Aviva Premiership Relegation Stats

This thread was inspired by a conversation on the Newcastle Falcons thread where I asked why they felt they would finish above my club London Irish this season.  The answer appeared to centre around a lack of quality in the pack in the pack and poor defence.  Essentially the debate on quality is a matter of opinion, but I was interested to see if the worst defence always gets relegated, so looked at the tables for the last 10 seasons of the Premiership.  Below is what I found, with the number in brackets in the for and against columns indicating where the particular offence and defence ranked in the table (so for Welsh last season there attack was 11th best and defence 12th).

Season	Relegated	Points	For	Against	11th Place Points
12/13	London Welsh	23	412 (11)	619 (12)	33 (+10)
11/12	Newcastle Falcons	32	351 (11)	529 (12)	33 (+1)
10/11	Leeds Carnegie	23	315 (12)	590 (11)	23 (0)
9/10	Worcester Warriors	28	312 (11)	420 (7)	32 (+4)
8/9	Bristol	17	229 (12)	637 (12)	34 (+17)
7/8	Leeds Carnegie	12	336 (11)	732 (12)	34 (+22)
6/7	Northampton Saints	33	342 (12)	499 (10)	34 (+1)
5/6	Leeds Tykes	27	363 (12)	573 (12)	41 (+14)
4/5	Harlequins	38	365 (9)	596 (7)	40 (+2)
3/4	Rotherham Titans	3	309 (12)	777 (12)	37 (+34)
AVERAGE		23.6			34.1

What the table shows is that in 6 of the last 10 seasons the team with the worst defence went down.  Surprisingly though, on two occasions the team with the 7th best defence in the league were relegated.  I wondered if that meant they had the worst attacks, but that was not the case on either occasion.  The team with the worst attack were relegated in 5 out of 10 seasons, but it is fair to say that in all but one season the team that went down had either the worst or second worst points scored total.


Ultimately I do believe that the team who is worst overall will go down, but from the figures I think it shows that point scoring is marginally more important than keeping them out.  It also shows that in 7 out of the 10 seasons 29 points would have been enough to stay up.


This year I think we will see a mini league at the bottom with Irish, Falcons, Worcester and Sale battling to beat the drop.  Those games against each other will be key to who goes down.  If you take a record of 4 wins and 2 defeats in the mini league, with a couple of TBP's and LBP's in the ones you don't win, you end up with 20 points on the board.  History says one more win against one of the other sides will take you to safety, with 23.6 the average points total going down, but I think it will be tighter this year, and 30+ will be needed to beat the drop.


Who will it be that joins this table and slips into the Championship in 2014/15?  Not the mighty Irish in my view, as we may ship a few points, but we will score more than enough to keep us up.   

You obviously need to score points to go with a tight defence.

You also need a half decent pack to give a talented backline the chance to score those points.

To me Irish have a extremely leaky defence, coupled with a weak pack and flakey FH.....all points to a relegation season imo.

I may be wrong and they may be the surprise team of the season, time will tell.

I expect Falcons to have a tight defence and competitive pack but I'm unsure how out backline will click.

Totally agree on the mini league, there's certainly 3 weaker teams in the AP and Falcons as the unknown quantity.

I don't think our first choice pack is weak at all, but I agree the back up is a real step down.  As I said over on the Falcons thread, we tightened up considerable in defence second half of the season, and I expect that improvement to continue.  

Key things for us are...

1. Avoid injuries/bans for key men.
2. Get a better start than last year. (We shipped 40+ points in each of our first 3 games)
3. Improve our away record (I think we won once away from home last season, at Gloucester of all places.
4. Be pragmatic and take 3 points whenever they are on offer as if we get beat we need LBP's

New scrum laws will be interesting in terms of if they have an effect on how teams set up in the pack.  

As an aside, how many of he Falcons squad were part of the squad that went down in 2012?

From the pack....Shiels(youngster), Welch(youngster) and Hogg.

I see Irish & Sale as having the weakest packs personally but Sale look to have a bit more depth.

I just can't see past Irish going down, they look so poor as to previous seasons and have little backup. The coaching setup also looks poor.

I really hope Irish stay up as I like them as a side but I just can't see it.

Ozzy mate, I've got to take issue with the stats. Surely you need to beat the average points of the 11th placed team (i.e.35 points rather than 29) to have a chance of staying up.

Plus take Rotherham out of the stats as they hugely skew the average points of the team finishing bottom.

Unless I have misinterpreted the stats.

Hound, if you beat the average points of the 11th placed team you'd finish 10th.  

If you take out the 3 from Rotherham, then you have to take out the 38 that Quins went down on, which would bring us out somewhere similar I suspect.

I dunno about taking Quins out of the stats. They were only two points off 11th, which suggests a very competitive season.

The usual feeling among coaches is that 40 points is good enough to stay up. Bonus points will be key imo, especially losing ones.

Irish have been one of the best teams in that respect over the last few seasons, except last term.

I don't see Irish going down though.

Yeah, we were way off with bonus points last season, which was unlike us.  The season we made the final, we got at least a point from every game during the season.

Anyway, I wouldn't wish relegation on any team. Two seasons ago my lot escaped on points difference. That was a traumatic time.