Round 3 of the 2022 NRL season gave us one of the worst executed games in recent memory on Friday evening when the Warriors squeaked home against the Tigers. The less said about the final 10 minutes of this game the better, with one particular halfback (let’s call him L. Brooks – wait that’s too obvious. Let’s go with Luke B) throwing two ill advised passes inside his own 40 metres and turning the ball over both times despite only trailing by a single score. This brought out the old trope of “there’s not enough players to support 17 teams”,...
Continue reading...March 2022
Examining expected points (ETxP) from NRL Round 1 2022
A few weeks ago, I debuted Eye Test Expected Points (ETxP) on the site, with the intent to use it for analysing team performance throughout the season. Ideally it would give us an indication of which teams are outperforming or underperforming the expected points from their field position as a proxy for how a team is travelling. If you need a refresher on ETxP there’s a substantial post on the site going into detail of how these expected points are calculated and how they can be applied, as well as some possible drawbacks from using this method. For those of...
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Explainer: Total Run % – improving Run % with decoys and supports
The advanced statistics for the NRL and rugby league in general that Eye Test introduced – Tackle %, Run % and Involvement Rate – have been around for a few seasons now, and I’ve been reasonably happy with the results. They’re not perfect (I don’t and never will claim them to be) and no one single statistic will ever solve any sport, let alone one with as many simultaneous moving parts as rugby league. But as metrics for tracking player workload I feel they offer an accurate representation of what is happening on field. Yet there’s always been something about...
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