Rugby World Cup could spark answers for football betting and A Question of Sport

I was as far from competing in a rugby World Cup as I was from competing in a football World Cup. As you will understand when I tell you this story about playing rugby at school.

The teacher wanted us to pass the ball. He divided the class into two groups and told us to line up facing each other across the width of the pitch. I stood at one end of a line. The teacher lobbed the ball to the boy at the opposite end of my line and shouted at him to pass it to the boy on his right.

The first two boys in the other line rushed at the second boy in our line, who quickly passed the ball to the boy on his right. Then the first three boys in the other line were running at the third boy in our line, who threw the ball to the boy on his right.

And so it went on. Until the boy next to me threw the ball to me. Now every boy in the other line was sprinting toward me. Just before they reached me I kicked the ball away as hard as I could. Too late. Either they could not stop running or did not want to. They knocked me to the ground then fell on top of me.

After the last lump had climbed off of me the teacher told me off. Apparently I should not have kicked the ball away. What I was supposed to do instead I cannot remember.

The lesson I should have learned, but did not at the time, was to think through situations and try to anticipate what might happen next. If I had considered all of the possibilities and their chances I would never have stood on the end of a line.

The other day in a checkout queue in Waitrose I picked up their paper called Weekend and read this quote from an article about a successful businessman: “I started with two blenders in a rugby club kitchen”.

How many people, I wondered, have started a business with the equivalent of two blenders in a rugby club kitchen? How many succeeded and how many failed? I suspect there were more failures than successes. A lot more.

What distinguished the successes from the failures? Were they smarter? Harder-working? Or just lucky? Probably some mixture, but with a much larger helping of luck than of higher intellect or greater effort. If, somehow, you had known at the beginning exactly how smart and hard-working each person was, you could not have predicted who would succeed and who would fail. Unless you also got lucky.

So what can we do? This brings me at last to football and betting. I have learned finally a way of trying to anticipate what might happen next. All sorts of things could happen. What are they, and what is the chance of each?

I scour records to find out what happened in similar situations in the past. This gives me an indication of the prospect for different outcomes in this situation. It is still imperfect, but I have come to realise it is a lot less imperfect than what I had before.

I have the time to do this. I am lucky enough to be employed by the Racing Post. Not everyone has the time, or the inclination. Not many people like trying to interpret stats, just as not many people like, say, translating books from old languages.

But there is something we can all do. We can try to keep in our head what we have seen. Every week in football there are upsets. Next week we forget about them, or bet on more upsets involving the same teams. Then there are other upsets involving different teams.

I have been watching football on and off for more than 50 years. It seems more confusing to me now than it ever did. I can take no credit for my confusion – it just grew – but I recognise that I benefit as a bettor from being confused. It brings me closer to an important aspect of how things are – one that is as important as many others but much less noticed.

When I was young something I enjoyed much more than playing rugby at school was watching the BBC quiz show A Question of Sport. My favourite round was What Happened Next? Contestants were shown a clip of an ordinary moment in some sport then asked what happened next. It was always something outlandish.

The 49th series of A Question of Sport starts on Friday night. I have not watched the programme for many years but I understand that What Happened Next? is no longer a regular feature. There might be material for a future episode at the rugby World Cup.

Stay out of the book and on the pitch

Arthur Masuaku was sent off on Monday in the 67th minute of West Ham’s Premier League game at Aston Villa. At the time the score was 0-0. At the final whistle the score was still 0-0. Somebody somewhere must have said: It’s harder to play against ten than 11. Generally it isn’t.

I studied Premier League games from the last 22 seasons – 1997-98 to 2018-19 – where there was one, and only one, red card. The average time of dismissal was the 62nd minute – only shortly before Masuaka was shown a red card.

Teams who had a player sent off scored 40 per cent of all goals before the red card and 25 per cent of all goals after. So teams who had 11 players throughout scored 60 per cent of all goals before the red card and 75 per cent of all goals after. The total number of goals scored after the red card, in case you wondered, was slightly higher than the total number of goals scored in comparable periods of other games.

How long does it take to score a goal?

A Champions League goal is preceded on average by four passes. The move lasts on average 12 seconds. This information comes from the Uefa Champions League technical reports for the past seven seasons.

Even in an age when many successful Champions League teams prize possession most Champions League goals are scored with a short attack. This is because most Champions League attacks are still short.

Follow us on Twitter

Like us on Facebook RacingPostSport