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When rugby league supporters call somebody an ‘average player’, it’s often not meant as a compliment.
But becoming an average player in an elite sporting competition is a significant achievement. Not as significant as becoming an elite player but, by definition, not everybody can do that. Everybody needs average players – footballers who’ll go out and do a job every week – and many are willing to pay good money for average.
Moreover, average can be an interesting point to dive into things. It’s where you find young players on their way up but who haven’t quite figured it all out yet. It’s where you find veterans on their way down, with weaknesses that are becoming more apparent. And it’s where you find the NRL’s most consistent contributors – the guys who might not ever occupy a representative jersey, but who you wouldn’t trade for a riskier prospect.
So, what do I mean by ‘average’ (sorry)? Regular readers are probably familiar with my POPE player rating system. POPE is no more. It’s been superseded by another system: BEAST (baseline and equalised aggregate statistical tally).
BEAST is the same broad concept – a composite of all the publicly available data on NRL player performance, with statistical contributions equalised to account for differences in playing time and with weights applied to reflect the relative importance of each measure.
There are some important differences, though. POPE’s biggest problem was its inability to adequately discriminate between players with low and high work rates – the Latrell Mitchell-Dylan Edwards conundrum.
Both play the same position and they’re comparable, and often compared, in that sense. Stylistically, they couldn’t be more different – Edwards is death by a thousand cuts, Latrell is a ballistic missile.
(Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)
BEAST irons out some of these differences and makes players across the board more comparable. Which is not to say comparisons are always apt. You wouldn’t compare James Tedesco to Jaimin Jolliffe, for example.
Like several other commentators, I consider missed tackles a not very useful statistical measure. They can even be misleading – in many cases they don’t matter much and are merely the product of a team’s defensive tactics.
The best example of that remains Penrith’s rushing edge defence which sees Viliame Kikau and Liam Martin ‘miss’ loads of tackles but still contribute to positive defensive outcomes. Misses therefore carry even less weight than they did under POPE.
Run metres are another tricky one. While advancing the ball is fundamental to rugby league, treating run metres in bulk or oven on per minute basis can positively or negatively distort comparisons between players, most notably starting props and bench props.
In terms of raw impact per minute, the recently retired Andrew Fifita was the NRL’s best prop in 2022. While his cameos for Cronulla were mighty impressive, he ended up playing much fewer than half the minutes of a typical starter. Players do get some credit for the average length of their carries, but it’s not a significant factor.
Finally, POPE gave no real credit to kickers. That’s changed, with BEAST giving halves some credit for kick metres gained.
At the end of all this, my spreadsheet spits out a score for each player and for the purpose of this exercise it then compares each player to the mean score in their position. 100 is a bang average player, with scores fanning in either direction from there. For this exercise an average player is anybody in the 95-105 range.
As far as above average goes, the excellent Joey Manu led all-comers with a whopping 165.7 in 2022. Does this make him the best player in the NRL? Ultimately that’s a matter of what you value most. He’s certainly the best outside back.
Considering the importance of their positions and the relative scarcity of quality players, other candidates for best in the NRL could include Cameron Munster (152) and Joe Tapine (164.8).
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
At the other end of the spectrum is Dragons prop Blake Lawrie (49). I like Lawrie – unlike some of his teammates he always tries hard gets through lots of work, but he’s probably no more than a bench player on a good team.
So, who’s in the middle – the talented but flawed, the experienced but declining, the admirably consistent or maddeningly inconsistent?
For a guy with just 21 first grade games under his belt, this is a good place to be. He was in roughly the same parish as Reece Walsh and Will Kennedy in terms of his overall output in 2022 and slightly ahead of Cody Ramsey and Daine Laurie.
Feldt’s now completed 10 seasons in the top grade and there are some signs of decline, though you could also argue that he suffers from a lack of opportunity given the Cowboys naturally favour their more potent left edge where Tom Dearden, Val Holmes and Murray Taulagi reside.
Even so, Feldt’s company around the mean – Edrick Lee, Jason Saab, Ken Maumalo – might indicate where he’s at as he approaches the twilight of his career.
Penisini appeared in an earlier edition of mean boys and I’m inclined to consider it admirable consistency on his part. He’s really solid, a slightly above average player overall and a strong defender who doesn’t make a lot of mistakes. He just lacks the attacking potency of guys like Manu, Holmes and Justin Olam.
There’s an above average player in here somewhere, but for the moment it’s stuck behind a flashy, mistake-ridden and often ineffective player. Lomax’s problem is exactly what you’d expect: poor decision-making and mistakes, lots of ‘em.
He should be close to the elite centres. Instead, he’s sandwiched between Tom Opacic and Brad Parker.
Sua’ali’i’s output increased quite a bit in the second half of the season, but his presence here reflects his 2022 season as a whole. He’s not yet among the bulk metre-eating, tackle-busting transition monsters who are most of the game’s best wingers, but he’s still young and not that far off.
The Titans will have an average half next season, which you could argue is a good thing considering Toby Sexton (63.4) is a long way down the list. Trouble is they signed Foran after letting a perfectly serviceable and younger half go.
It’s also not clear where Foran will fit in around AJ Brimson (139.7) and Jayden Campbell (122.5), or whether his style will suit whatever it is the Titans have been trying to do.
(photo by Getty Images)
Speak of the devil. Fogarty does pretty much everything Foran does. While he doesn’t run as much, he’s pretty good when he does. Fogarty’s kicking game and defence are slightly better. Foran is certainly much better at putting people into gaps, but again, is that going to translate?
If there isn’t a picture of Alex Twal next to the word ‘consistency’ in the Macquarie Dictionary, there should be. He’s a solid contributor on both sides of the ball, rarely makes mistakes and makes enough metres to be firmly middle of the pack. Most famously, he’s outstandingly consistent at failing to cross the try-line.
Statistics can only ever tell part of the story and I’m inclined to mostly ignore them when it comes to the current crop of dummy-halves. BEAST probably overrates runners like Damien Cook and Reece Robson and definitely underrates a passer like Reed Mahoney.
Stylistically, Koroisau is somewhere between the passers and runners, so his inclusion here isn’t without logic.
The grandson of the great Johnny King and the fourth generation of his family to play first grade, King had a breakout 2022 for Canterbury. His offloading was a feature, and King and Tevita Pangai Jr could be one of the most enterprising middle combinations in season 2023.
This didn’t come as a complete surprise given I kept a close eye on the exciting Nanai in 2022. Missed tackles might not matter as much as other measures, but they have to count for something and when you miss as many as Nanai it waters down your attacking contribution.
By way of comparison, Angus Crichton, a comparable player to Nanai in terms of playing minutes and work rate, missed about 1.9 tackles per 80 minutes of playing time. Nanai missed 3.5 per 80. It adds up over the course of 20-odd games.
Jeremiah Nanai scores. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Su’A was one of the NRL’s best edge back rowers in the first half of 2022, but injuries seemed to slow him down in the second half and his numbers declined in most areas.
It should be noted that it doesn’t take much to slide down to the middle in this position. Apart from some notable outliers (looking at you, David Fifita and Corey Waddell), the difference between the best second rowers and the worst is smaller than in every other position. Most teams have at least one good operator on the edges.
Is Sutton a lock? He mostly came off the bench in 2022 and proceeded to hang around in the middle. Close enough. Plus, there were no other eligible candidates in this category.
Canberra’s bench forwards, including Sutton and the Coreys Horsburgh and Harawira-Naera, were an underrated part of their late-season run to the finals. Sutton consistently made an impact when deputising for the outstanding Tapine and Josh Papalii and he could be a handy signing for the Bulldogs in 2023.
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