Farrell vs. Hock - How has the deal worked out?

Possibly the biggest transfer story before the 2013 Super League season was the loan of Gareth Hock from Wigan to Widnes. It broke on the eve of the season in a whirlwind of rumour, speculation and press releases and saw one of the sport's most imposing and controversial characters leave his home town club, the club that stood by him through his difficult times, to go to the previous season's wooden spoon winners.

I won't be going into the reasons for the move (I don't know anything more than innuendo and suggestion about what pushed this on), but the move did cause concern for me as a Wigan fan. There we were, having already lost four seasoned champions, we got the news that a player who on his day is as dominant a player as there is, an international courted by NRL clubs, would be leaving the club...on loan...to Widnes. Crazy! Could we compete with a squad packed with inexperience and a new half back combination after losing another star player? Would the left edge provide much attacking threat with an aging Pat Richards outside a new combination between stand off, 2nd row and centre? What would Wigan do?

The answer may already have been given away with the squad number announcement giving Liam Farrell Hock's #12 jersey before he had even left the club. Farrell, the Ginger Pearl, made his Wigan first grade debut in 2010 and went on to play in winning Grand Final and Challenge Cup final 17s (something Gareth Hock has never done). Outside of those victories, Faz is possibly best remembered for his last gasp game winning try in the 2011 Good Friday derby against St Helens. A record of 30 tries in 81 appearances for Wigan up to the end of the 2012 season helped get him a call up to the England Elite Training Squad, but he's yet to make his senior international debut.

On the flip side, what would this do for Widnes. Their return to Super League in 2012 saw them finish bottom, though positive signs were seen towards the end of the season and they ended up only bottom on points difference. Kevin Brown was seen as a marquee signing for the new campaign and getting his brother-in-law Hock on board gave them a top tier player. A player who made his Wigan first team debut in 2003 and made 191 appearances, scoring 48 tries, over a ten season period that saw significant time missed first due to injury and then due to suspension over recreational drug use. A player who has earned Super League young player of the year 2003 and Dream Team 2012 individual accolades as well as representative honours for both Great Britain and England.

Well, at this mid-way point of the 2013 season, I thought it would be interesting to see how the deal has worked out for both teams and both players by having a look at the stats the players have put up and the results in the games they've played.

Faz and Wigan
After 13 games, having played all teams once, Wigan sit 1st in the table. Farrell has played in all 13 games, playing almost every minute of the Super League season, and the team have a record of 10-2-1. Here is a breakdown of his stats in those games:



As a Wigan fan, I've seen 9 of Farrell's performances live and caught extended highlights of the other games he has played in, so I've seen plenty of what he has done beyond just the numbers. What has stood out is his work rate and quality in defense. The numbers are impressive themselves - leading the team in tackles and marker tackles, as well as barely missing a tackle - and watching him you get the impression that he reads the attack very well and can also scramble in broken play to prevent the opponent scoring. In attack his relationship with Blake Green rivals that of Finch and Hoffman from a couple of years back. They seem to read each other far better than the defenders can keep up with them. Their link up on tries against Warrington and at Huddersfield exemplify their relationship and it has become a key threat in Wigan's attack.

Whilst Farrell's performances have been consistently top notch and have put him in the Man of Steel reckoning, the thing that really stands out for me is his performances in games against better teams where Wigan haven't gone as well. He was arguably Wigan's best player in all three of the games they haven't won - Warrington at home and Huddersfield and Leeds away. In these games he has totaled 3 tries, 2 try assists, 12 tackle busts and 4 clean breaks. He made 117 tackles and missed 0. He did as much as anyone in those games and was one of the few creative influences in the team at Huddersfield that lacked Sam Tomkins' attacking flair. Big performances in attack and defense were also seen in big games against rivals St Helens and rejuvenated Bradford.

Gaz and Widnes
Widnes' round 4 game with Leeds was rescheduled for Leeds to play the World Club Challenge, so their season is 12 games old. Hock carried an injury into the season so made his bow in round 2 against St Helens. He has played in 8 of 11th placed Widnes' 12 games - a red card against Bradford accounting for him missing the trip to Catalan in round 7 and the loan deal preventing him playing Wigan. The record in games Hock has played is 3-1-4. Here's the breakdown for Hock:


I haven't seen a much of Hock's performances. The live Sky games he has played in have shown me he still has aspects of the best and the worst in him. His offload game can be a gamble and it doesn't come off all the time. His offload numbers are high, but so are the errors. His penalty numbers aren't great and watching him you see that he still plays far too close to that line between aggression and excess, crossing that line with a verbal attack on the officials in a game against Bradford that his teammates did a great job to salvage a draw from. In the Sky game against Hull FC he was massive and saw plenty of the ball, but also showed his flaws giving away penalties, including the less forgivable sin of doing so whilst in possession. His biggest performance may well be the Warrington Easter derby fixture - he contributed in attack with 85 metres and 6 offloads, with no errors, and balanced that with his highest tackle count of 27 and greater than usual effort shown with 5 marker tackles.

The problem seems to be a lack of consistency with Hock, which stands out more in a poorer team where there is less around you to make up for poor defensive efforts and lost ball. A crucial knock on over the line against Wakefield could have changed that game, and he was a non-factor in a big defeat at Huddersfield as well as a sizable win over Salford. He has played in 75% of Widnes wins and only 57% of their defeats, so in that regard he has had a positive impact - their record without him is 1-1-3 (I've counted him as both playing and not playing in the Bradford game). In 2 of the 3 wins Hock has definitely contributed heavily to the team success.

Comparisons and conclusions
The following shows how the two compare against the teams they've both faced up to. They both play left-side so in general they'll have gone up against the same blokes in these games:


This is an overall comparison of their per game averages:


People can draw their own conclusions from the figures, but when considering the numbers it would be remiss not to note that Farrell is playing in a better team with better players around him.

The quality and structure of the teams' attacking play does require different things from these two players. Farrell often hits decent ball when he is one of a number of potential recipients after his team have been put on the front foot. This has given him more carries and metres than Hock despite a similar average gain, and helps him to make more breaks. Hock needs to make things happen on his own more, in part because of the team he is in and in part because his mind thinks he has to, which means he makes significantly more offloads - and on the flip side, more errors too as these are lower percentage plays than Wigan run. Both have shown similar capability to set up tries for their team mates, but Farrell's 10 tries on the season is a great return for a second row. Another area where he is vastly outperforming Hock is in tackle busts, which may come as a surprise when you consider the relative size and physicality of the two players, but Farrell is hitting opponents often with great body position and speed to prevent himself getting fully wrapped up, and he looks to then break free more than get the ball out like Hock. A key stat that isn't featured in those Opta share on the Super League website (my source) is fast play of the balls. From observation alone I would guess Farrell outperforms Hock in this category - when he doesn't break free he likes to get out of a tackle quickly, whereas Hock might have more men tackling him in the first place and sometimes likes a little shove action when he is getting up to play the ball.

In defence, Wigan concede the fewest points per game as a team where as Widnes are one of the worst. Farrell is a big part in Wigan's success - he didn't miss a tackle until round 9 and has made the most tackles the team, also leading in marker tackles, showing his work ethic and fitness must be very good. Hock on the other hand does far less work in defence and is three times as likely to miss a tackle than Farrell is. Both have been fairly guilty of giving penalties away, but in relative terms Hock is much the worse offender. In terms of penalties per appearance he is slightly worse, but you have to consider with less carries and less tackles, he has been far less involved in play than Farrell has for the penalties that have been given away - and Hock has seen a red card for his poor discipline for mouthing off at the referee in Widnes' home game to Bradford.

In summary, Wigan are showing no real ill effects following the exit of several key experienced players before this season and it's arguable that in one of those positions Farrell has upped the play at left second row from what fans saw a season ago. Widnes are far more competitive in the first half of 2013 than the first half of 2012 and despite a couple of punishing scorelines they've shown they have an outside shot at 8th position, with Hock being a big part of that, involved in three of the four wins.

The deal has worked out well all round so far. Wigan haven't sufferred from the negative parts of Hock's game, but benefited from the best he can offer as he performed highly to help Widnes knock off Wigan's title rivals Warrington. Widnes have had a world class player to get them up the table from the wooden spoon position of a year ago and attract a bit more media attention along the way. Both players are likely to be in Steve McNamara's World Cup squad. Hock has secured a move to compete in the best club competition in the world in 2014 with the NRL Parramatta Eels and Farrell has seen himself secure a new long term deal at Wigan amidst talk of being a potential Cherry and White captain in years to come. 

Is it time for pre-qualifying?

This debate raised its head again in England because we actually beat a team we're expected to by an distance we're supposed to be beating them by, and everyone asked if we should even be playing them in the first place. But it's not a new debate, and it's not just England that have asked the question.

Now I'm asking the question should there be pre-qualification in Europe for international football tournaments? And, the other question that would need some serious consideration if the first one was answered 'yes', how would this be organised?

A quick Google search will give you an array of pieces that try to answer the first question. Most of them flap around with some sentiment towards the spirit of the underdog before dismissing the 'minnows' as a waste of time for the larger nations with no-one really benefiting from one sided scorelines. I would argue these games bestow no real benefit to the top nations, or even the middle-tier nations, but it's hard to say they are of no benefit to the lesser nations - those shop owners and insurance salesmen that put on their national colours with pride and try valiantly in vain against some of the best players in the world. For the blokes playing it must be great. For the fans, they get to see the top players in their country. For the national bodies, they get to fund the running of their national team for another campaign. For hoteliers, restaurateurs, bar owners, taxi drivers, these games are a massive boost.

Now, getting rid of these teams, by and large, from the main qualification process will only be of benefit to the better footballing countries. It cuts down the amount of predictable and dull games they have to play to get to a World Cup or Euros. It means they can fill the gaps now arising in the international calendar with more lucrative friendly games against each other or the powerhouses of South America.

In European club competition we also see various levels of qualification criteria and pre-qualification, designed to get the biggest teams more often than not playing in the important stages of tournaments. It begs the question why a different attitude is taken to national competition?

Well one clear answer is numbers. There are far more poor quality clubs than countries, relatively speaking. However, one startling fact going against the numbers argument is that only UEFA and CONMEBOL (South America) don't have any pre-qualifying for World Cup tournaments - the South American confederation only has 10 teams mind, UEFA has 53, the joint highest. The others all whittle things down before qualification proper gets under way.

The general consensus is pre-qualification would be the way to go. The problem people who get to this conclusion, however they have got there, all stumble upon is how to arrange this. I have an idea...

The World Cup
For the World Cup, teams are generally seeded by world rankings, rightly or wrongly. I don't see any reason to move away from that. Generally 13 European countries get to the finals. An decent group size would be 5 nations per group, spread across 9 groups, means 45 of the 53 still get to the qualification proper.

The top 4 seeds in each group will be drawn from seeded groups of 9, making up 36 of the qualification competitors. The final pot would could from a pre-qualifying playoff round. Of the 17 remaining nations, the best would be straight in, the others would play each over two-legs in an open draw to gain one of the remaining 8 spots. The 8 teams that miss out can do what they will for two years - play a tournament amongst themselves, try and draw some lucrative friendly form bigger nations etc. Group winners and best runner up go to the dance, along with 4 winners of runners up playoffs.

That could work. Fewer games in qualification generally. The really poor teams that never look like improving won't be wasting anyone's time. As things stand, Northern Ireland would be pre-qualifying and Scotland are on the brink.

The Euros
Oh, darn it, here's where UEFA mess it up. For some reason they now want 24 nations making up the finals for this tournament. That's nearly half the members of the confederation. When you think of it that way, what's the point of pre-qualifying?

A better way to go would be to not make the best 8 teams have to qualify at all (how you decide best 8 would be up for debate - world rankings aren't really used for this tournament, maybe go with the quarter finalists last time around auto qualify). Really, reducing qualifying stages is for their benefit anyway so that they play less games against poorer teams. We know they are highly likely to get into a 24 team competition anyway, the outcome is known in advance, another reason people argue for pre-qualifying.

Then the remaining 45 battle it out in 9 groups of 5. Here, the minnows play the 2nd tier countries, giving them a chance to play against some bigger countries - for example, Croatia, Netherlands and Russia would be in the pot based on not being Euro 2012 quarter finalists. The holder and host should auto-qualify too, so if the host isn't in the 8 previous quarter finalists, it just reduces the amount of teams in the qualification stage by one.

These are my poorly conceived ideas if UEFA decide to cut down the amount of frankly boring international qualification games. Anyone do any better?

Two Games Too Much? Super League's Easter fixtures by the numbers

This debate seems to get trotted out every year now. An overseas coach will come out in the media and criticise the Easter schedule, and a home grown representative of the game will come out and defend the Easter double header.

The main argument against the fixtures is player welfare and whether its right to put these athletes out there for back to back matches in the physically intense sport of modern rugby league. Other concerns are also raised about how good an advert for the game the second fixture is - the feeling is they will lack the intensity of the Friday games and the other weekly rounds, you might see a drop off in performances and end up with very one sided fixtures, which isn't good for the sport.

The supporters of the double-header often hark back to the tradition of the Easter weekend in the sports calendar. Its seen as being positive for the games to be on bank holidays during school holidays as it should have a positive impact on crowds. The best defence of the fixtures I've seen came as 'tackle two' of Guardian journalist Andy Wilson's most recent 'Set of Six' blog - that these games give youth their head as senior players don't have the time to recover and the matches are a bridge between academy competition and the usual intensity of other Super League rounds.

However, I'm not going to go over what other people have said, I'm going to look at the numbers - two numbers in particular: 1) attendances and 2) points difference in the games. I've looked at the last 10 seasons and compared Good Friday (GF) fixtures, including ones played Thursday nights, with Easter Monday (EM) fixtures, including the odd Tuesday night games, and also included the season averages (for 2013, this is averages after first 10 rounds). The numbers are summarised in this table:

The boxed figures indicate best of all figures. Bold indicates the better of the two that year. Red indicates the figure is worse that the average for that season. Obviously, the higher the attendance the better, the lower the points difference the better.

Attendances
The crowds have always been better on Good Friday, apart from the highest figure being 2007's Easter Monday. The best explanatory factor is that the first proper Hull derby for years was staged at the KC on that Easter Monday. Wigan also travelled the Leeds, so the best two supported clubs met on that Monday, and four of the five worst attended clubs that season hosted Good Friday games, which weren't all derbies in this year.

Since 2008, four or five genuine derby matches have taken place in each set of Good Friday fixtures, whereas 2005 and 2007 were the only years where Easter Monday saw a derby take place. The influence of derby games in the crowds being high is clear - teams tend to get their highest crowds against their closest rivals, particularly in the big derbies Wigan-Saints, Leeds-Bradford and the Hull derby, that make up the bulk of the aggregate attendance at Easter and see similarly strong crowds in reverse fixtures.

A noteworthy observation is six of ten Easter Monday rounds have seen lower average attendances than the season average, including all of the last five years - two years are significantly lower, 2010 and 2012. This goes against one of the common defences of the Easter fixtures, as Easter Monday games are no more popular in general than average weekly rounds - although its worth noting the weekly round figures benefit from the inflationary Magic Weekend, but even taking this into account 2010 and 2012 were below average and 2004 had no Magic Weekend.

Looking beyond average attendances for the whole round and focusing on the crowds at the individual games gives some more perspective. Not including 2013 as the season isn't over yet, on the Good Fridays I looked at there were 58 games. In 41 of them, the crowd was bigger than the home team's average for that whole season. 9 of those games weren't derby matches, and the 8 that were below the home team's season average all were not derby matches. On the Easter Mondays, 26 of the 58 games (including 1 derby) saw higher crowds than the home team's season average, 32 games (including 1 derby) saw lower crowds than the home team's season average - more than half.

Maybe that second game on Easter Monday isn't as big a deal with the fans as the game's administrators think.

Points difference
The general trend is Good Friday games are closer than Easter Monday games. Seven of the ten years saw a closer average points difference in Good Friday games over Easter Monday games. Also, six of the ten years sees a higher average gap between winning and losing teams than the season as a whole saw for Easter Monday, some a number of points wider, when that is only seen in two of ten Good Fridays. The overall average for Easter Monday also suggests less competitive matches in general than all regular season matches during the entire period.

One notable exception is 2008, where Easter Monday saw the closest games of any Easter round in the period. Actually, that season, both rounds saw mostly close games - 8 of 12 ended within two scores - but the difference was two one-sided results were seen on Good Friday and only one, with a smaller points gap too, on Easter Monday that year.

I've broken it down a bit further to see how close individual games were, beyond the averages (as these can be skewed by massively one-sided games like Warrington at Salford in 2010 and Wigan at Hull KR this year). Categorising a close game as one that finishes with a two score (12 point) difference or less and a blow-out as 30 point or more difference between the teams, gives these results:

2004 to 2008 had six games in each round, 2009 onwards had seven games each round.

Good Friday sees more close games and fewer blow-outs than Easter Monday, supporting the averages. More than half the Good Friday games are close, and I'd note 12 of these close games weren't derbies. Of the 11 Good Friday blow-outs, 6 were derbies. Nearly half of the Easter Monday games were close. Only two traditional derbies were played on Mondays during the 10 years - one was a close game, one was a blow-out. These figures suggest that a game being a derby doesn't have a great deal of influence over how close a match might end up being.

All of this suggests games aren't as close on Easter Monday, which is less exciting for the fans and it's not a great advert for the sport that over a quarter of the games are one sided blow-outs over the years. The average points difference, number of close games and number of blow-outs all support the commonly held notion that Easter Monday games lack the intensity and competitiveness of Good Friday games, or of the average weekly round.

A lot of observers also point out that it isn't just the second game in three days that causes players and competitiveness to suffer, but it's also that third game in little over a week that suffers too. In seven of the nine years 2004-2012 (inclusive), the weekend after Easter has seen an average points difference for the round of 19 points or more, so the average game is decided by more than three converted tries. This shows that round suffers for competitiveness too - again, not a great advert for the league.

Edit: I've decided to throw in the figures from looking at the 'third' game of the Easter schedule, the rond after Easter Monday. I'll let you draw your own conclusions from it...


Summary
Overall, I think it's reasonable to conclude that if we were to lose the Easter Monday fixture it wouldn't be the worst thing for the sport. The crowds aren't brilliant, the games can quite often be a bad advert for the league, and it extents that effect to the week after too.

I'm not saying it should be taken from the calendar, but I do think the RFL should have a proper think about whether this scheduling is worth keeping. I feel the drawbacks out weigh the positives. A re-think could be to get Sky buy-in to have a extended televised schedule of games but only play one round over the weekend - say, Leeds-Bradford on the Thursday night every year, Wigan-Saints on the Friday afternoon, Castleford-Wakefield on Friday night, London-Catalans Saturday, Huddersfield-Salford Sunday, Hull derby Monday lunch time and Warrington-Widnes Monday evening - still televise four games like they do at the moment, or all of them would be nice.

...and finally...
Whilst I've been looking at these numbers I'll just make another couple of points.

1) The crowd numbers for this season are concerning, only averaging 8,718 as it stands. We have the Magic weekend, the reverse derby fixtures and the important games at the season end to help get that figure up. Plus, it has remained wintry cold to this point of the season, meaning many fans may have chosen to or been forced to miss games due to the weather. Lets hope for a dry and warm summer to bring fans in.

2) Whilst the RFL Chief Exec Nigel Wood came out after Good Friday to proclaim this as the most competitive year in Super League history, the current average points difference per game of 19.6 is actually higher than seen in 13 of the 17 completed seasons (as all figures shown, this is correct as of 2013 round 10). On the flip side, with another 17 rounds to be completed there have already been 7 drawn games - the record for a whole summer season is 8 in 2003. Also, when Wood came out with his words it was after round 9, when the difference between the top club and bottom club was the narrowest margin ever seen at that stage of a Super League campaign (10 competition points). Of course, this just shows that you can chose the numbers you want to support your argument, and in reality, for all the entertaining close games we've seen this season so far there have still been plenty of one-sided affairs - I just think the weaker teams are more capable of beating the stronger teams in one off games now, which compresses the league table.