Round 3 of the 2022 NRL season gave us one of the worst executed games in recent memory on Friday evening when the Warriors squeaked home against the Tigers. The less said about the final 10 minutes of this game the better, with one particular halfback (let’s call him L. Brooks – wait that’s too obvious. Let’s go with Luke B) throwing two ill advised passes inside his own 40 metres and turning the ball over both times despite only trailing by a single score. This brought out the old trope of “there’s not enough players to support 17 teams”,...
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Examining expected points (ETxP) from NRL Round 1 2022
A few weeks ago, I debuted Eye Test Expected Points (ETxP) on the site, with the intent to use it for analysing team performance throughout the season. Ideally it would give us an indication of which teams are outperforming or underperforming the expected points from their field position as a proxy for how a team is travelling. If you need a refresher on ETxP there’s a substantial post on the site going into detail of how these expected points are calculated and how they can be applied, as well as some possible drawbacks from using this method. For those of...
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Explainer: Eye Test Expected Points (ETxP) for the NRL
“We stayed in the contest when they certainly had all the field position and a lot of ball. “We just couldn’t get any good field position. We were attacking from the back of the field at some stage and making some good yardage – but it was too far to go.” The above comments came from Wayne Bennett after his South Sydney team lost the 2021 NRL Grand Final to Penrith 14-12. The Rabbitohs were constantly under pressure from the Panthers, with Penrith forcing five drop outs to zero by their opponents. Yet they had a chance to tie the...
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