The secret statistic behind the top NRL teams

Whilst the Eels edge backs have made a major contribution I would also suggest the passing width of Mahoney and willingness to spread the ball to the those on the edges has worked well.

Passing the football and moving the defence is the most important stat IMO. One out play is very detrimental to results. Josh McGuire was a great release. Jason Taumalolo is over paid. Cleary, Reynolds, DCE, Ponga and Sam Walker are killing teams with ball movement.

Most trys are scored by players who are good at crossing the opposition's goal line. Scoring the most points in a career is often done by players who play a lot of games. The most successful clubs are those that score the most points. Even the best defensive team cannot win the comp without scoring. You can prove anything with statistics.

What he seems to actually arguing is that forwards in those top teams are doing less work in attack to save energy for defence so the the way to test their idea is to look at forward hit up stats and compare work rates rather than metres from wingers. You could include post contact metres to see if forwards are just diving to the ground to get faster play the balls as well where wingers, if you buy into the proposed theory would try and push for more post contact metres. Personally I think it is a result of wingers being on the end of set plays from good teams against teams who are too unfit, unstructured and unprofessional to defend well.

i enjoyed reading this angle. one hole i could see in the argument is that it concentrates on certain players rather than total run by the team from those positions. for example, certain teams may have had more stability in that position, therefore players have higher stats.

Will check it out over the weekend, thanks. But as for this particular topic, not really. I'd need some convincing that the results are the outcome of the stats and not the other way around.

“you can clearly see the best teams want their backs doing more of the dirty work early in the sets than their forwards” I havent looked at the stats to confirm but typically all teams want their backs doing early hit ups. I dont see how this shows the best teams doing something different, just doing the same thing better. “The backs can play the ball much quicker and are more likely to draw a six again or penalty than forwards” I don’t think there is any evidence to make this statement, though I would assume (but dont know) that backs have received more 6 agains than forwards. This would be a logical result of teams deliberately holding down on play one, ‘accidental’ offsides when trying to maximise line speed to keep a team pinned inside their 10m whilst tired forwards from the attacking team struggle to get behind the play the ball and the holding down of players after a linebreak. Not because of an inherent ability of backs to play the ball quicker.

Definitely - but Rellum was asking about metres gained from hit ups.

Are the top teams utilising their backs better? Or, do the backs in the top teams simply run more metres because their in a top team which forces more clearing kicks from the opposition by dominating the territorial battle? I suspect it is more the latter given the outside backs in the lesser teams consistently run for more metres than their team mates in the forward pack, and as others have noted this is not a new tactic.

Tuquiri and Sailor were probably the first pair but there were a number of big units before those two. Eric Grothe, John Ribot, Terry Fahey, Steve Knight were all in the same mould

Mushi, I think long range tries are probably significant, as Joe also says below, and is a differentiator between the good and the not so good. The better teams / players can split defenses open at any point on the field whereas the poorer teams don't have that ability to the same extent or are shut down earlier. Longe range tries I think are definitely an indicator of the talent gap.

First of all Ely, thanks for throwing your hat into the Roar writer ring. This is a really interesting piece and judging by the comments, might have stopped more than a few regulars. As with all stats, in isolation, the numbers are neither here nor there, but for things like sharing workload equitably across the team, field position after the first tackle, etc this is a critical stat. I also don't think it makes a lot of difference how these numbers are achieved, or for how long this stat has been important. The conclusion you presented seems pretty clear, so I'm assuming coaches must know about it and must be trying to maximise it, along with other crucial numbers they use in a game. If it's working for the two teams that are heading the comp, surely other teams need to get on board.

You could subtract kick return metres but you wouldn't be able to account for finishing long range tries. Also your best prop typically gets a leg up on metres through kick returns (gets the kick off and drop out hit ups counted)

A quick look had between 5-8 of the top 10 being back three guys each year from 2013. Some years there was a metre eater prop in the #1 (JT13, Fifita and Sam Burgess)

I think you've raised the beginnings of an interesting conversation, but I think the focus of the conversation might be about momentum and how the outside backs use their speed and agility to kickstart sets and gain momentum. While the use of outside backs early in sets to ruck the pill up used to be about minimising the amount of territory your forwards had to cover to get back on side, it is now more of touch footy with tackles ethos of getting defensive lines back pedalling and stripping their numbers somewhere or having them giving away six agains

First off I love Bloke in a Bar and Kempy, especially now that he's doing The Captains Run with Cam Smith who sounds like he's been doing it for ages. I also watched the episodes you mentioned. Not sure its a new phenomena but definitely with the new rules it maybe having a bigger effect. At the beginning of the season I didn't think George Jennings would be my preferred Storm winger but he has a very high work rate in carting the ball up and has topped the meter count a few times for the Storm. They picked him for that exact reason and not his attacking ability. To'o is a freak of nature, especially considering his height but he is a pocket rocket and I've maintained that he is a big part of the Panthers success similar to the effect of JFH. Big meters, quick restarts and also manages to jag a fair few penalties as teams try their best to slow him down. A metric that might be skewing the stats though is long range tries that these teams score involving the back 3. I suspect Manly might be right up there in this metric too. If you have a potent back 3 with the new rules and tired defenders you're likely going to win games.

I thought it started in the 70's/80's with the roosters?