Goal-kicking becomes a percentage game

James O’Connor: Taking on difficult kicks lowered his kicking success statistics.

There is an interesting technological development taking place in New Zealand which could transform a team’s decision to kick for goal or punt it down the line.

Indeed, had Declan Kidney had it available to him last weekend, he may have stopped Jonathan Sexton taking on that kick from inside his half in the closing minutes against Wales last week.

Current stats don’t take into account a kick’s degree of difficulty and the kicker’s record at that angle and distance from goal but a Kiwi statician has created a reliable computer programme that has started to build the data for the Six Nations.

The website called www.ruckingoodstats.com has been following the careers of James O’Connor, Dan Carter, Quade Cooper and Morne Steyn through their kicking ability.

The developers created a database of place kicks from the last ten years from a variety of games and, due to the volume of kicks taken and some smart algorithms, a probability of success (POS) of a kick can be calculated of any kick.

It is now so big that the numbers don’t move more than a decimal point over a season except when the kicker is 65m out.

It runs for live games including POS and has shown up some interesting results which completely go against perceived thinking.

“At the end of the Super15 round-robin, not including POS, James O’Connor’s kicking success was 71% (54 from 76), Quade Cooper 69% (68/98) Morne Steyn 79% (79/100) and Carter’s 72% (50 from 69),” said the developer, who wishes to remain anonymous.

“Throughout the season I observed that O’Connor was asked to take more and more kicks that had a low POS. The data backs this up. “O’Connor’s kicks on his graph are more towards the low POS end. In fact three-quarters (75%) of his attempts had a POS of 69% or lower.

“O’Connor was getting asked to take harder kicks and the fact there were few Western Force tries added to his lack of opportunity to take high POS kicks. This pushes his kicking success down and makes him look ordinary to the media when the reality is he had a big ask.

“Steyn is a typical of what you would expect, or want, from a kicker.

“He gets all the high POS kicks and his first miss, moving back from the posts, was in the 70-74% POS range.

“As the POS lowers Steyn starts to miss more but you have to go back to POS range of 25-29% before he misses more than he is getting. Either way he is a reliable kicker.”

But the data showed Quade Cooper is a better kicker than given credit for, moreso than Steyn and Dan Carter.

“In the last minute of the game with a 25-29% POS penalty kick lined up, you would back O’Connor and Cooper for it.

“In the 70-100% POS range you would expect kickers of the calibre we are examining to get most of them, and they do. Carter got 93% (26/28) of his attempts, Steyn was the best, getting 98% (40/41) of his attempts and Cooper 90% (36/40).