I have just been crunching a few numbers from the Opta stat pack. A few things stand out as being quite surprising.

I along with many others have put our woeful displays down to mainly poor tackling, lack of impetus going forward, handling errors and key refereeing decisions going against us.

A look at the figures seems to tell a different story though.

Here is a list comparing a few key metrics with our nearest and dearest rivals, Castleford.

[list
[*Missed Tackles - Wakefield 2 more per game[/*:m
[*Average Gain - Castleford 0.18m more per carry [/*:m
[*Errors - Wakefield 0.5 more per game [/*:m
[*Penalties - Wakefield 1 more per game[/*:m[/list:u

Although they have fared much better than us this season, these figures don’t really tell a significantly different story.

The talk for a long while was that the pack were performing ok but, the backs were letting the side down. I personally think the following figures indicate that the backs were either playing behind a pack that were consistently losing the collision and not dominating the ruck or, there was a lack of football intelligence or sharpness from the pivots.

[list
[*Dummy Half Runs - Castleford 6 more per game[/*:m
[*Attacking Kicks - Castleford 5 more per game[/*:m[/list:u

I know only too well that you can skew statistics to try and prove a point but, I’m not trying to prove a point at all really. Just trying to take a more analytical look at things rather than just the gut (wrenching) feeling of having watched the games.

The things that I thought were our main problems, don’t seem on the face of it to be indicated by the facts.

(All stats ©Opta)