With Round 12 ending on Sunday half of the NRL has already passed. Some clubs might wish the whole season is over. And as we did last season, the half way point is time for the regular review of the Eye Test’s advanced statistical leaders over the first half of the season. New readers to the site may not be familiar with some of these metrics, and if that is the case, I’d highly recommend reading the explainers on some of them to get a better understanding of what I am trying to capture with these measurements. If you’re enjoying...
Continue reading...May 2022
Who are the NRL’s biggest front runners? An analysis of unanswered points scored
After a one week dalliance with meme posts in last week’s sock height analysis, which surprisingly resulted in the largest weekly audience for the site in history, the Eye Test is getting back on brand this week. Recently a suggestion was posed to the Rugby League Eye Test twitter account by friend of the site Elliott Richardson, who publishes Rugby League Monthly. He was wondering how many tries a team leading would score before they conceded one in 2021 and then for 2022. This idea really piqued my interest. We all know 2021 was absolutely cooked as a competitive season...
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Another incredibly important Eye Test investigation – a dive into NRL player sock heights
Magic Round for 2022 is over and people in rugby league are staying on brand by doing the one thing they know how do to – fix something that isn’t broken. There’s been suggestions of moving Magic Round out of Brisbane (dumb), rotating it’s location (also dumb) or having multiple Magic Rounds, which is such a galaxy brain rugby league idea that I’m surprised it hasn’t already been decided upon. Find something unique and run it often enough that it’s no longe special. But I’m not here to talk about that this week. I’m going to tackle an incredibly important...
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The statistics South Sydney are struggling with in 2022
No one expected Souths to match their performance from last year and appear in another NRL grand final. With the key losses of Wayne Bennett, Adam Reynolds and Dane Gagai, they weren’t going to be premiership favourites, but they still had enough talent across the park to have a successful season. Few also would have predicted them to be struggling the way they are currently Last week on the Eye Test we looked at the rise of the North Queensland Cowboys, who had a great start to the season and continued their march into the top four with a win...
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The numbers behind North Queensland’s improved start to the 2022 NRL season
Prior to last weekend, the North Queensland Cowboys had quietly pushed their way into the 5th place, but few considered them among the ranks of the top teams in the NRL. Their existence at the top end of the table could be put down to excuses like a soft draw or facing teams when they weren’t at full strength. All of these are valid reasons and it’s not unusual to see random teams appearing at the top of the table before regressing to the mean. This year we’ve also had the Knights start the season 2-0 before fading into obscurity,...
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