By John Eakins
While watching the Ireland v Scotland Pool game last Sunday, it occurred to me that the Captain for both teams played in the same position in the team (Hooker or Number 2 - Rory Best for Ireland and Stuart McInally for Scotland). It made me wonder if this was a more common occurrence as I could recall some international captains in the past who also played in that position (Dylan Hartley of England and Sean Fitzpatrick of New Zealand were two that sprung to mind).
While admittedly a crude sample to examine, I collected data from the squads of the teams at the Rugby World Cup currently taking place (looking at club teams and/or teams over time would increase the sample size and perhaps give more insights). At least it is contemporary. The following Wikipedia page lists the squad members of each team and indicates the captain of the squad. In addition, information on their position, age and number of caps is also given. Of the 20 Captains at the Rugby World Cup, 10 are positioned in the Back Row (Numbers 6, 7 and 8), 3 at Hooker (Number 2), 3 at Centre (Numbers 12 and 13) and 1 each at Lock (Numbers 4 and 5), Fly Half (Number 10), Wing (Numbers 11 and 14) and Full Back (Number 15)
One should be careful with these numbers however as the back row position covers three personnel while the centre covers two and the hooker just one. To adjust for this, we calculate a ratio of the number of captains per players in that position in the squad listed at the Rugby World Cup. The table below presents the figures and shows that even when adjusting for the number of players, the Back row is still the most popular position for a captain in the current Rugby World Cup.
While watching the Ireland v Scotland Pool game last Sunday, it occurred to me that the Captain for both teams played in the same position in the team (Hooker or Number 2 - Rory Best for Ireland and Stuart McInally for Scotland). It made me wonder if this was a more common occurrence as I could recall some international captains in the past who also played in that position (Dylan Hartley of England and Sean Fitzpatrick of New Zealand were two that sprung to mind).
While admittedly a crude sample to examine, I collected data from the squads of the teams at the Rugby World Cup currently taking place (looking at club teams and/or teams over time would increase the sample size and perhaps give more insights). At least it is contemporary. The following Wikipedia page lists the squad members of each team and indicates the captain of the squad. In addition, information on their position, age and number of caps is also given. Of the 20 Captains at the Rugby World Cup, 10 are positioned in the Back Row (Numbers 6, 7 and 8), 3 at Hooker (Number 2), 3 at Centre (Numbers 12 and 13) and 1 each at Lock (Numbers 4 and 5), Fly Half (Number 10), Wing (Numbers 11 and 14) and Full Back (Number 15)
One should be careful with these numbers however as the back row position covers three personnel while the centre covers two and the hooker just one. To adjust for this, we calculate a ratio of the number of captains per players in that position in the squad listed at the Rugby World Cup. The table below presents the figures and shows that even when adjusting for the number of players, the Back row is still the most popular position for a captain in the current Rugby World Cup.
The obvious question now is why. An initial reaction might be to say that players in the back row positions touch the ball or are involved in the majority of plays during a game but if that is the case, why are scrum-half’s or fly-half’s not captains more frequently? One thing that we can test using our data is the influence of experience in the form of both the number of caps and age. The table below presents the average age and average number of caps by position. Interestingly no obvious pattern appears to be present with the Back row/Flanker/Number 8 position being one of the lowest rather than one of the highest in both categories.
A more sophisticated analysis is perhaps required. The final table present results from two logit regressions which seek to explain the factors which significantly determine the odds of being a captain or not (the dependent variable is a 1, 0 dummy variable). In the first regression we include dummy variables to represent each position on a rugby team. Because some positions are never captains and are perfectly collinear with the dependent variable we ‘lose’ some observations in this specification. The second regression codes the positions as simply forwards (Hooker/Prop/Lock/Back row) and backs (Scrum Half/Fly Half/Centre/Wing/Full Back) in order to circumvent this problem. As can be seen in both regressions, the number of caps is a significant predictor (significant at the 1% level) of the odds of being a captain while position and age are insignificant. In simple terms, once you control for the number of caps, the position on a rugby team doesn’t actually matter in determining the odds of being a captain or not. With a further calculation based on the coefficient estimates, it can be estimated that an extra cap will increase the odds of being a captain by approximately 4.8%.
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