Last week at the Eye Test we looked at whether ladder position had an affect on teams being whistled for more penalties (narrator: it did not). Coaches were claiming that teams at the lower end of the ladder were scrutinised more than those at the top, which appears to be largely unfounded based on last weeks post. At the end of that article, I alluded to this weeks post looking at penalties being awarded to teams leading or trailing as a better view than using ladder position. And that’s exactly what we’ll be going over. One of the reasons I...
Continue reading...April 2022
Does ladder position dictate how many penalties are conceded by an NRL team?
There’s been a lot of chatter recently from coaches and media that games aren’t called fairly by referees, specifically that teams at the bottom end of the table aren’t treated fairly opposed to those at the top of the table. North Queensland Cowboys coach Todd Payten was the first to speak out about perceived referee bias after his side lost handily to the Sydney Roosters. “Teams that have been up the pointy end of the competition for a while now, or have high-profile players get the benefit of the doubt too often, and that’s frustrating. “That’s my opinion over watching...
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Are any positions seeing more or less touches in 2022?
A few weeks back the following excellent question was asked to the Rugby League Eye Test account on twitter. It felt like something obvious that I’d missed so I wanted to check and see the results. I’d spent the weekend putting together the numbers to check this and see if anything had changed this season with the reintroduction of penalties for a ruck infringement or straying offside inside 40 metres. In an amazing co-incidence, the number of touches by players became a talking point this week thanks to an incredibly astute question from friend of the site Mike Meehall Wood....
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The games are closer than ever, so why can’t he just leave Rugby League alone?
We’re only four weeks into the season and Peter V’Landys, much like a toddler endlessly scratching a mosquito bite, he just can’t leave rugby league alone. And like the other times he’s trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. The product on the field this season has been almost unanimously praised, with one of the lowest average margins in NRL history for 2022 thus far. This praise even came from the head honcho himself a week ago, only to contradict himself this week because a few people got in his ear. Before I get into the stats about what...
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