Last year I was involved in some work looking at the past-present-future of certain aspects of Australian HP sport, attempting to surface patterns, “rate limiters” and opportunities.
One of the interesting things that started to emerge was Australian national team sport results. However the project finished before I could conduct a thorough analysis and include results from various World Cups that took place in the 2nd half of 2023.
I recently got around to doing that and the graph below is the output…
The data is based on aggregating World Cup results for Australian teams in:
- rugby (men and women)
- basketball (m&w)
- football (m&w)
- field hockey (m&w)
- ODI cricket (m&w)
- netball (women only).
Each 8-year “era” (1992-99 | 2000-07 | 2008-15 | 20016-23) reflects two world cups for each sport, with the exception of ‘92-99, when ODI cricket (men) had 3 WC’s and rugby (women) only 1.
The weighting/awarding of points is straightforward - 3 points for winning a world cup, 2 points for runner up, 1 point for third place. The vertical axis value is the average points score (total points / number of world cups), ie in ‘92-99 Aus. women’s teams averaged ~ 1.5 points per world cup ( 🤯 ).
Now, there is a caveat to this…the women’s pattern changes significantly if you apply a weighting scheme that rewards progress across every stage/round of a world cup rather than just podium places, ie getting out of a group stage will get you some points. On this weighting scheme, the most recent period (2016-23) is actually the highest scoring “era” of the four for women.
However, the men’s teams pattern stays the same - the most recent era is clearly the lowest of the 4.
So,
- what do you make of this?
- In terms of the men, why have we seen a quite dramatic dip (relative to what was a high bar)?
- Is this likely to continue?
- Will women’s teams start to follow the same downward pattern?
I have a small amount of qualitative (narrative) data from reports and commentary following recent World Cups and national team losses that provides some further insight, and a “theory” about some subtle but significant shifts in Australian HP sport as we have ventured further into this millennium.
However, it would be great to evolve this further if you feel the urge to co-create this with me by sharing your thoughts and observation in the comments below… 🙂 #wisdomofthecrowd
If you do……
- maybe “zoom in and out”, considering micro and macro (socio-cultural-historical) influences.
- Perhaps think about the sport experiences of players from 5 to 25 years of age…what has been “amplified” in recent times? what has been “dampened” in comparison to earlier eras?
- How is Australia different to other (western) countries, ie lifestyles in most western countries have become more sedentary so, whilst that could be raised as a factor, it is not unique/specific to Australia.
- What are players exposed to in talent pathway programs and HP/pro teams? What, where and how are resources and expertise allocated?
- building on the previous bullet point, is that coherent with developing the qualities required to be amongst the worlds best players in these team sports (in comparison to requisite qualities in other types/categories of sport)?
If this generates a few responses maybe we could follow up with an online sense-making session for those interested…? Where that could lead is a delightful unknown, however I’ll leave you with a thought from Ric Charlesworth…
“To be the best, change the paradigm”
Image Credits
FIBA, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
