Stuart McCloskey commits to Ulster despite Top 14 interest

My guess is that rugby will learn to value the IP stored in such ppl, just as it will learn to value the contributions of ppl outside the game looking in - pretty much the message of Bill James and Moneyball!

2] Yes I recognize that, which does beg the question whether the current rules will really help Tonga and Samoa achieve tier one status.

3] I think it would be fair to bring the stand-down into line with residency at 5 years.

I wouldn’t think Top 14 is that much. My TLDR advice for you in this article is that everyones all very balanced, so don’t get too stuck up about someone saying SRP is a ‘cut above’.

If the league shows to be high scoring, then doesn’t that mean even a 12 margin with 5 to go (or so 12 at the end too) is still very much game on.

For instance, some of the games that he found in that 25 points bracket, might have still had the same amount of lead changes?

Perhaps though if such instances had such ‘competitive’ markers, it would mean statistically that there is not a lot of them (that you wouldn’t get a 12 avg)?

URC us doing very well with it’s competitiveness given that each group has it’s own salary caps and entirely different makeups, from clubs, to provinces, to franchises and regions. One group might be teams from the most populace country with the biggest rugby base while another the smallest, with the least amount of rugby players to chose from.

On average, just about one SRP game every weekend has been decided in the last five minutes!

I would also be interested in a average clock length (don’t need to go into the whole BIP hole) showing how long the last phases are taking (because one team is trying to still alter the match points outcome in some way) to complete before the game finally ends. I don’t know if its more common this year but in general I wonder if its a stat that can show how good games are/were?

17.7%

You really had the same reversed 10 points lead % as you had lead changes after the 75th?

Some of these values while standing out numerically against each other have a much less correlative impact than some that tighter differences which might only stick out a small amount. While SRP’s ones might not necessarily be such examples (and here I’m still going off the basic principle that everyone knew this was happening, even though I was challenged about that assumption) they have had the advantage of the fixtures being were doctored even more than normal. In this instance its irrelevant whether they were doctored or not of course, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that there hasn’t been a lot of cross over of worst v best yet. Maybe it just feels like that because the worst are so much better this year? I definitely think that it is undeniable that all the bottom teams (that remain) have gotten better.

So I would be very interested in another weight graph of the games still, but regardless I don’t think it’s fair for SRP to claim anything over the other leagues yet. Certainly as I have said numerous times about the Top 14, it’s sub par compared to what it’s billed up to be, but that is the only league in this group that has promotion and relegation, which is the antitheses of a competitive league, so a trade off there.

Thank you very much for sharing your research though Dmitri, I hope you find another topic to get interested about!

It’s even worse when the NZRU relatively recently gave Rugby Australia a bigger cut of the Super Rugby broadcast.