Do the World's Best Influence On-Field Performance? Estimating the Impact of New Zealand-Born Rugby Coaches on Non-native International Teams

ABSTRACT

New Zealand-born rugby coaches have recently been regarded as the best in the world, and are in demand to coach offshore professionally both at the club and international levels. This paper seeks to quantify the impact that coaches of New Zealand origin have when coaching overseas teams at the international level. A model is built with socioeconomic- and rugby-specific predictors of a country's World Rugby ranking points in the spirit of previous economic research into determinants of success in other sports. Results from cross-sectional and panel data analysis indicate that New Zealand-born coaches have been associated with improvements in the international performance (via a statistically significant increase in ranking points) of overseas national teams that they have coached.

世界一流教练是否会影响球员的场上表现?新西兰籍橄榄球教练对非本国国际队伍的影响评估

新西兰籍橄榄球教练近来被公认为世界一流 , 无论是海外俱乐部还是国际水平的橄榄球队都渴望专业的新西兰籍教练来指导。本文旨在量化分析新西兰籍教练在指导国外团队参与国际赛事时的影响。学术界针对其他运动项目的成功因素进行了经济学研究。基于前人的研究成果, 本文通过一国世界橄榄球排名积分的社会经济学指标和橄榄球相关指标, 建立模型。横截面和面板数据分析结果显示, 在指导国外团队参赛时, 新西兰籍教练同团队在国际赛事中的成绩提升有关 (排名积分呈现出统计学意义上的增长趋势) 。

KEYWORDS:

• New Zealand-born coaches
• international rugby rankings
• economic model
• cross-sectional analysis
• panel data analysis

关键词:

• 新西兰籍教练
• 国际橄榄球排名
• 经济模型
• 横截面分析
• 面板数据分析

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to acknowledge the advice from Seamus Hogan, as well as other participants at the 2015 New Zealand Association of Economists Conference and the 2015 School of Economics and Finance Seminar Series. The author also wishes to acknowledge the feedback by two anonymous reviewers. Their contributions were invaluable.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The points on offer in a game depend upon the outcome (and the margin) of the game, the relative strengths of the two teams and home ground advantage is also factored in (World Rugby, 2015).

2. Countries in the United Kingdom are recognised as separate entities in rugby, but there is an absence of disaggregated economic data for each of England, Scotland and Wales. The approach of Gásquez and Royuela (2016) is followed here in including England as the sole representative of the United Kingdom.

3. There is also evidence in the literature of a positive impact of a higher proportion of elite athletes from urban communities in football (Rossing, Nielsen, Elbe, and Karbing, 2016), ice hockey (Turnnidge, Hancock, and Côté, 2014) and major league sports in North America (Côté, Macdonald, Baker, and Abernethy, 2006). Smaller cities have been found to be more effective at producing elite athletes than rural areas or large cities (Côté, et al., 2006; Turnnidge et al., 2014). In this analysis, the percentage of population classified as urban is significantly positively correlated with GDP, so its inclusion would potentially result in multicollinearity in the model estimations.

4. I wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Samuel Andrew Richardson

Samuel Andrew Richardson (PhD, Massey University, New Zealand) is a senior lecturer in the School of Economics and Finance at Massey University. His research interests are in the economics of sport, including the justification for government involvement in the provision of sports facilities and the hosting of major sporting events, as well as the role of sport in economic development in the South Pacific.