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Explainer: NRL general play kick spray charts

One of the many things I’ve been working on during the off season is kicking spray charts for the NRL and rugby league in general. I’d been wondering if different players had different kicking profiles and if there was a way to visualise this.  I got the idea from seeing some MLB spray charts on social media. The idea behind this chart is that it visualises where a player is hitting the ball overall, and allows you to filter down on different variables such as how they fare against certain pitch types. It makes it quite clear what the path...

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Is this the most even top eight in the NRL era?

Thanks to the Broncos handing over their final spot in the NRL Finals to the Raiders, the top eight is prety much set for 2022 barring a major catastrophe. With those positions likely secured I thought it’d take a look how how these top eight teams sit compared to previous seasons and if that can give us an indication of who might appear in the Grand Final. Is this the most even top eight in the NRL era? And how likely are we to see a team outside the top four make the decider? Firstly we’re going to look at...

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Should the Round 23 blowouts have been expected?

There’s nothing like a round of blowout results to fire up the rugby leauge hot take and crisis merchants. Everything needs to be fixed, it’s an embarrassment, code in crisis etc. This line of thinking would have to complete ignore the start of the NRLW season including a fantastic game between the Knights and Broncos on Sunday evening. Yes, NRL Round 23 ended up with the highest average winning margin after 80 minutes since 2014 when I started tracking this sort of thing. That average winning margin of 32.3 points per game was nearly 6 points per game than the...

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Applying Eye Test Player Contribution Rating (ETPCR) to the NRLW

Earlier this season I introduced the Eye Test Player Contribution Rating (ETPCR) for NRL players and the feedback and results so far have been encouraging. It’s not perfect – measuring a hooker’s performance is nigh on impossible with traditional statistics – but the basics are there of something useful and it’s been a popular addition to the site. With the 2022 NRLW season starting on the weekend, this week’s post will focus on applying it to the women’s game and the results obtained. We’ll highlight the top and bottom NRLW players since 2018 by ETPCR, the differences in the distribution...

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Is there anything the Gold Coast Titans do well?

Another round, another disastrous performance from the Gold Coast Titans. The fact Justin Holbrook has held on to his spot this long is solely due to his team playing in the relative obscurity of the Gold Coast with limited expectations. Had he been coaching a Sydney team, he’d be subject to more scrutiny than Michael Maguire was considering the astonishing way they’ve been losing, and the effort or lack thereof involved. There weren’t many people predicting big things from the Titans this season, given how green their spine players were and a lack of depth. After limping into the finals...

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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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