It takes two, baby: Understanding the great penalty goal drought of 2022

On Sunday afternoon, in the gym at the southern end of WIN Stadium, Michael Maguire gave a somewhat confusing string of answers to a fairly innocuous set of questions.

His side had just lost to the Dragons by six points, despite winning the game on the major statistical indicators – completion rates, possession, field position, etc – and Maguire answered a question from yours truly about the attritional nature of the game.

“It was a fair game of footy, end to end and very tight,” he said. “There’s key areas where you’re playing in games like that, it can come down to one play, one little moment. They were able to capitalise.”

“I know the style that St George Illawarra have been playing, and they’ve probably looked at us and thought that it was going to be an end-to-end game. That’s what came out: two teams wanting to complete high and play their style.”

He’s right: this was a serious grinding game of rugby league. In the first 30 minutes, both teams combined for 140 tackles, but just nine of them had been within 20m of either goalline. That’s just 5% of the game in the red zone, or alternatively, 95% in the middle part of the field.

With that in mind, the next 10 minutes confused me enormously: the Tigers had all the ball and all the field position, with several repeat sets and, crucially, penalties in the Dragons end. The score was 2-0 to the Tigers and I asked him why nobody thought that it was a good idea to take the two points on offer.

“We all decide on those things,” he said, before swiftly moving on. Or nobody decided, I guess.

It was a fair old tactical blunder, as it played out. The Tigers lost by six, and essentially removed the opportunity of future penalty goals in the second half, and of the two-point field goal late in the game, and of simple scoreboard pressure – all in search of four points that never came, and based on all evidence available, weren’t likely to come.

It spoke to a wider trend within the NRL this season. There’s been a huge reluctance to take the two, even though the margins are way closer than they have been in recent years.

Last year, penalty goal attempts were down from 1.6 per game in 2020 to 1.1 per game – in line with more tries being on offer in the asterisk year of 2021. By my count, that’s now even lower at 0.9 attempts per game.

The drop over time is (obviously) because of the six-again rule, which reduced kickable penalties, with a 50% drop between 2020 and 2022. In 2021, offside was included in the six again, which might account for some of the fall, but also contributing was the higher number of tries, because saw the value in going for four. Now, with fewer tries, that doesn’t make sense any more.

The Storm and Cowboys have attempted seven penalty goals this season, ahead of the Panthers, Warriors, Tigers and Eels on six. The Titans have tried just once and the Broncos not at all.

It’s a strange old set of numbers. For the Tigers it is particularly confusing: they took three in their 8-6 defeat to the Titans, for example, and should have won as a result. Yet when the points were on the table against the Dragons … nothing.

For the Warriors and Cowboys, however, it does seem to be paying off. They might be the biggest ladder outperformers of 2022, having jagged results that their performances might not have merited. It might be a fluke that they take lots of penalty goals, but I doubt it.

At the other end, Brisbane’s lack of two-point taking is confusing – I haven’t written down every minute of every game, but surely it must have been on offer at some point – and cannot fathom why habitually low-scoring teams like the Tigers and Bulldogs don’t do it more.

Maybe I’m biased, as someone who grew up watching Kevin Sinfield, who never knowingly knocked back two free points, lift championship after championship.

I’m also a supporter of Hull FC, who won two Challenge Cups on the back of Marc Sneyd’s unusual yet incredibly effective kicking style landing north of 90%, regularly from penalty goals. I think these things really, really matter.

For close games, especially in the first half, double especially if you struggle to get points elsewhere, triple especially if you’re in a tight game, they are vital.

If your goal is to stay in the game as long as possible, then accumulating points every time you get into the opponent’s end gives you something to hang on to and gives the defence something to, well, defend.

Just ask the Warriors: they’ve picked up three wins within a one try margin with great assistance from Reece Walsh, the best goalkicker in the NRL in 2022, and the maximum number of penalty goals.

There’s plenty of reasons not to take a penalty goal, of course. If you’re losing by loads, then it doesn’t make much sense.

Unless you’re playing Melbourne who have had two bizarre incidents where teams have taken the two after the siren.

Last weekend the Knights were given a kickable penalty at 26-0 but with first half time elapsed, they chose to kick it.

The Raiders did the same in the dying embers of their hefty loss to the Storm, they did for no reason at all – well, except for covering the 14.5 points line, on which I will say no more other than to say out that it happened.

If you’re winning by a lot it doesn’t make a great deal of sense either, unless you want to waste time off the clock, as Mitchell Moses did to great amusement in the first round, or to hit a meaningless number, as Ryan Papenhuyzen did on Sunday to raise the half century.

Maybe the reason the Warriors do it because they think they’ll kick it. They have a 92% kicker in Walsh, but he is an outlier. Goalkicking in the NRL this season has been pretty rubbish.

The 80% mark has been the sign of a good kicker in the modern era, but only six NRL teams have that. At the same stage last year, there were 10 players who would be considered regular kickers who were above 80%.

Walsh (92%) leads the pack, with Blake Taaffe (86%), Reuben Garrick and Brad Schneider (both 85%) and Nathan Cleary and Ryan Papenhuyzen (both 82%) behind.

(Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)

Walsh is well above his career average as are Valentine Holmes (79%) and Moses (78%): no surprise that Walsh and Holmes have kicked six penalty goals each, while Moses has four (with Clint Gutherson adding two more). Zac Lomax is also a 79% kicker, bang on his career average.

Anything below 75% isn’t great, and that includes exactly half of the league. Adam Reynolds is passable on 75% but beyond him, you get into some real kicking strife.

Nicho Hynes and Sam Walker are horrendous, with Hynes – who has spoken about issues kicking at Shark Park because of the wind – down at 62% and Walker marginally better at 69%.

Hynes kicked at 74% for the Storm last year and Walker at nearly 79%, showing a serious slide in form.

The Knights, Bulldogs, Titans and Tigers are even worse: Toby Sexton (56%) and Jake Clifford (60%) are bad, and the combination of Jackson Hastings and Luke Brooks and Matt Burton and Kyle Flanagan are worse.

Two questions arise from this. Firstly: what is the value to a team of a good goalkickers? Secondly, why are teams suddenly worse?

For better teams like the Roosters and Sharks, the simple answer to the first question might be ‘not much’.

No Sharks result would have been altered by better kicking, and in the Roosters games that were within the margin of kicking error, Walker kicked 2/2 against the Dragons, and only the recent Bulldogs defeat would have flipped.

Notably, Adam Keighran took over the duties in that game, though he missed twice and Trent Robinson insisted that it was due to an injury to Walker.

Down the bottom, however, things are very different. The Titans could have turned several losses into golden point/win situations with better kicking.

They won or lost within a converted try in each of their first six games but have only attempted one penalty goal all seasons despite receiving the third most penalties in the comp. Even Sexton, 56% and all, might have been worth a shot.

The Knights, Tigers and Bulldogs are bottom for tries scored, so every point they do get is at a premium – having a Walsh with a 92% chance turning four into six would go a long way. Marginal gains, right?

The Dogs have the fourth most tackles within 20m and the fourth worst completion rate, as well as the fewest tries scored, so there’s a decent argument to be made that taking the two every time is a better return on investment, especially early in games.

If it were me, I’d be sending Matt ‘biggest boot in the NRL’ Burton back for 40m field goals at this point. I’d back him to hit three of them before the Dogs scored a try.

The Tigers are also bad culprits for getting into range, getting penalties and then failing to leave with points, so – just like on Sunday in Wollongong – you’d hope the bloke with the spreadsheet sat next to Maguire is pointing this out.

Matt Burton. (Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)

There’s also another factor at play for the great goalkicking drought: field position. Imagine you have a goalkicker with a 60% chance of kicking the goal, and you don’t score many tries.

It might stand to reason that the kicker themselves might not be the problem, and instead, it could that they are simply being asked to kick from more difficult areas.

In 2022, that has happened a lot: early round data suggested 30% more tries were scored in corners compared to last season.

In 2021, far more tries were scored through tired defence, and invariably, that meant more tries were the result of close range crashovers or long range tries where the scorer can run around the back to improve the angle.

Again, the Bulldogs and Tigers are interesting case studies. Canterbury’s top scorer list features Josh Addo-Carr (5), Jayden Okunbor (2) and Braidon Burns (2), meaning that 10 of their 16 tries have been scored by wingers, who score the vast majority of their tries in the corners.

The Dogs have actually switched of late to have Burton kick from the left and Flanagan from the right, trying to play the percentages better for lower probability kicks. It hasn’t worked, but they are at least thinking about it.  

This is replicated at the Tigers, where Ken Maumolo and David Nofoaluma have shared 11 of 16 tries, mostly at the corner post, and at the Knights, where 11 of 17 have been scored by a winger or centre. Hastings and Brooks have also shared kicking recently, though that just appears to be losing faith in Brooks with the boot.

There is a direct correlation between line breaks and goalkicking percentage, with one honourable outlier on either end.

The bottom four teams for line breaks are those that score the fewest goals, with those at the top for line breaks score the most goals – excepting Nicho Hynes and the (potentially imagined) Sutherland Shire wind vortex.

Line breaks don’t necessarily correlate directly with how good a team is, by the way, though obviously it helps you be good if you make breaks. The Bunnies hugely overperform line breaks and Manly underperform it, but sit next to each other in the ladder, while the high-flying Cowboys are behind the lowly Dragons in line breaks.

The bottom end exception is the Warriors, who outperform line breaks to goals because they have a reliable kicker, but also take lots more penalty goals with Walsh kicking six from six.

Is that a tactic, or is that because their kicker is better? The Bulldogs have taken just three shots and the Knights just two, one of which was after the siren this weekend against Melbourne. The Tigers might conceivably have won on Sunday if they’d have took either of the two easy shots presented to them.

Then again, teams tend to take penalties that they think that they’ll kick, so maybe Walsh’s 92% is because he’s taking the easier shots from penalty goals. Either way, it seems to be paying off.

It’s a lesson Maguire, Trent Barrett, Adam O’Brien and Juston Holbrook would do well to learn. It makes perfect sense to take the two when you struggle to get over the line, but the lowest-scoring teams tend not to. Strange.

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