After another frustrating result where we again gave up the lead late in the game I wanted to test the theory that we are playing not to lose rather than playing to win this season. Does the team play differently when they are ahead than when they are behind?
To look at this statistically I captured our starting position for the beginning of each quarter (Ahead, Behind, Even). I excluded Q1 from the data set for obvious reasons. I then calculated the subsequent result in each quarter (ie. did we win or lose it and by how much). All of this is shown in the below table.
So what does it show us and is it statistically significant? My answer to that is....I'm not sure. There does appear to be some correlation to our being more attacking when behind but is this to be expected? So sorry if you are reading this expecting answers! Others more adept than me may be able to assist us reach a conclusion!
Some observations from the data:
To look at this statistically I captured our starting position for the beginning of each quarter (Ahead, Behind, Even). I excluded Q1 from the data set for obvious reasons. I then calculated the subsequent result in each quarter (ie. did we win or lose it and by how much). All of this is shown in the below table.
So what does it show us and is it statistically significant? My answer to that is....I'm not sure. There does appear to be some correlation to our being more attacking when behind but is this to be expected? So sorry if you are reading this expecting answers! Others more adept than me may be able to assist us reach a conclusion!
Some observations from the data:
- in 2018 we have won 50% of 1st and 2nd Quarters, 60% of 3rd Quarters and 55% of 4th Quarters
- average result when starting a quarter in front is to win it by +1.75 points
- average result when starting a quarter even or behind is to win it by +3.93 points
- when ahead at the start of a quarter we have won 18 of 33 (55%)
- when even or behind at the start of a quarter we have won 15 of 27 (56%)
- when ahead at the start of a quarter and winning that quarter our average margin gain is +11.5 points
- when even or behind at the start of a quarter and winning that quarter our average margin gain is +14.2 points
- Potentially controversial but ....if we exclude the 4 games we won pillar to post (rnd 1 vs Freo, rnd 9 vs GC, rnd 16 vs Saints and rnd 19 vs Dogs) then when we were ahead at the start of a quarter we have only won 6 of 21 (29%). So a different performance in close matches? *there were no games where we lost every quarter so I haven't done the opposite analysis to this.
