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The relative importance of ability, luck and motivation in team sports: a Bayesian model of performance in the
Federico Fioravanti1,2, Fernando Delbianco1,3, Fernando Tohmé1,3
1Instituto de Matemática de Bahía Blanca, CONICET - UNS, Bahía Blanca, Argentina.
Abstract:
Results in contact sports like Rugby are mainly interpreted in terms of the ability and/or luck of teams. But this neglects the important role of the motivation of players, reflected in the effort exerted in the game. Here we present a Bayesian hierarchical model to infer the main features that explain score differences in rugby matches of the English Premiership Rugby 2020/2021 season. The main result is that, indeed, effort (seen as a ratio between the number of tries and the scoring kick attempts) is highly relevant to explain outcomes in those matches.
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