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Last weekend’s fiery Souths/Roosters clash seemed to strike a line through the Rabbitohs chances as a grand final outsider with the lengthy suspension (but not send off) of Latrell Mitchell. Parramatta meanwhile performed one of the cruelest acts that could be inflicted on an already traumatised fanbase – they gave them hope. Here at the Eye Test, we’d already struck a line through Eels for being perennial finals disappointments, Souths due to their defense, the latter of which I’ll expand on this later. Most teams had a line put through them by myself this season, and not just because they’ve...

Another week, another set restart post here on the Eye Test. If nothing else, I know my brand and how to stay in my lane. Last week I mentioned my holy grail would be pinpointing what tackle and where on the field each set restart was occurring. Thanks to some of the finest minds on NRL Twitter helping me out, that is now possible (for 2021 at least) by combining it with the set restart data I’d put together for last week’s post. We now have the tackle when each restart has occured and an approximate location of where the...

Another quiet week for rugby league. I’m not going to use any time trying to explain the numerous factors what was behind the one sided results during Round 16. Friend of the site Liam of PythagoNRL fame has already penned an amazing post on the subject, and everyone should read it, if you haven’t already. I’ll be here when you’re finished. It’s a far more nuanced situation with multiple factors at play than the myopic argument that either rule changes or bad teams being the root cause alone, and Liam summarises it with his usual brilliance. There’s also been some...

The first half of the 2021 NRL season is over already. Time sure does fly, unless you’re a Raiders fan, and then it probably doesn’t move quick enough. With the passing of the midpoint, it’s time to look back at what has transpired and see what has changed thus far. Fatigue has been the main talking point this season, with the NRL claiming there is no link between the rule changes and fatigue. I figured it was a good time to take a broader look at how fatigue and injuries has changed minutes played and players used in 2021. Earlier...

Nothing like a quiet week in rugby league. Magic round has come and gone, and the game is further slipping into territory that could be best described with the “f” word – farce. The blowouts have continued as well, as shown by the wonderful charts from friends of the site NRLFanalytics and AndrewRLP at the conclusion of Round 10. It was only four seasons ago that we had almost 40% of games decided by one score. Now it is almost half of that, with just 21% of this seasons 80 games decided by 6 points or fewer. We know that...

There was a lot of talk in Round 6 after the Warriors beat the Dragons around completion rates, as it looked like the New Zealand had finished the game with a 100% completion rate, a rare occurrence. The NRL later downgraded them to 40/41, although Fox Sports still has them at 40/40 for that game. Either way it was the highest completion rate in a game since at least 2014 and probably earlier, a mark that used to be held by North Queensland (we’ll come back to this later). Commentators will often talk about high completion rates during games as...