FACT: Bryce pings Wallabies twice as much

I thought that I would crunch some numbers on Bryce Lawrence, so I asked the forum members about it and they thought it was a good idea as well.

I’ve been tracking every ref throughout 2011 — OK, not every ref, but the professional ones. So I have a trend of their games they have officiated this year. It means I can compare with other refs and crunch a few numbers to see if Bryce is different or not.

This neither a Bryce love-in nor an anti-Bryce piece, just what the numbers say. I will be using averages and was going to do 95% confidence intervals but thought it was too hard to explain in a short piece..

I have Bryce’s data from week 2 of the Super tournament and I found that after a while, collecting more games doesn’t change the averages a lot. I’m also going to compare his numbers when doing the Wallabies games.

Starting with scrums. Lawrence is averaging 6.3 scrum resets per game. This is the highest number of resets per game for any ref in the RWC. Before RWC he was averaging 4.4 per game and his average is now 4.9. In the 2011 Wallaby games he was averaging 6.3. For the record the average number of scrum resets for a RWC ref is 4.1. Joubert is the lowest with 2.5 per game.

For scrum penalties, Lawrence is 3rd highest in the RWC with 4.3 per game. He was 2.9 before the RWC. He is averaging 4.1 scrum pens per Wallaby game in 2011. Pearson is averaging 1.8 scrum pens per game and the RWC average is 3.7.

For total penalties awarded Lawrence is averaging 18.8. Before RWC his average was 18.3. For Wallabies in 2011, he is averaging 17.0. This place him 8th in RWC for penalties (Rolland is 1st with 23.5).

Now — and this is weird — for Lawrence’s three Wallabies games the penalty count is 33 awarded to the opposition and 18 awarded to the Wallabies. Still weird is in two games the Wallabies were penalised twice as much as their opposition. In the Tri Nations versus the Springboks it was 12–6. In the RWC versus Russia, Wallabies conceded 9–4. In the Ireland game the Wallabies conceded 12–8.

His source of penalties against the Wallabies are scrums first, averaging 3.2 per game, then ‘other’ 2nd at 2.8 per game and then offside 3rd at 1.9 per game. ‘Other’ is where it’s not a ruck/maul, scrum, lineout or offside. Things like off-the-ball play, late tackles and back chat.

However, it’s also not all one way traffic. It seems that Lawrence will hand out very few ruck penalties in 2011 Wallabies games. His RWC ruck penalty average is 10.5, 8th lowest. In the Wallabies games his average is 8.3.

For offside penalties Lawrence is ranked 9th with 2.8 per RWC game. He is averaging 1.8 for 2011.

Of the penalties Lawrence awarded in RWC, 5.8 are inside the 22. This ranks him 8th in this regard. Also an average of 8.6 penalties will result in the team taking a penalty kick.

In terms of bias Lawrence is 60% more likely to award a RWC penalty kick on the left side of the field than on the right side of the field.

Overall, apart for the weird penalty ratio he awards to the Wallabies’ opposition [just apart from that?!? – Ed], there is not a great difference between his averages and his stats when he refs Australia.