Two trophies in 5 charts

You might well say that I'm a bit late to write about last season and given it finished 8 months ago and that this season is close to drawing to a close and you'd be right. However given how significant it was for those of us in the Westcountry I thought it was worth dwelling on one more time. 

Whichever way you describe the 2020/21 season (all 13 months of it) it was pretty remarkable for Exeter Chiefs, with the Devon side winning both the English Premiership and the European Champions Cup. Many words have already been written about this by better (and more timely) writers than me. But nevertheless here are some combined stats from European and Premiership games for Chiefs last season. However below are five charts to refresh the memory or maybe even show it in a new angle. 

Amazingly given his struggles in the past with serious injury, (Big) Dave Ewers spent more time on the field that any other player a total of 1845 minutes (over 60 hrs). Sam Simmonds (another who had missed a lot of time out with injury) and his brother Joe (who was the most present back) were both about 40 minutes behind. Other honourable mentions go to Ian Whitten and Johnny Hill while Harry Williams played more (1520) minutes than any other front row forward.

The treemap chart below shows the minutes played by each player as an area of the whole.  The colours on the chart represent the most common position played by each player. 

What the chart shows is how consistent that back row trio of Ewers, Sam Simmonds and Jacques Vermeulen was and undoubtedly this combination was a large part in the Chiefs success. 

The next few charts show a few of the playing stats, starting with the metres gained. Despite his international appearance Stuart Hogg still managed to rack up 1490 metres gained (which is basically from running from Sandy Park to Clyst St Mary), Tom O'Flaherty confirmed his emergence as a top class winger covering 1104m with the Sam Simmonds phenomenon clocking over 1km as well. 

Moving on to tackles made to mix it up I bit I thought I'd show the tackle rate per 80 mins played. Using the rate means there are perhaps a few unlikely names on at the top of the chart - which is why I like it, the season of all seasons (particularly the second 'half') made squad depth so important and while this favours some who only really made relatively few appearances, such as Richard Capstick, Matt Kvesic (who left Exeter during the covid shutdown), and young prop Marcus Street. Of the regulars, Johnny Gray (who arrived during the shutdown) had the best rate along with the best tackle success, with Don Armand, and the seemingly tireless Dave Ewers not far behind both averaging more than 13 tackles per 80 mins played. 

Ollie Devoto made the most tackles per game of any of the Exeter backline, averaging almost 9 tackles per 80mins with the evergreen Gareth Steenson making more than 8 tackles per 80 mins played. 

Finally this scatter chart shows tackles and carries made per 80 minutes played. I've excluded those players who played less than 320 minutes across the season. This chart really shows that the difference between forwards and backs is the number of tackles they make, with none of the forwards having a lower tackle rate per 80 mins than any back.

Luke Cowan-Dickie and Sam Simmonds dynamism shows with their clear space at the centre top of the chart. Matt Kvesic's exceptional tackling rate also sees him in the top right of the chart. 

Another departing Chief, Sam Hill showed his work rate with the highest carry rate per 80 mins of any of the backs and a high tackle rate (as discussed above).   

This is obviously a belated post and even more delay than the season itself was hopefully a 2021/22 season post wont be far away.....