Rugby League

A few weeks ago friend of the site Jason Oliver wrote a tremendous piece for Rugby League Writers on the trend of teams not contesting bombs. It’s a fantastic insight into a part of the game that has become somewhat boring of late, but we all know how risk adverse football coaches are these days. Rather than do a poor job of rehashing Jason’s article, I’ll just use this quote which sums everything up nicely. “While they disrupted the contest and forced a mistake, the Titans don’t present a line on the kick chase. Those close to the sideline have...

Nearly three years ago I wrote “Six again? More like 2.3 again” which exposed a lot the truths about the set restart rule, and how it wasn’t working as intended. It showed that teams had worked out they could game the system and use it to cynically control their opponents. Before that in 2020, and just weeks into the introduction of the rule I covered how the top teams had negative set restart differentials, aptly titled “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying“. That’s still applicable today. The good defensive teams quickly worked out that defending for an extra 2-3...

Round 16 was a bye week at the Eye Test offices, and I’m back from a much needed break after cataloguing the footwear of every NRL player in Round 15. And somehow, we’re already at the end of June, which means another month has passed and I’ll be using this week’s post for a league wide efficiency update. Which is going be very useful as the last month of NRL matches have muddied the waters on some of the likely contenders this year. In a season with a glut of very mid teams outside of (and occasionally including) Penrith, trying...

With a slower week due to Origin commitments and very little happening on the NRL front, it’s the perfect time to look at a very important rugby league topic. Namely, cataloguing which brand and colour of boots every NRL player was wearing during Round 15 and comparing them to prior seasons. Yes, Bootwatch is back for the third installment, as possibly my favourite post to do of the year. Not just because I’m a sneakerhead AND a rugby league tragic, but also because I like to see how much content I can get out of something so irrelevant as how...

We are a week late with the Eye Test’s monthly efficiency updates due to scheduling in the mid-season advanced statistical leaders after Round 13. So, this week we have May efficiency update with the first week of June thrown in, as well as a look at what (or if) the Tigers might have improved up on under new coach Benji Marshall. That’s an additional round included at no extra cost for your May(ish) efficiency update. There’s no shrinkflation here at the Eye Test where we understand the rising costs of living. For new readers, the regular efficiency analysis is done...

It’s hard to believe but we’re already thirteen rounds through the 2024 NRL season. This also means it’s as close to the midpoint of a 27 round season as you’re going to get, since I can’t do an update for Round 13.5. Following tradition as we did last year, the year before, and the year before that, we’re going to take this time when Origin fever is taking over the eastern seaboard to see the top (and in some cases lowest ranked) players by the Eye Test’s suite of advanced statistics for rugby league. Find out which players are performing...