Rugby League

Last week the NRL noted that there would be a “crackdown” on deliberate infringements on early tackles that lead to set restarts, as it has become more obvious that teams are gaming them for reasons that myself and many others have mentioned before. Basically, it comes down to field position, as giving away one or two extra tackles is far outweighed by conceding an extra 20-30 metres down field as well as a fresh set of six. What was the result of this set restart “crackdown”? Fewer penalties than Round 8 and slightly more set restarts. Not a lot of...

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...

During the Raiders loss to the Cowboys on the weekend, Canberra five eighth and Dally M medal winner Jack Wighton did something he seems to do far more often than any other player in the NRL – kick a ball out on the full. Andrew Voss mentioned it on commentary on Fox League as well, bringing up that according to the Fox Sports Lab he’d kicked out on the full 16 times since 2019. It’s something that appears to happen so frequently that NRL Twitter continually dunks on him for it. This had me thinking, is Wighton the worst offender...

This week I’ll be skipping any analysis of the pace of the game, for a few reasons. The first is something I alluded to last week, which is that we’ve hit a decent threshold of data points, the affect of the new rules is relatively clear and the impact of fatigue is still obvious. The second is that friend of the site Liam of PythagoNRL fame has put together the best summary to date of the impact of the new rule changes on margin and form. It’s well worth your time to read through it. And I’m not just saying...

With three rounds and 24 games complete in season 2021, it’s becoming pretty clear what affect the new rule changes are having NRL this season. There are no dramatic shifts as we saw with the introduction of set restarts and reverting to one referee, but there are noticeable trends of what is (or isn’t happening). The confirmation of Condensed Rugby League theory I have mentioned condensed rugby league previously, where we’re seeing the same amount of rugby league shoehorned into a shorter period of time, and it’s looking increasingly apparent that is what we’re seeing in 2021. Whether or not...