The Roar's 2019 top 50 NRL players: Odds and ends

You should only count 4 of the 5 votes removing outliers. E.G the RTS one is a joke where one judge doesn't have him in top 50.

Stuart, AJ and Tim voted Damien Cook "Dally M Hooker of the Year" 12th, 20th and 17th respectively. Seriously? Are you sure there isn't some bias there? Especially as NO Rabbitohs player was ranked highly by either of them despite the fact that Souths went on the longest winning streak of the season and finished on the SAME competition points as minor premiers the Roosters. They did however rank many of the Roosters players VERY highly. I would be interested to know which teams they each support and if any of them follow the Roosters? Particularly Tim who voted Sam Burgess 15th.

Stuarts pick of Nathan Cleary at 8 (what the?) clearly distorted his ranking from the mid 20s which would seem about right.

So egg on my face then BA. I only saw the first three judges from my mobile and did not scroll across. If my posts weren't being modded I would get an opportunity to amend or retract. As things stand my hands are tied. My last paragraph still stands though.

Cam Smith was ranked 2nd, 2nd and 4th respectively by the 3 judges. Cooper Cronk was ranked 11th by one judge only (you lose points for not playing with two arms!) Sam Burgess was ranked 6th not 5th by one judge and although on current form I would agree that GI is not in the top 10 if he was 100% fit and not carrying injuries few would argue that he shouldn't be ranked in the top 10. Any judge that would rank Greg Inglis 58th while ranking Cam Smith 2nd and James Roberts 18th is NO "expert" IMO.

The Eels are just waiting to pounce on Mary's number 11 pick Will Chambers , might even be cheaper than Manu who's not on the list. Typical Eels signing.

We have some pretty tough judges here if luke keary can't get into the top 50 of two lists.

I think the 5 judges deserve accolades, not for the selections they did or did not make, but I can't see any obvious bias in their choices. This signals to me they've tried to be objective, which is all one can ask when doing this type of exercise

That must have boiled Tim's potatoes picking Smith as his number one. But probably proves that he's a bigger man than me

exactly

Geez some of those selections have left me dumbfounded. Scott and Tim's list are the ones you would think the majority agree with. As for the others, how they are considered experts is beyond me.

Maybe. But I think you need some sort of criteria or something if you're going to ask experts to judge. Even with a criteria people will always be swayed by their personal preferences and bias which is great for discussion. But you can't have a top 50 players in the game list and have a judge not rank the reigning Dally M player of the year in RTS on that list (for example). Maybe even just some com's between the judges to sanity check it for any accidental ommissions.

Cherry Evans is 5 for Tim 47 for Mary and not even in Scott's top 50.... wow

2 of the judges put Cooper Cronk as the best player? My god its a sad state of affairs if thats the case. He only completed 7-8 try assists last year and his short kicking game was off. Is it just me, that because the NRL has become so robotic and defensive orientated that these lists are actually quite misleading. 15 years ago you would of had Fittler,Lockyer,Johns, Buderus, Langer etc. There was a wider gap between the best and the rest. The fact Tedesco is No 1 even though he was pretty ordinary in the first 8 rounds speaks to the competition at the moment.

Maybe these things are better when you don’t have a clear criteria. Saying “Give me your best 50 players” to five people probably gets a more interesting discussion and diverse lists than setting really specific criteria.

Assuming everyone was given a clear criteria, it goes to show you how differently everyone views the game. Mitch Pearce is unsurprisingly quite divisive. Michael Morgan also rates from a 9 to outside the top 60. Surely the answer is somewhere in between? RTS got duded by not getting points from one judge or he would have been 11th, I am not sure how GI makes the Top 10, but again, it depends on the criteria you use. And how someone can rate Burgess the 5th best player in the game and Cam Smith the 11th... I just don't understand by any measure.... But it is all opinions...