This is the second part of my blog related to predictive & rugby.
In part 1, I explained the data preparation, the creation of the predictive model and the findings. Part 3 details the application of the predictive model to new data (RWC 2015 players).
The tragedy of modern rugby players is that despite their amazing performances, few of them will be remembered on the long-run.
didier.mazoue pointed my attention on the fact that a performance data set is not capturing 100% of the reasons why certain players become legends.
Call it charisma, leadership, fair-play, beauty or sometimes evil character traits (this is rugby after all!), but its participates to our collective memories.
Sebastien “Caveman” Chabal is a retired French player that was featured a lot in the sport medias over the past years.
I will first test my model on that player, to see if its fame is coming from its performance or its from its "beardy" look :wink:
I fill the 6 variables that are part of the model, using the data I collected.
The score I get is quite low (0,2 out of 1), which means that Mr. Chabal's popularity will probably never exceed France’s boundaries in the coming decades.
Now the fun part starts - trying to predict the future :cool:
I am going to place a bet on Jonathan Sexton becoming an all-star of the next world cup, so as to please my Dublin colleagues :wink: and also because I feel he deserves it!
Let’s back this up with some degree of rationale:
Let’s be positive and say Ireland will reach the semi-finals (I don’t want to know what that would mean for France :sad: ).
If such is the case, Jonathan Sexton will play 6 additional matches, win 5 of them and unfortunately lose the 6th one.
Let’s pretend he will score an average 8 points per match, that means a total of 48 points.
Here are its current RWC stats:
Jonathan Sexton’s stats after the World Cup would be
There is slightly one chance out of two that Jonathan Sexton will become one of my greatest players of all time for the rugby world cup.
Let’s now unleash fantasy and explore different scenarios.
Thanks for reading this blog post, I hope you have enjoyed it and please comment on who you think will be the next RWC 2015 rock-stars :cool:
I wish all of you a nice summer break, see you on SCN in September!
Antoine
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