Not to be lost in the accomplishment of back-to-back Championships is the approach Rennie and crew took towards selecting and starting players and that is that it had a heavy emphasis on stats. The importance of this approach is not to be underestimated and the rest of the rugby world would do well to pay attention. Goes a long way towards explaining how the Chiefs had the ball for the second fewest minutes but had the most clean linebreaks of any team and the most tries.
The end result is a team that looked remarkably like the Oakland A's who first took the approach of in-depth statistical analysis with tremendous success - a few stars, but plenty of good players (note the lack of All Blacks).
Moral of the story is that you ignore stats at your own peril.
