STAT ATTACK: Wire's error-strewn display laid bare, but was this Musgrove's best yet?

TO try and highlight what went right and wrong for Warrington Wolves at Hull FC, we’ve turned to the stats sheets.

The facts and figures available on the Super League website can give a good idea about the areas in which The Wire did well and perhaps more pertinently, the ones in which they struggled.

Here’s what we found by looking at the numbers from the Round 15 victory…

Wire’s error-strewn display laid bare

Given the weight of numbers against them, it seems quite incredible that Warrington Wolves won this game.

The 20 errors they made to lead to a completion rate of less than 50 per cent would usually result in a defeat, but Hull FC were unable to take advantage.

The Black and Whites had almost twice the number of completed sets – they managed 31 compared to just 17 from Warrington – while Wire had to face 42 play-the-balls inside their own 20 compared to 19 going the other way.

Naturally, this leads to huge disparity in the number of tackles made – Wire made 326 to Hull’s 274, which is the equivalent of just under nine extra completed sets worth of hit-ups.

But they did that defensive work largely well – while 27 missed tackles is not a particularly impressive figure, their tackle success rate came in comfortably higher than that of their hosts.

They completed just over 92 per cent of their tackles, with Hull’s 45 misses knocking their rate down to a hair under 86 per cent.

Encouragement when they did keep the ball

The fact Wire managed to score enough points to win the game despite having so little of the ball will no doubt offer some encouragement for Sam Burgess.

When they were able to keep hold of the ball, progress was readily made – the significantly fewer number of carries they had (165 to Hull’s 224) naturally meant they gained fewer metres (1,379 compared to Hull’s 1,535) but on average, they carried the ball further.

Quite a bit further, to be exact – Wire’s carries yielded 1.5m extra each on average compared to the Black and Whites (8.35m of average gain compared to 6.85m).

They also made seven clean breaks of the Hull defensive line while giving up only two to the Airlie Birds.

More big numbers from Dufty

We have become used to impressive figures from Matt Dufty, and he provided more on Saturday.

Another 216 metres of gain with the ball means he has now crossed the 200m mark seven times in Super League matches this season.

And then of course, there was his winning try – a try that arguably only he was capable of scoring – as he pulled his side out of the fire.

Despite all of this and having taken his tally of try involvements for the season to 28 in all competitions (13 tries, 15 assists), there are still plenty of Wire fans who remain unconvinced by the Australian full-back.

That sentiment probably focuses more on his work off the ball and while he is clearly not perfect defensively, he still made a big contribution in that respect by chasing down Carlos Tuimavave when the Hull centre looked certain to score an interception try.

The same people argue Dufty goes missing when his team need him most but on this occasion, the fact they left with an important two points was largely down to him.

Musgrove’s best game for Wire?

Wire’s forwards struggled to make ground yesterday, but the exception to that rule was Zane Musgrove.

Sam Burgess seems to be trusting the New Zealander to play long minutes and in this game, he was rewarded with some impressive output.

His 145 metres made with the ball was the highest figure of any forward on the field and it was a figure he achieved from just 14 carries.

Indeed, he made more than twice the metres of any other Wire middle-unit player – Paul Vaughan’s 65m is the next best figure although there are no publicly available stats for Max Wood, who played perhaps his longest stint in a Wire shirt in this game.

Musgrove’s metreage was bettered only by Dufty (216m) and Josh Thewlis (166m) on his side while off the ball, he completed 21 tackles without missing a single one.

All of that combined makes this comfortably his best game in a Warrington shirt and hopefully, he can kick on from here.