During the Raiders loss to the Cowboys on the weekend, Canberra five eighth and Dally M medal winner Jack Wighton did something he seems to do far more often than any other player in the NRL – kick a ball out on the full. Andrew Voss mentioned it on commentary on Fox League as well, bringing up that according to the Fox Sports Lab he’d kicked out on the full 16 times since 2019. It’s something that appears to happen so frequently that NRL Twitter continually dunks on him for it. This had me thinking, is Wighton the worst offender...
Continue reading...April 2021
The increasing importance of interchange – NRL Round 5 2021 stats and trends
Last week I mentioned one of the things that the new NRL rules has changed in 2021 is how often teams use their interchange bench. With fatigue playing an even larger part of the game this season due to the reduction of in game stoppages, players off the bench are spending nearly 10% more time on the field this season, up three minutes to 33.8 per game. It’s not a huge change yet, but as middle forwards tire bench players are impacting the game even more and becoming more important. Not only are starting players tiring quicker and earlier in...
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How is increased fatigue affecting the NRL this season? – Round 4 2021 stats and trends
This week I’ll be skipping any analysis of the pace of the game, for a few reasons. The first is something I alluded to last week, which is that we’ve hit a decent threshold of data points, the affect of the new rules is relatively clear and the impact of fatigue is still obvious. The second is that friend of the site Liam of PythagoNRL fame has put together the best summary to date of the impact of the new rule changes on margin and form. It’s well worth your time to read through it. And I’m not just saying...
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