April 2024

Another round, another second half flame out by the Parramatta Eels. When they found themselves behind against Manly in the second half, they doubled down on some incredibly poor discipline and let the game slip away from them. Unfortunately, the team hasn’t learned the first law of holes – when you’re in one, stop digging. The depressing thing for Eels fans is that things hasn’t changed much from last season. This is from last year’s post on the site after Round 8: “When they have the majority of possession, they make metres quite well through the middle of the field....

If you watched both Sunday games from NRL Round 7, there’s some very obvious conclusions about the sides that played. Other than the Knights losing their 2023 identity and the Sharks running up a score against a bottom nine side at home, that is. The first is that the long path for Cameron Ciraldo’s defensive system to pay dividends appears to finally be here. The Bulldogs commitment to defense in 2024 has been tremendous and as terrible as the Newcastle were, Canterbury didn’t let them in the match at any point. The second is that North Queensland are easily the most...

Could the Canberra Raiders be a smokey for a top four spot in 2024? That would seem utterly insane considering their difficulty in beating the NRL’s only winless team on Sunday evening. However, I’ve got some numbers that say they might be. Before you close the tab and think I’ve lost the plot, please at least hear me out. It sounds unlikely but all I’m asking is for you to read through the analysis below before disagreeing. It might not be as crazy as it sounds. There’s some data provided below from their performances this season that suggest they have...

Most of the NRL media appears to be writing obituaries for South Sydney’s 2024 campaign this week. And to a lesser extent the Titans, although they never had any real hope of competing this year to begin with. I’m not going to join them as I’ve got very little to add on from last week’s post. It was very clear that both sides fell into the “incompetent” quadrant of my efficiency charts, although incompetent may have been too nice given their respective performances in Round 5. Maybe I need a new descriptor for sides as abysmal as Souths and the...

It’s hard to believe we’re already one month into the NRL season. It feels like only yesterday we were all laughing about the escort advertising behind Buzz on NRL 360, but it’s been four rounds and five weekends since the opening weekend in Las Vegas. Over that month we’ve had plenty of upsets, some incredible finishes and even more impressively the game has continued to build on the momentum created by the Vegas launch. Round 4 culminated with topped off by a thrilling one point victory by the Tigers over the Eels yesterday, which topped off a record round for...