RUn %

Round 11 is complete, meaning we can now look back at the advanced statistics I use to track players through the season. The first up is Run %, and if you’re new to the site you can find a primer here. Here’s the Top 20 all minutes chart for Round 11 Royce Hunt absolutely smashed the rest of the competition, not only sporting a 30.5% Run %, which is unheard of from players who spend more than 10 minutes on the field, but he amassed 20 runs in 28 minutes. If you scan down the list, the only other player...

Before the charts this week, I wanted to clear up the “Team Plays” column based on some feedback from Twitter. The “Team Plays” column is the total plays for a particular team, and not the minute adjusted number of plays a player was on the field for. The adjustment for minutes played is made in the Run % calculation. I’ve left the “Team Plays” unadjusted get an idea of how many opportunities to run the ball. Generally, NRL games have around 300 play the balls and about 150 per team. If you’re seeing a team with more than that number...

With NRL Round 9 complete we can have a look at one of my advanced statistics for rugby league, Run %. This statistic aims to estimate the percentage of team plays that a player completed a run during his time on the field. It is used to estimate workload with the ball. Firstly, we will look at all players for Round 9. Despite a chronic knee injury, Andrew Fifita can still turn it on in limited minutes, with 9 runs in 13 minutes for a Run % of 43.6%. It’s likely that percentage would have declined had he played more...

Round 8 is complete so it’s time to look at some advanced statistics for the round, starting with Run %. As noted previous, Run % looks to quantify how often a player completes a run while they were on the field, taking into account an estimate of how many plays they faced whilst on the field. It is purely meant to identify how often someone is making a run, not how good the run was or how much impact it had. Middle forwards are usually only measured by counting stats like runs and run metres, which makes it hard to...