers, know that the answer to this is yes, of course. The results of my analysis on the season so far are illuminating, if taken with a pinch of salt, a dash of paprika, and a sprinkling of chilli powder.

Total return games 39
Number split 25
Number not split 13

Throw in a draw (in the return game between the eels and rabbitohs) and you get 64% of return games being won by the team that lost the first game. Not too shabby.

Looking a little further, it turns out that of the 13 double wins/losses, 10 involved the warriors, raiders, sharks or roosters. Surprise, surprise, 9 of these 10 were double losses for our poorsome foursome. If you want to omit these duds from the analysis, you get 22 games, 18 splits and one draw, or 82% being split. Even the mighty Dragons have split 3 of their 6 return games.

My take home message: a split of return games is likely, especially between non-crap teams. What else can we read into this data, and what can’t we? Trusty Steeden probably knows better than I do, for now I’ll leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions.











Image: A split is likely