The ex-Wallabies prop unpicking the secrets of rugby
As any good school counsellor will have told you, sport has a number of transferable skills. Ambition, communication, dedication, teamwork – the list goes on. That said, the question of what rugby players do after retirement from the game has received increasing recognition of late, with a number of former players noting their difficulties and current players discussing their plans. Coaching and the media aren’t for everyone, after all.
A particularly interesting example is Ben Darwin, the 28-cap Australia prop who found himself retiring early through injury and taking a natural-seeming step into coaching before realising his interest and talents lay elsewhere.
Now the co-founder of GAIN LINE Analytics, an operations and management consultancy founded on data analysis from his coaching days but applied to the business world as much as sport, the 43-year-old is able to draw some fascinating conclusions from perceived difficulties or disadvantages.
Darwin, the old Australia tighthead, is preaching his gospel to a host of sporting and non-sporting industries and is clearly absorbed by the work and its potential application. “The first thing to know about me is I have really bad ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), but I see that as an advantage I didn’t do very well in school, even though I went to a Sydney private school.
“But when my parents broke up, I dreamed of playing for Australia,” Darwin told RugbyPass. “I put my head down into that goal but I wasn’t a very good player at the time. I sort of just put my efforts into it to try to put my attention somewhere else.
The biggest secret about great teams is there is nothing special about the players and nothing special about the coaches. It’s the system and the process.
— Ben Darwin (@bendarwin) February 2, 2020
“Eventually, I was part of the Brumbies, which was this kind of team of off-cuts that didn’t even make sense when you look at it in a different manner. Then we won the Super Rugby title and I made the Wallabies, played for a couple of years for the Wallabies before I had my spinal injury in 2003.
“Then I jumped into some coaching in a whole different bunch of places: Western Force, Melbourne Rebels – two expansion franchises. That’s really important to this process because I saw that you can’t just throw teams together and win. And then I was in Japan where I coached two teams.
“I jumped around in my coaching quite quickly and saw a lot. I’d go to one place and the team would never lose. And then I go to another place and do exactly the same thing and the team didn’t win. So I started to understand as a coach I had very little input on what was happening.”
It was this that drew Darwin into data analytics. “I looked a lot at the stuff that data analysts do, looking at how teams play and go about that process, and I started to realise that everyone was looking on the wrong side of the coin.
“There’s two sides of the coin – the causative side, and the output side. Even the ability to improve a team is an output of the way the team or club is run. And everyone is looking at the output side and maybe following the wrong kind of leads as I would put it.
“My last job in Japan, the team I had went undefeated and I was fired at the end of the season. So I was like, ‘Coaching sucks! I’m going to jump into video analysis and data analytics’. I really didn’t have any idea what I was going to do but I had two kids at the time and I just had to make it up as I went along.
“The first thing I did was I built a database of all the players in the world in league and in union and I was looking at when they were coming off contract.”
What Darwin started to notice was that the most successful teams all have one factor in common – and it wasn’t what you might expect. “There are some coaches that underperform but 90 per cent of coaches are where they should be.
“Now, here’s what’s interesting: When we looked at coaches joining teams, we looked at coaches with experience as head coach and we looked at coaches with no experience as a head coach. There’s no statistical difference between the two of them except the experienced coaches underperformed in their first year because they come in and they change things.”
Culture, he added, was also misleading. It might correlate to successful teams but it’s not causative. There are plenty of wildly successful teams with objectively horrible cultures, he explained, citing the Wimbledon football Crazy Gang in England during the 1980s and ’90s.
Darwin also highlighted the AFL West Coast Eagles who made the finals 16 times between 1990 and 2007, winning three Australia Premierships despite “it becoming apparent over time that the club had a horrific drug culture, with the death of the ex-captain due to a drug overdose in retirement, the addiction and repeated incarnation of its best player Ben Cousins, and up to eight other players arrested on drugs charges or assault.
“We tend to retrospectively place culture as a cause after the fact whether it be to negatively or positively attribute the cause of success or failure,” explained Darwin. So, if the decisive factor isn’t coaches or culture (or facilities or money), what is the factor Darwin sees as the predictor of success? Cohesion.
A unique way of looking at Sport and Corporate governance via #CohesionAnalytics. Subscribe to The GAIN LINE Report #Governance #Sustainability #TalentIsNotEnough #CohesionMatters #singnalinthenoise https://t.co/YvFGZZJDgq pic.twitter.com/LYkHc8XA2V
— GAIN LINE Analytics (@GLAnalytics) June 23, 2020
They are two metrics for measuring cohesion: teamwork index (TWI) and key cohesion markers (KCM) that identify “the quantity and intensity of linkages within a team”. The higher the number, the higher the cohesion – and the more likely the organisation is to be sustainably successful.
The inspiration came from studying military and hospital data before assessing 15 other sports, and these metrics are now applied across industries. In rugby union, however, these metrics led Darwin to this: a seeming lack of resources can be beneficial because it creates cohesion out of necessity.
Darwin claimed it was a factor in the success of the Australia teams he played in. If he had a bad game, for example, there was rarely an obvious replacement, meaning he stayed in the side and developed alongside his fellow players.
This similarly applied to Leicester City’s 2016 Premier League title win. Darwin did the maths. No team in the competition that year had a TWI of above 40 per cent heading into the 2015/16 season (for reference, last year’s Super Rugby-winning Crusaders were at 93 per cent).
A pivotal time in New Zealand Rugby as they ponder their internal structure. Will they be asking the right questions about the areas that matter? And if they make the wrong decision 1/2 https://t.co/1JPutMyKqh
— GAIN LINE Analytics (@GLAnalytics) April 30, 2020
Coach Claudio Ranieri, previously nicknamed ‘Tinkerman’ for his approach to team selections, left the side as unchanged as possible throughout the season, especially in defence. Leicester went from strength to strength despite pundits expecting them to tail off.
How does this apply to rugby union then? If you don’t have a team that knows each other inside out, what can you do? The cohesion metrics are kept a secret but they are based on three simple components – interpersonal understanding, system understanding, and role understanding.
“The most important thing in the short term is to actually understand what you have in front of you: in chaos, great players can look terrible,” said Darwin. “As an organisation, in the long-term, the only way to win is through long-term stability. We know that instability is almost guaranteed to result in losses. Therefore, the only way to win is to be stable and lose, and that’s where teams get unstuck.”
Darwin cited an Australia NRL example: after a team loses a game by 20 points, the instinct is to make changes. But according to Darwin’s stats, “If you make three changes to the team, when you lose a game by 20 points or more, the chances of you winning next week are 34 per cent. If you make two changes, it’s 39 per cent. If you make one change, it’s 43 per cent. If you make no changes, it’s 49 per cent.”
The former Australian front row believes that you have to act with the long-term in mind and the board have a huge role in setting that agenda. Players that appear supremely skilled in one environment can struggle in another, as a number of French club owners have discovered.
You might get lucky and be able to buy temporary success in the right context but, as Darwin’s research has shown, it’s not the approach itself that is responsible for that success.
Since Jimmy Peters first pulled on an England jersey in 1906, black players have forged sporting careers in the game of rugby union, often despite the odds
– @rhigarthjones looks at the stories of 9 black rugby players, who deserve greater recognitionhttps://t.co/I67CHtIgz9
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) June 21, 2020
Comments on RugbyPass
Lets compare apples with apples. Lyon sent weak team the week before, but nobody raised an eyebrow. Give the South African teams a few years to build their depth, then you will be moaning that the teams are too strong.
41 Go to commentsDid footballs agents also perform the scout role at some time? I’m surprised more high profile players haven’t taken up the occupation, great way to remain in the game and use all that experience without really requiring a lot of specific expertise?
1 Go to commentsSuper rugby is struggling but that has little to do with sabbaticals. 1. Too many teams from Aust and NZ - should be 3 and 4 respectively, add in 2 from Japan, 1 possibly 2 from Argentina. 2. Inconsistent and poor refereeing, admittedly not restricted to Super rugby. Only one team was reffed at the breakdown in Reds v H’Landers match. Scrum penalty awarded in Canes v Drua when No 8 had the ball in the open with little defence nearby - ideal opportunity to play advantage. Coming back to Reds match - same scrum situation but ref played advantage - Landers made 10 yards and were penalised at the breakdown when the ref should have returned to scrum penalty. 3. Marketing is weak and losing ground to AFL and NRL. Playing 2 days compared with 4. 4. Scheduling is unattractive to family attendance. Have any franchises heard of Sundays 2pm?
10 Go to commentsAbsolutely..all they need is a chance in yhe playoffs and I bet all the other teams will be nervous…THEY KNOW HOW TO WIN IM THE PLAYOFFS..
2 Go to commentsI really hope he comes back and helps out with some coaching.
1 Go to commentsI think we are all just hoping that the Olympic 7s doesn’t suffer the same sad fate as the last RWC with the officials ruining the spectacle.
1 Go to commentsPersonally, I’ve lost the will to even be bothered about the RFU, the structure, the participants. It’s all a sham. I now simply enjoy getting a group of friends together to go and watch a few games a year in different locations (including Europe, the championship, etc). I feel extremely sorry for the real fans of these clubs who are constantly ignored by the RFU and other administrators. I feel especially sorry for the fans of clubs in the Championship who have had considerable central funding stripped away and are then expected to just take whatever the RFU put to them. Its all a sham, especially if the failed clubs are allowed to return.
9 Go to commentsI’m guessing Carl Hayman would have preferred to have stayed in NZ with benefit of hindsight. Up north there is the expectation to play twice as many games with far less ‘player management’ protocols that Paul is now criticising. Less playing through concussions means longer, healthier, careers. Carter used as the eg here by Paul, his sabbatical allowed him to play until age 37. OK its not an exact science but there is far more expectations on players who sign for Top 14 or Engl Prem clubs to get value for the huge salaries. NZR get alot wrong but keeping their best players in NZ rugby is not one of them. SA clubs are virtually devoid of their top players now, no thanks. They cant threaten the big teams in the Champions Cup, the squads have little depth. Cant see Canes/Chiefs struggling. Super has been great this year, fantastic high skill matches. Drua a fantastic addition and Jaguares will add another quality team eventually. Aus teams performing strongly and no doubt will benefit with the incentive of a Lions tour and a home RWC. Let Jordie enjoy his time with Leinster, it will allow the opportunity for another player to emerge at Canes in his absence.
10 Go to commentsLove that man, his way to despise angry little men is so funny ! 😂
4 Go to comments“South African franchises would be powerhouses if we had all our overseas based players back in situ. We would have the same unbeatable aura the Toulouses, Leinsters or Saracens of this world have had over the last decade or so.” Proof that Jake white does not understand the economics of the game in SA. Players earning abroad are not going to simply come back and represent the bulls. But they might if they have a springbok contract.
22 Go to commentsA lot of fans just joined in for the fun of it! We all admire O'Gara and what he has done for La Rochelle
4 Go to commentsThe RFU will find a way to mess this up as usual. My bet is there will be no promotion into the the Premiership, only relegation into National League One. Hopefully they won’t parachute failed clubs into the league at the expense of clubs who have battled for promotion.
9 Go to commentsWell that’s the contracts for RG and Jordie bought and paid for. Now, what are the chances we can persuade Antoine to hop over with all the extra dosh we’ll have from living at the Aviva & Croke next season…??? 🤑🤑🤑
35 Go to commentsWow, that’s incredible. Great for rugby.
35 Go to commentsYou probably read that parling is going to coach the wallaby lineout but if not before now you have.
14 Go to commentsIf someone like Leo Cullen was in O’Gara’s place I don’t hear Boo-ing. It’s not just that La Rochelle has hurt Leinster and O’Gara is their Irish boss. It’s the needle that he brings and the pantomime activity before the game around pretending that Munster were supporting LaRochelle just because O’Gara is from Cork. That’s dividing Irish provinces just to get an advantage for his French Team. He can F*ck right off with that. BOOOOO! (but not while someone is lying injured)
4 Go to commentsDid the highlanders party too hard before the game? They were the pits.
1 Go to commentsWhat a player! Not long until he’s in the England side, surely?
5 Go to commentsHe seems to have the same aura as Marcus Smith - by which I mean he’s consistently judged as if he’s several years younger than he actually is. Mngomezulu has played 24 times for the Stormers. When Pollard was his age he had played 24 times for South Africa! He has more time to develop, but he has also had time to do some developing already, and he hasn’t demonstrated nearly as much talent in that time as one would expect. If he is a generational talent, then it must be a pretty poor generation.
6 Go to commentsThe greatest Springbok coach of all time is entirely on the money. Rassie and Jacques have given the south african public a great few years, but the success of the springbok selection policy will need to be judged in light of what comes next. The poor condition that the provincial system is currently in doesn’t bode well for the next few years of international rugby, and the insane 2026 schedule that the Boks have lined up could also really harm both provincial and international consistency.
22 Go to comments