The Player Watch Project

First topic message reminder :

Folks


I was wondering if people might be interested in participating in a little project. Playing time and appearances for players and clubs is a hot topic at present in the context of the upcoming discussions around the next agreement for the European Cups in 2014/15. It's also useful to see how particular players are doing within your own teams that you support or in an international context within a particular season.

What I was looking to do from the start of this season is to compile the appearances and playing times across the 6 Nations if possible. I've started putting together data based on games played so far this weekend, but there's a lot of data to compile, and in some cases, not easily available. For example, some leagues give the times when a player was hooked during a game, others don't. Or rather, it's not compiled in one place. The Pro 12 lineups give players, and who was replaced, but not when. However, the match timeline does give them as long as you work through the full timeline. If the workload was to be split across a few people who were interested in the project, it would be possible. People take their own team, and one or two others, or whatever suits people's workloads.

That all assumes that people would be interested in taking part. If it was deemed worthwhile, then I've no problem if the output becomes a regular part of 606v2 or V2 (not sure what each bit means), and it would become a useful resource for people on here, and perhaps, as it developed over the season, for others to peruse the site as well, and build traffic.

The table below is merely an example. It could contain other headings e.g. LV Cup, B& I Cup, no of matches, etc. This could be a summary sheet, and a more detailed one kept off-line or on another site thingy (see how technically literate I am?) that has the individual totals of each round or match week. If people sent data in an agreed common format and layout, I'll happily assemble it.

Fee free to comment, pour scorn, wax lyrical, or simply emote.

Surname	First name	Position	Team	Country	League	H Cup	C Cup	Nov Int'l	6 Nations	'A' Intls	Total time
O'Driscoll	Brian	Centre	Leinster	Irl	23	80	0	56	75	0	234
Ashton	Chris	Wing	Saracens	Eng	43	62	0	46	80	0	231
Roberts	Jamie	Centre	Cardiff	Wal	80	76	0	66	42	0	264
Grey	Richie	Lock	Sharks	Sco	80	80	0	52	80	0	292
Rougerie	Aurelien	Centre	Bourgogne	Fra	70	80	0	62	80	0	292
Parisse	Sergio	No 8	S Francais	Ita	60	0	70	52	80	0	262

Actaully PH, if you have a list of all of the players in each leauge with their club and position to hand I'd be very interested in using that data for a side project (scoring stats) if that would be ok with you?

All you have to do is pass data in the form of a csv file and create a new sheet each week to append in a uniform manner (if Excel is the preferred host) and you'll build up a data library. But care would have to be taken over what data is collected and collated, how it is organised in terms of indexing and verification of data to minimise transcription errors etc..

Then the database can be designed, built and populated correctly.

Remember the mantra : Garbage In Garbage Out.
And don't pretend that this task is going to be easy - especially if it's going to rely on manual input.

Mickado wrote:Actaully PH, if you have a list of all of the players in each leauge with their club and position to hand I'd be very interested in using that data for a side project (scoring stats) if that would be ok with you?

Same source Mick : http://www.itsrugby.co.uk/player_1952.html

e.g. Exeter

Player name
Position
Nationality
Age
Weight/Height
Alcott, Simon Hooker England 28
105 kg 1 m 78
Arnott, Jack Wing England
72 kg 1 m 80
Arscott, Luke Centre England 27
100 kg 1 m 85
Barrett, Kevin Scrum half England 31
80 kg 1 m 75
Baxter, Richard Third Row England 33
108 kg 1 m 93
Brown, Alex Prop England 22
117 kg 1 m 81
Budgen, Chris Prop New-Zealand 38
112 kg 1 m 73
Camacho, Gonzalo Centre Argentina 27
82 kg 1 m 73
Carrick-Smith, Will Lock England 20
116 kg 2 m 08
Chudley, Will Scrum half England 23
83 kg 1 m 77
Clark, Neil Hooker England 31
95 kg 1 m 78
Cowan-Dickie, Luke Prop England 18
112 kg 1 m 84
Cowan-Dickie, Tim Prop England 20
104 kg 1 m 83
Dollman, Phil Wing Wales 26
87 kg 1 m 83
Dorrian, Myles Fly Half Australia 29
86 kg 1 m 85
Ewers, David Third Row Zimbabwe 21
115 kg 1 m 92
Fairbrother, Lloyd Prop England 20
116 kg 1 m 75
Foster, Mark Wing England 29
91 kg 1 m 83
Hanks, James Lock England 27
107 kg 1 m 97
Hayes, Tommy Third Row Scotland 31
109 kg 1 m 93
Hill, Sam Centre England 18
97 kg 1 m 83
Hortsmann, Kai Third Row England 30
103 kg 1 m 96
Jess, Matt Wing England 28
85 kg 1 m 80
Johnson, Tom Third Row England 29
103 kg 1 m 88
Mieres, Ignacio Fly Half Argentina 24
90 kg 1 m 89
Mitchell, Craig Prop Wales 26
110 kg 1 m 83
Moon, Ben Prop England 22
105 kg 1 m 78
Muldowney, Aly Lock Scotland 29
116 kg 1 m 96
Mumm, Dean Third Row Australia 28
109 kg 1 m 96
Naqelevuki, Sireli Centre Fidji 31
93 kg 1 m 95
Nowell, Jack Full back England 18
87 kg 1 m 81
Phillips, James Third Row England 24
115 kg 1 m 88
Poluleuigaga, Junior Scrum half Samoa 31
93 kg 1 m 81
Rimmer, Carl Prop England 25
118 kg 1 m 83
Scaysbrook, James Third Row England 30
104 kg 1 m 90
Sestaret, Nicolas Wing France 29
82 kg 1 m 79
Shoemark, Jason Centre New-Zealand 31
95 kg 1 m 83
Slade, Henry Fly Half England 18
86 kg 1 m 90
Steenson, Gareth Fly Half Ireland 28
87 kg 1 m 78
Sturgess, Brett Prop England 30
112 kg 1 m 85
Tatupu, Josh Centre Samoa 25
102 kg 1 m 84
Thomas, Haydn Scrum half England 29
78 kg 1 m 73
Tui, Hoani Prop New-Zealand 27
117 kg 1 m 81
Welch, Damian Lock Wales 29
114 kg 1 m 96
White, Ben Third Row Australia 28
105 kg 1 m 90
Whitehead, Chris Hooker England 25
101 kg 1 m 78
Whitten, Ian Centre Ireland 25
102 kg 1 m 87
Yeandle, Jack Hooker England 22
114 kg 1 m 85

Thanks Portnoy, that’s handy.

No worries.

Be careful though Mick, as there are utility players all over most clubs. Plus substitutions 'n stuff. In this case it doesn't always do what it says on the tin.

Also, should at some time in the future, you may want to share and compare data with PH's project, I'd speak to him to ensure that the data formats and cell positioning in tables are compatible.

Yeah, i notice that Fitzgerald is listed as a fullback for example. Also, there's no team information for Zebre on there.

Trust me any project of this nature is fraught with difficulty. It's not the routine stuff, it's the Vicky Pollard exceptions - 'No, but, yeah, but, no, but, yeah'

It will also be tricky to understand whether a player isn't playing due to strategy (a coaching decision) or due to injury. Someone might play 18 games in the year but that could be full 80mins when fit and doesn't figure when injured.

Knowing when a player and which players are injured is the biggest unknown out there. It would be great if all teams when submitting their team sheet for a match would have to declare injured players, so their team sheet would have something like;
Squad;
starting XV
bench
squad available
squad injured
And that this full squad status/lineup would be required to be filed on the league website the day before a game.

Just a thought.

Wouldn't it be important to know the size of a teams squad? Some teams can rest players more because they simply have bigger squads, irrespective of what league they play in.

All adds to the complexity guys.

At this rate we'd be ready to start sometime in 2013.

Just agree on a (simple) starting point or I'm out. I'll offer advice, but otherwise I don't want to deal with all the johnny-come-lately niceties and pretty tweaks.

The Vicky Pollards in data handling in itself might break the back of PH's aspirations.

I've been there.

Mickado wrote:

Pot Hale wrote:

Portnoy wrote:Not all injuries are even reported PH. It would be a nightmare to follow. You'd have to check websites and press and still some would slip through the net. Plus some of today's nobodies will be tomorrow's stars.

Don't go there!
Stick with what can be verified with a modicum of certainty and accuracy.

Gotcha.

I'm not sure how best to go about splitting the task to be honest. Since a team changes each week, you can't create linked spreadsheet to feed a master sheet. As a start you need the team name, the players and their time on pitch beside all 23. You still have to enter that manually though.

Main thing though is how do you put the database of names on line? I've created it in Excel but I don't know if that's a suitable format for transferring to HTML (if that's the right thing to say). Creating the table in the OP took far too long, but maybe there's an easier way to do that.

It's straight forward enough to set up an excel sheet to create a mirror of a table of data that can be easily transfered on here. Send me a PM with your email address and I'll send you how I do it.

Appreciate that, Mickado. Will do.

Mickado wrote:Actaully PH, if you have a list of all of the players in each leauge with their club and position to hand I'd be very interested in using that data for a side project (scoring stats) if that would be ok with you?

Not yet I don't. But when I do, no problem.

Portnoy wrote:All adds to the complexity guys.

At this rate we'd be ready to start sometime in 2013.

Just agree on a (simple) starting point or I'm out. I'll offer advice, but otherwise I don't want to deal with all the johnny-come-lately niceties and pretty tweaks.

The Vicky Pollards in data handling in itself might break the back of PH's aspirations.

I've been there.

I now feel so much more encouraged......

I've no intention of bringing in injury absences, unless it's bleeding obvious that yer man broke his leg in the 36th minute and he's definitely not being cushioned for next week's match.

I can see the future, and the future is - "you got an advantage because your player, who scored the winning try, played 28 minutes less in the year than our poor player who slipped and fell whilst trying to defend against the try!"

Looking forward to all that stuff when the Official Board of Shame (OBS) is up and running.

SecretFly wrote:I can see the future, and the future is - "you got an advantage because your player, who scored the winning try, played 28 minutes less in the year than our poor player who slipped and fell whilst trying to defend against the try!"

Looking forward to all that stuff when the Official Board of Shame (OBS) is up and running.

Sarcasm doesn't become you, sir.

PH - PM for you.

Just a thought here lads, when you’re importing information from any website you’ll need to have something unique associated with each player in order for your database to correctly assign their match time or stats. Normally the name will do, but in the case of the Dragons (for example) there’s 3 Evan’s, 3 Jones and 2 Smiths. Scrum.com only lists a players surname so you might have to have some kind of catch in there to ensure the right times are assigned to the right players.