Michael Hooper - Part 2: the role of awards

This is the second article in a series which looks in depth at some of the arguments for and against Michael Hooper.  In this post I will focus on awards given to players, in particular the John Eales Medal ("JEM") and the IRB Player of the Year Award.

These accolades are often used as arguments by bloggers to support their assessment of a player.

If they win these awards, they must be good. If you don't think so, while you must be up against some fairly expert knowledge on the point. Therefore, the argument goes, you would be an idiot to disagree.

This applies certainly to Michael Hooper who has racked up the awards over his short career.  A catalogue of his awards to date:

• Australian Rookie of the Year (2012)
• Australian Super Rugby Player of the Year (2013)
• Australian Under 20s player of the Year (2011)
• John Eales Medalist (2013)
• Waratahs Player of the Year (2013, 2014)
• Australia's Choice Player of the Year (2014 - chosen by the fans)

How do you win these awards?  And, what are their relevance?  These questions have come under more spotlight recently given the controversial inclusion of Johnny Sexton in the consideration for the IRB Player of the Year award.

The JEM is awarded to the best player in Australian Rugby Union each year and began in 2002 (inaugural winner George Smith).  According to Wikipedia, the award is based on a 3-2-1 points tallying system - awarded after each test match by the players.  A sort of players' player medal.

In the year that Michael Hooper won, he polled 297 votes, 100 votes ahead of his nearest rival Wycliff Palu.  What do these numbers mean in context?

Assuming each player in the 23 person matchday squad has 6 votes to allocate, that equals a possible 138 votes per test match available for distribution among the players who played (realistically 17-18 players - it would be hard to see a substitute being awarded as many votes as a run-on player for obvious reasons).

In the 12 month period relevant to the JEM the Wallabies played 13 tests (the JEM is awarded prior to the EOYT, but would include the tests of the following EOYT), this means that 1794 votes where available to be won from other players in the period relevant to the JEM.

On this basis, Michael Hooper secured 16.5% of the potential vote followed by Palu with 10.3%.

Hardly a compelling statistic, when put into context.  In my view this shows that from a player's perspective there is a lot of differing opinion on who the best player is each game.  I don't mean to denigrate the fact that at the end of the day Hooper got more votes than the next man, it is interesting to see that it is by no means clear cut.  While we can assume that the votes are cast in anonymous fashion, is it not hard to imagine factors outside of a players performance on the pitch contributing to a player's decision to vote for a peer.  In this way, this award might not fully reflect the performance of the player.  By its nature it would allow some player bias - are players in the best position to judge performance?

In contrast to the JEM, the IRB international player of the year award is awarded on the basis of votes cast by a panel of experts (known as the IRB awards panel), this year:

John Eales (AUS, 1991-2001) - Convenor POSITION - Lock	Will Greenwood (ENG, 1997-2004) POSITION - Centre
Gavin Hastings (SCO, 1986-1995) POSITION - Full Back	Francois Pienaar (RSA, 1993-1996) POSITION - Flanker
Paul Wallace (IRE, 1995-2002) POSITION - Prop	Scott Quinnell (WAL, 1993-2002) POSITION – Back row
Agustin Pichot (ARG, 1995-2007) POSITION – Scrum half	Tana Umaga (NZL, 1997-2005) POSITION – Centre
Raphel Ibanez (FRA, 1996-2007) POSITION - Hooker

The process involves the panel awarding a 3-2-1 after every test match (from January to the last test of the year), at which point following a discussion (regarding form, appearances and opposition) the players are nominated to the public and the media.  Selected media and public input is then provided before the final award of the player.

I think there are a number of key points to highlight about the process above:

1. Given the primacy in the process provided to the panel (that's a lot of p's), it is reasonable to question how such a panel is appointed and the nature of its composition.
2. Irrespective of the votes tally following the test matches, the decision is still subject to a discussion between the panel.  This means there remains a residual discretion for the panel to act contrary to the results of the vote tally.
3. The IRB website states that selected media and public input is the final stages in the process.  What weighting is provided to this part of the process? And why only selected media - and who are the selected media? How do they become selected media?

In 2014, the nominated players are:

• Jonathon Sexton (Ireland)
• Willie Le Roux (SA)
• Duane Vermuelen (SA)
• Brodie Retallick (NZ)
• Julian Savea (NZ)

To put this in to context, during the period in which the IRB Awards panel considered the nominees, their respective teams records were as follows:

Ireland: 6 W 1 L (Opponents - six nations, Argentina whitewash)
SA: 6 W 2 L (Opponents - Rugby Championship, Wales whitewash)
NZ: 7 W 1 D 1L (Opponents - Rugby Championship, England whitewash).

From these statistics, we can see that Sexton and Ireland have had a great season (even recently rising to their highest ever ranking #3 in the World).  Against this background, it is not hard to see why Sexton made the cut (although I am unsure whether the win against SA was included).

Sexton talk aside, the awards are useful measures of a players performance, but they should not be used I think without a better understanding of how they are calculated.  Each award is subjective in the way that they are awarded, this is the important thing to remember.  But it is also important to note that the weight of subjective opinion is what is required to win these awards. 

A final word, sometimes armchair Rugby critics can be deceived into thinking that their opinion actually matters.  It doesn't.  The opinion of the other players in the squad means a lot when assessing the value of a player to a team.  I think this is particularly important in the case of Michael Hooper.

Michael Hooper - a love hate relationship?

(Photo credit to abc.net.au)

Michael Hooper is a real conversation starter on the various Rugby sites covering the game in the Southern Hemisphere.  These conversations tend to move quickly into heated arguments, reflecting the love or hate that the various fans have for him as a player.

In their condensed form the arguments for Michael Hooper tend to be grouped into the following categories:

1. Age based arguments which focus on his youth relative to his achievements, musing on his potential for the future.
2. Arguments which focus on his accolades to date as a sort of "well if they rate him, who are we to say any better sort of argument".
3. Statistical based arguments, which are self explanatory.

There have also been some common themes in the arguments against Michael Hooper.  These tend to centre around the narrative that has developed on the internet about Hooper, namely that he is ineffective and/or absent at the breakdown (more on the role of these narratives in a later post), and include that he:

1. Lacks the size and physicality at the breakdown to affect turnovers, secure ball and add weight to the contact area.
2. Plays too wide, often like an outside centre, again reducing his ruck involvement (which leads to the usual arguments surrounding the traditional role of the flanker in Rugby).
3. The perceived lack of breakdown work from him places huge pressure on the other moving parts of the Wallabies already fickle forward pack.

In this series of articles on Michael Hooper I want to dig a bit deeper than these often trumpeted arguments for and against him, in the hope of finding (or maybe not finding) some definitive facts on which to base a solid opinion on his play. 

To do this, I will be looking at each of these arguments in greater depth, and adding some statistical and analysis techniques that I have picked up from the US (mainly in the context of basketball) but also in other sports.  At this stage this analysis is largely limited to publicly available statistics, but I am in the process of developing a statistic gathering tool in addition to a video analysis tool which I hope to make available as soon as possible to the discerning Rugby reader of this blog.

I hope you enjoy the series.

John