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Opinion
Want some more stats that matter?
So far this season there have been seven shutouts. I’ll do the math, that’s one per round and we still have five games to go this weekend as I write this.
So what you ask? Well, we had five over the whole 2018 season and three in 2019.
Then an explosion in 2020 as we had ten over the 20-round season at a pace of one every two weeks or 16 games. Granted we might not have another shutout all the rest of season 2021 but I’m betting we do and could very well eclipse last season for frequency. Is it becoming easier to hold a team scoreless?
Well I wouldn’t have thought that was the ‘man of feathers’ (thanks Roy, thanks HG) plan when he introduced a method to speed the game up.
Shutouts are absolute proof of one team’s dominance over another in a game and used to be very hard to achieve considering rugby league teams have approximately 40 possessions per game – that’s a lot of sets to score off of. Further proof of the yawning gap in talent, coaching and application among the NRL clubs? Perhaps.
One other measure has been discussed in media circles lately and that is the points differential gap. As at Week 9 of this season we have five teams who have scored over 200 points in game so far and seven teams who have allowed 200 points scored against them.
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
This could blow out to be ten teams allowing 200+ points over the first nine weeks depending on results over the rest of the weekend.
This might be further proof of a very recent trend. As best as I could figure going back over the previous six seasons up to Week 9 (so as to compare apples) this is the plus 200 and minus 200 ratio. 2015 2-2, 2016 5-5, 2017 4-4, 2018 4-5, 2019 4-6 and 2020 4-6.
It might not mean much but there is a slight upward trend in teams allowing 200+ points over the first nine weeks of the season, which I think we would agree is not a good look. 200 points against represents 22 points per game. That’s an awful good head start to overcome.
Just wondering if all that research into the need for six-again to be implemented considered this as an outcome.
Just so you know, my team is sitting pretty and managing quite well through all this. I just think the changes are favouring an unexpected few at the expense of many.
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