SIDELINE CUT:Statistics in sport, as in most other areas, can be used to obfuscate as much as clarify matters but few can quibble with the great Kiwi outhalf's feat, writes KEITH DUGGAN

“LIES, DAMN LIES and statistics,” is a damning quote most often attributed to Benjamin Disraeli but then he never had to punt a rugby ball between the posts for a living. Statistics and figures have never been so popular in the world of rugby and today, New Zealand’s Dan Carter is expected to claim the most prestigious of them all when he assumes Jonny Wilkinson’s crown as the man to have kicked the most points in international rugby history.

Sports statistics are an American obsession that have slowly become fashionable throughout the world. Soccer remains an exception – there is still a hearty mistrust of allocating precise figures and percentages to the stars that light up its games – mainly, one suspects, because the pastel-shirted ex-football men who analyse the games from the comfy television armchairs could not be bothered swotting up on them.

If ever you watch an American college basketball game or an NFL game, it is always staggering to listen to the co-commentators fire statistics – points scored, passes made, consecutive appearances and game-winning shots made – off the top of their heads.

Bob Knight, one of the most respected and controversial coaches in college basketball history, now acts as a regular analyst during the height of the college season. During a particular game last year, he mentioned that he had watched three video tapes of the team he was covering just to prepare for that night’s game. This was during the most frantic weeks of the NCAA basketball tournament when teams and media alike jump from location to location to cover games. But Knight made time for mugging up before his broadcast.

That level of knowledge and analysis makes the standard Premier League observations appear as they often are: unforgivable statements of the obvious delivered in complacent tones. Why bother distilling the more subtle contributions of Wayne Rooney to a Manchester United away win when you can get away with a light chuckle and the old faithful: “He’s a bit special”. Why bother finding out about the lesser lights of European football when you can make do with predicting that “technically, they will be good”.

But maybe that is as it should be! Sport can get bogged down in number-crunching. Baseball is the sport most responsible for this, with fans getting hot and bothered about most home runs, consecutive games played, batting average and so on.

Englishman Henry Chadwick, who moved from Exeter to Brooklyn with his family when he was 12 and applied his love of cricket and statistics to the burgeoning game of baseball, is generally credited with nurturing the national fascination with exactitude.

The rhythm of baseball suited such bookkeeping in a way that the less governable rhythms of English football never could. Even now, when sophisticated television presentation means everything in football, the statistics served up to the audience are endearingly basic: yellow cards, corners won, shots on goal. A seven-year-old with a decent attention span and a notepad and paper could keep track of them with little difficulty.

And football still seems to revolve around the basic conundrum: 4-4-2 or 4-5-1. During the most glorious of all eras of Ireland’s international football, the most challenging tactical decision facing Jack Charlton – after he had implemented his Put Em Undah Preshah master stroke – was whether to introduce Big Cas in the 75th or the 80th minute. The rest was watching the football match while wearing his trademark cap and bemused grin. Nobody really cares how many times the right-back touched the ball, how many times he delivered accurate passes and whether he favoured his left or his right.

In Roy Keane’s delightful quip on his former Sunderland player Nyron Nosworthy – “now that Nos has switched to centre-back, he’s got much less time on the ball, which is probably best for all concerned” – was a reminder that there will always be room in football for players whose qualities have little to do with mastery of the football.

And football’s glorious indifference to the conclusions of statistics makes the process of finding a great manager even more mysterious. It seems unlikely Alex Ferguson would be guided by a folder full of compelling statistics on a potential young signing over his own eye. Football beats on to its own rhythms.

But rugby is a different matter. Since rumbling into the professional era, statistics have become part and parcel of the daily life of any rugby professional. It became apparent that as a sport, it was almost as suited to the keeping of tallies as baseball is. First-up tackles made, lineouts completed, percentages at the breakdown, going through the phases, handling errors, etc, etc. Every single sequence of an 80-minute game can be dissected and repackaged in the clean and clinical pages of statistics which purport to tell the story of the game with all the grunting and sweat and cheering taken away. They give the cold hard truth and all of that.

And they are probably a great help in explaining to coaching teams and players why the unacceptable has happened: why they lost the game. But when you hear commentators and coaches banging out the statistics nowadays, you can’t help but think they have become a smokescreen in their own right, that instead of exposing the reasons why you lost, they are something to hide behind.

The basic reason why one team loses never changes. They lose because the other team scored more. They lose because the others were better. All the statistical data in the world won’t change that.

But some statistics are treasured because they manage to combine the mathematical buzz of knowing with the boyish thrill of doing something improbable and almost impossible. The stats that have to do with the most or the furthest, the highest, the fastest, remain the best. “We are all fascinated by the numbers, as we were by the 100 points,” noted hoops legend Wilt Chamberlain when he managed the ludicrous feat of knocking down a century against the New York Knicks while playing for Philadelphia in 1962.

And to some extent, that remains true.

So when Dan Carter places the ball in the Millennium Stadium this afternoon to fire home the penalty that will leave him on the top of a glittering place-kicking Everest, people in the stadium and watching on television will salute a notable moment of sporting history.

It was probably inevitable Carter would sooner or later become the most prolific point- scorer in international rugby. He always had that look about him. Sooner or later against Wales, he will land a penalty that will bring his total to 1,178 points . . . and counting.

It is an impressive total that just hints at the endless hours of practice, of fine-tuning the repetitive art of doing the same thing over and over again, of concentrating on the easiest as well as the hardest kicks and of having the staying power season after season.

And in the dusty, ever-thickening tome of rugby statistics, it will figure for longer than most.

“It was probably inevitable Carter would become the most prolific point-scorer in international rugby. He always had that look about him. Sooner or later against Wales, he will land a penalty that will bring his total to 1,178 points.