After the minor distraction that was the 2024 Paris Olympics, it’s time to get back to more significant matters. The Eye Test is back with another of my favourite posts of the season – NRL Sockwatch 2024. And because bootwatching is a way of life and not something you can switch on or off, there’s some bonus boot related content at the end of this post.
For new readers, the process is similar to the Bootwatch methodology. I watch every game from a round of NRL and tag whether a player wears their socks up or down at the moment they start playing. It’s the intent here I’m measuring, if they end up with their socks down during the course of a game then that’s just a side effect of playing rugby league. Then I tally up the numbers for high and low socks, and see how things are trending year over year, or by team, position and age. This is the third installment of the hugely popular Sockwatch, you can read the previous editions on the site here, and here.
There’s some nuance here as some players are wearing their socks neither high or low, but more of a mid-length. I’m still deeming these as “low” as historically rugby league socks have been worn just below the knee, like these fine gentlemen from the 1931 Queensland state rugby league team.
Hopefully I’m not encroaching on Liam’s fantastic Maroon Observer content here, which you should all be subscribed to.
So just like last year, any sock that is worn below the medial head of the gastrocnemius (calf) muscle will be classed as a “low” sock.
And like previous years, I had a quick scan of the official NRL rules and could only find the same wordage pertaining to uniforms in part (b) of Section 4. The Players and Players’ Equipment :
(b) A player’s normal gear shall consist of a numbered jersey of distinctive colour and/or pattern, a pair of shorts, socks of distinctive colour and/or pattern and studded boots or shoes.
There’s still no specific legislation about the height of a players socks, and nothing about having TruSox sewn into regular athletic socks. It’s the wild west for sock heights, no one is policing it, and anything goes.
However I’m sure there are pockets of NRL fans who would argue that players are bringing the game into disrepute by wearing their socks low and should be fined accordingly.
Maybe they could take a leaf out of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI, cycling’s governing body) rules, where they check in random tests after a stage or race. (https://www.stickybottle.com/latest-news/uci-sock-length-tests/) . The specific language for maximum sock height for cycling is below:
“…socks and overshoes must not exceed half the distance between the lateral malleolus and the fibula head in terms of height.”
I can only imagine how well rugby league players would react to having their sock heights measured pre or post match and being fined if they weren’t compliant. These aren’t cheap fines either, as they can range up to CHF 2000 (AUD$3,500, US$2,250, £1,800).
They could even borrow the UCI’s sock measurement tool, as shown below.
Of course there’s a possible aerodynamic advantage in cycling, and they’re regulating a maximum sock height, not a minimum one. There’s no such advantage in the NRL, other than looking the part (where the part is determined by whether you’re on #teamup or #teamdown).
Moving back to the analysis, in keeping up with the times there is also one minor change to the methodology this season which I’ll get to shortly.
First up the breakdown of sock type (high or low) from the three rounds that I’ve tracked this incredibly important information. Those rounds are Round 10 2022, Round 21 2023 and Round 23 2024. Here’s the breakdown of all 270+ players I catalogued this weekend compared to prior seasons.
It’s not as a dramatic increase as we saw last year, but the trend is still on the up. 63% of players are now wearing socks deemed “low” by myself, up from 61% last year and 57% in 2022. Low socks are still in, but the pace of their growth has slowed slightly.
This year I’ve also split out players wearing low socks with calf compression sleeves under them. Last year there were five of them – Pat Carrigan, Luciano Leilua, Jack De Belin, Leo Thompson and Aitasi James, and didn’t really tag them accordingly.
In 2024 I’ve identified nine of them, well eight and a half at least. Three continuing from last season – Carrigan, Leilua, and Thompson – De Belin seems to have returned to pure high sock. The new additions are Jordan Riki, Kayal Iro, Hame Sele (wishing the best for him and his family), Viliame Kikau, and Tony Francis.
The half comes from Canterbury’s Josh Curran, who has a sleeve on his right leg but not his left, and still has his socks down as seen below.
As the sole adjudicator on this, I’m going to allow it and count it the same as the others. The intent is there even if the execution isn’t. Overall, for players with calf sleeves and low socks, we’re not quite at double figures but I’d be astounded if that didn’t happen next season.
All of the above players were wearing white compression sleeves under their socks, with the exception of Thompson, who has moved from a white sleeve in 2023 (left) to a blue sleeve in 2024 (right) despite wearing blue socks both times.
With that clarification out of the way, here’s the overall numbers again now with calf sleeved players split out.
Players wearing low socks with compression sleeves made up only 3% of all players, but up from 2% twelve months ago. That’s almost 10% of players wearing low socks, so still minor numbers but something to keep an eye on.
I also feel like there should also be a special category for Reece Walsh for his own branded sports grip socks that are worn under longer socks, with minimal effort to blend them together. But it’s not really worth it for one player just yet.
The main reason I want to point this out (again) is that I’ll take any excuse for me to post this picture of Mitch Moses’ sock drama from almost a eight years ago. Yes 2017 is that far back now.
On a completely unrelated but yet still related note, am I the only one who sees the old City Rail logo and not the O’Neills one on the Panthers socks?
Getting back to the data, let’s also have a look at the split of high and low socks by team this season.
South Sydney, Cronulla and Penrith were the only teams to have more than 50% of players wearing long socks in 2024. After that there were a four teams (the Broncos, Dragons, Warriors, and Tigers) at 41%, with seven of their 17 players wearing socks up to their knees.
The Dolphins and Titans had the highest proportion of players wearing high socks in Round 23, with both teams having just three players wearing socks at their traditional length. That might indicate it’s not an age related trend, as the Dolphins have one of the oldest teams in the NRL (27.1 average age in Round 23), whilst the Titans had one of the youngest (25.4).
It’s interesting to see the Bulldogs still at the bottom of this list, something I had noticed last season and that Phil Gould had to check on social media if I was correct.
There doesn’t seem to any correlation with winning games and sock height either, as the team with the larger proportion of high socks only winning two games on the weekend. Penrith and Cronulla were the only teams with a higher count of knee high socks to win. Brisbane and North Queensland had the same number of players wearing high sock.
There’s not much of a change year on year for most teams either.
The Cowboys had one of the bigger changes going from 41% low to 59%, while the Dragons moved from 71% low to 59%. Otherwise it’s within a one or two player swing for most of these shares, the numbers are actually more consistent than I’d expected.
Now we’ll split them by position as well.
Halfbacks are the ones keeping the practice of high socks alive, with a nice 69% of halfbacks wearing socks up to their knees. As you’d expect the mug lairs of rugby league out wide have the highest percentage of low socks, with fullbacks, wingers and centres all split 75%/25% high/low.
And finally, we’ll check the high/low split by age, to see if it’s an old blokes thing to have your socks worn high.
As we alluded to before, has age started to play any part in sock heights? The answer is still loosely yes.
You do get some outliers, like 32 year olds having 78% of players wearing socks low, but it’s a small sample size (7 of 9 – no, not that one) and the overall trend is higher for older players. In 2022 we had 91% of 31 year olds (10/11) wearing their socks high, showing these sort of outliers aren’t uncommon. It’s also worth pointing out that the 100% of 18 year olds is just Lachlan Galvin too, proving some young players do have a sense of tradition. Hooray for small sample sizes.
Finally there’s also some bonus Bootwatch content this week after watching each game from Round 23.
Knights rookie Fletcher Sharpe had a monster game against the Tigers on Sunday, bagging four tries including a sensational finish off a Kayln Ponga kick. When he crossed the line for that try, I noticed he wasn’t wearing his usual Asics boots, but a pair of Oxen Metasock DNA.
And of course, fellow bootwatchers at the Oxen social media team were all over it, doing a far better job promoting their brand than anyone else locally.
Sharpe now joins Tom Burgess as the only NRL player wearing Oxen boots this season, although I have seen Burgess alternate between Oxen and Nike this season, as noted in the Bootwatch 24 post, possibly due to surface conditions.
I also noticed from their Oxen’s socials that Mizuno NRL pioneer Lachie Miller is now wearing Oxen as well. I guess he’s handed that mantle over to Chad Townsend or Dylan Brown.
Another change I noticed on the weekend was Luciano Leilua, himself a low sock/compression sleeve trailblazer, moving from Asics boots to Concave, which looks to have happened at least a few weeks back after checking the tape.
The Dragons already have Ben Hunt and Jack De Belin wearing the same brand, with Hunt being one of their ambassadors and one of the first in the NRL to wear them, along with the departing Jake Granville.
