World Champs with a World of Experience

My goodness!!  I spent a couple of hours earlier, researching some statistics around the experience of the Bok Team which fronts up to the Aussies in Perth this weekend.
You will be awestruck by the difference in experience levels between our World Number 1 Team and the current Wallaby 22.  I know I was!!!

Well, here's the info.  It's phenomenal.

First up.  Smittie and his match 22 boast a staggering 813 caps in comparison to the Wallabies' impressive 586.  The Bok backs have 362 whilst the hosts' backs weih in with 201.  In similar vein, our forwards bring 451 caps to the party, with their Australian counterparts numbering 385.

Looking deeper, we see that this works out at the Boks averaging 37 caps per player to the 27 of the Wallabies.

Our starting lineup has 634, with theirs numbering 440, whilst our bench has 179 tests between them in comparison to the Aussies' 146.

The average number of caps per backline player, and per forward, indicates an interesting aspect, namely that our backline seems far more experienced than theirs.  We have 36 caps per man to their 20.  Up front honours are more even, with the World Champs having 38 caps per man to the 32 of Robbie Deans' charges.

As if these stats were not conclusive enough evidence of the experiential supremacy of the Boks' I decided to delve into the realm of experience in combinations, and compared what I thought to be the  coaches' seven most important combinations to consider when selecting a team.  Again, Deans did not have much to entuse about, as only 2 of his combinations are more experienced than those of Div's Boks.  And even then, the difference is not THAT marked.

Important to note here is that (in all cases) these numbers include the substitutes, based on the positions they are most likely to cover.

See for yourself:

1. Frontrow:       SA 146       Aus 152  (6 more to the Wallabies)
2. Second-row   SA 163       Aus 72    (Boks have 91 more)
3. Back-row       SA 142      Aus 161  (Aus by 19, although Brussow's 7 tests are worth 50!!)
4. Halfbacks       SA 126      Aus 94    (SA 32 ahead)
5. Midfield          SA 124      Aus 46    (Aussies seriously lacking)
6. Back 3            SA 145      Aus 65    (another big gap)
7. 8-9-10-12       SA 164     Aus 133   ( a healthy gap in this crucial combination)
8. Leadership      SA  173     Aus 172   (nothing much in it here, between 2 teams captains & vc's)

So you see, these are the kind of things that we use to bring about comparative analyses in the game.  Ultimately, we all know that stats like these do not bring any guarantees of performance.

But I'm going with the proven old adage that "there's no substitute for experience"

Go Bokke!!!