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Baffling rotations, metre problems explain why Eels are staring down a 0-5 start

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14th March, 2023
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It’s fairly well known that making metres is a key indicator of winning games of rugby league.

It’s also well known that where you get those metres from has changed drastically over the years: perhaps the most drastic change in the fundamental tactics of the game in the full-time professional era has been the expansion of yardage work to backs and away from forwards.

Where once carting the ball in was the job of bulky props, now it is a collective endeavour that uses wingers to start sets and finish them, with the big boys in the middle doing the grunt work in between. 

It makes sense. With interchanges limited, you need to keep your middles fresh for more defence, and it’s a lot easier to subcontract their carries to similarly big, but also fast bodies on the bench. 

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - OCTOBER 02: Eels look onduring the 2022 NRL Grand Final match between the Penrith Panthers and the Parramatta Eels at Accor Stadium on October 02, 2022, in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Data nerds have long pointed to kick return metres (KRM) as an indicator of success, though usually with the caveat that it is often a factor of what one good team – Penrith – is good at and not necessarily a signal in and of itself.

That makes sense. KRM is usually fewer than 10% of all metres made, so 90% have to come from elsewhere anyway, and uncontested runs back from long kicks are the easiest yards going outside of interceptions. Looking at you, Dylan Edwards.

But where metres come from, and who is making them, is a vital statistic and one that can lay bare structural issues within teams.

If you follow Parramatta, you might be nodding along here. The Eels are the last holdouts of what you might call the old style: they depend disproportionately on their forwards to get them up the field, and so very little to supplement their work with assistance from the backfield.

Even more old school, coach Brad Arthur rarely has recourse to his bench. Greater minds than mine have made the joke about the Parramatta interchange being stuck, like so much of their discourse, in 1986.

In last Friday’s defeat to Cronulla, Arthur leant on Reagan Campbell-Gillard for 68 minutes and Junior Paulo for 57. The league average for props in 2022 was 41 minutes and elite props rarely do more than 55.

The week before it was the other way around, with Paulo playing 68 and RCG 59, albeit with an extra sliver of golden point time thrown in.

The bench middles, Makahesi Makatoa and Wiremu Greig, have got around 15 minutes each – but not in the same game, as Makatoa was unused in the loss to Melbourne and Greig getting splinters against the Sharks.

The Roar asked Arthur about this in the Friday post-match presser.

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“You struggled a little bit with rotations,” Arthur was asked. “You only had 14 minutes out of Makatoa and no minutes at all out of Wiremu Greig, what was the reasoning behind that on such a hot day with fatigue in the game?”

“We’ve got a lot of good players that start for us,” he replied. “Junior and Reg, they’re pretty important to the team and we need them on, especially in the tight games like tonight. We need them on the field for long periods. They’re our match winners and that’s why we need them out there.”

(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

It seemed a good time to deep dive the stats on who gets metres from where, and whether it makes a difference.

Taking the last 10 games of every team in the NRL in 2022 for a comparison, I split them into back three, back five, back row, prop and interchange. Back three is the obvious place to start, but it’s worth throwing in the centres as well as plenty of sides use them for yardage carries too.

Second-rowers and locks go in together too, because lots of players play a bit of both and thus it’s hard to statistically separate them at times, and they also tend to play much longer minutes as a collective, ranging between 60 and 80 on average.

Props and interchanges are kept apart so that, as in the case of Parra, we can discern who is making metres when. Subs are a little difficult, because not all subs are middles, but in the case of yardage, it shouldn’t be too big an issue in a 160 game sample size as nobody carries a metre-eating outside back on the bench.

What did we learn? Well, Parramatta are very forward dominant, topping the comp for their combined percentage of Forwards and Interchange, who were responsible for almost 54% of all the metres that they made. This, obviously, is not surprising.

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They’re right in the middle of interchange metres, with subs combining for 15% of their total, but there’s a major caveat: our sample is from late 2022, when Ryan Matterson was starting on the bench, coming on after 20 minutes and playing the rest of the game.

He was worth about 150m per game, which is likely to distort the numbers a little. Had he started and played the same minutes, the interchange share would likely have sunk the Eels to the bottom of the list.

Parra topped the starting pack metric easily, with 38%, but were dead last for back five metres, a distance behind Souths and Storm on 32%. 

Compare and contrast with the Panthers, Sharks, Cowboys and Roosters, who were getting upwards of 40% of their metres from their backs and around 30% from their pack. 

Reagan Campbell-Gillard

(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Parramatta weren’t the only team to back their big men, but they were the only ones to leave it solely in their hands.

Souths and the Storm had a lower back three percentage, but they supplemented that with excellent work from their centres – Parra were second only to the Tigers in that area, with the now-departed Tom Opacic the major culprit – while matching the Eels’ output in back row.

Souths, however, kept the roll going with excellent interchange involvement, and while the Storm were just as weak from the bench as Parra were, they were the only team to derive statistically significant yardage numbers from their halves and hooker, which helped them get up the park alongside the obvious attacking upside of having very dangerous running playmakers.

You might at this point question why it matters where Parra get their metres from, given that they made plenty of them anyway. The Eels were third in the NRL, comfortably behind the Panthers and Cowboys, but a decent way ahead of Souths and the Roosters.

But there’s the ever-present problem of when those metres come: twice this year, they have blown sides away early, and twice they have been reeled in as their big men tired. Arthur tries to batter the door in – nothing wrong with that – but then can’t maintain the rage because he won’t go to the bench. It falls away as Junior and Reg tire.

That’s not even the main issue. As discussed at length in previewing their Grand Final charge last year, the biggest problem comes on the other side of the ball. 

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There’s nothing wrong with asking your forwards to truck the ball in, but when you also need them for defence – as every side does – and then refuse to spell them, then you’ll end up with a lot of big, tired men. 

Last year, Parra were well off the pace in terms of run metres conceded, a sure sign that they were unable to stop other teams when they got a roll on. Again, not a huge issue – Souths were in the same boat. 

But the Bunnies conceded far fewer linebreaks, because they used their bench more readily and thus had fewer instances where a tired forward could be found out.

We saw it just this weekend: J’maine Hopgood, who was their best on ground, missing the simplest of tackles on Matt Moylan late in the first half to allow a very simple try to Sharks fullback Will Kennedy.

Defence, as everyone knows, is all about effort and fatigue. You try until you can try no more.

The small devices that players wear in the back of their jerseys are largely so that analysts can measure physical output and make informed decisions on when to sub players before incidents like the one above occur.

Hopgood was a prime candidate for a rest late in the half, but at that point, Arthur had made just two subs – Clint Gutherson in an enforced HIA change and Junior Paulo, rested on the 27th minute for Jack Murchie. RCG played the whole half and Hopgood lasted until the 49th minute, when Makatoa was introduced for his quarter hour stint.

If Arthur had his time again, he might have wheeled out the tried and tested ‘ten minutes either side of halftime’ given to the weakest forward in the 17.

It needn’t be like this. Plenty of other sides carry forwards of the standards of Makatoa and Greig, but actually use them smartly.

While guys like Spencer Leniu can be used to excellent effect as impact middles, plenty of other jobbing NRL interchange props are shock absorbers, used solely to allow another, better player to rest. Hame Sele, Tof Sipley, Royce Hunt and Aaron Pene all averaged 30 minutes or fewer last year.

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We kept a stat last year on tackles per minute, with Michael Molo, Matt Eisenhuth, Ava Seumanufagai and Leo Thompson all operated as, essentially, specialist short minute tackling machines. As those names show, this role doesn’t have to be a world-beater, and there is no reason why Makatoa or Greig couldn’t do it.

Indeed, some of the names on that list have among the worst tackle efficiency for props, meaning they were essentially glorified speedbumps, blocking rather than completing tackles but nonetheless effective. They were sent out not to worry about misses, but to get in the way and be physical.

(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

It’s not going to suit Parra to change their style, like, for example, the Cowboys did. They ran their attack around a big central player, Jason Taumalolo, for years before pivoting to a more back three dominant style in 2022.

The Cowboys relied on their props for just 9% of total metres last year and were second last in all forward metre percentage, which would go a long way to explaining how rapidly they were able to improve their defence. 

They totally reshaped how they made metres and, in the process, freed their middles to just tackle, with the likes of Reuben Cotter excelling. They were also among the best at extracting impact in yardage from their middles.

Parra, with the roster they have, are likely unable to do that, but they’re failing to exploit the best of the stars at their disposal.

Their starting middles are one of their biggest strengths, but at the moment, they’re being asked to do too much without relief. 

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There’s plenty of ways to get up the field – and stop the other team doing the same – but at the moment, it’s clear that the Eels are not using what they have.

It makes it all the more confusing that they released Nathan Brown to the Roosters this week, as he could certainly have filled that role. 

Brad Arthur’s rotations are equally as baffling at the moment, and might well be what is holding Parra back. Certainly, it’s something to keep an eye on in the coming weeks. 

With a trip to Manly, a derby with Penrith and a trip to the Roosters on the horizon, it might be something that more and more fans are talking about if they end up 0-5 to start the year.

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