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Mike Meehall Wood is a rugby league writer, Celtic supporter and cricket tragic. He has written extensively about rugby league for publications in the UK and Australia, and about sports more widely for Forbes, VICE, LADbible and more.
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Death, taxes and PSG messing it up in Europe. But the story shouldn't be that Paris have again failed again on the biggest stage…
Coaching Queensland and coaching New South Wales might look like similar jobs, but are actually vastly different. The Maroons boss tends to work off…
There’s a joke in soccer that if you sack your coach midway through the season, you give it to Big Sam until the end…
The UEFA Champions League is set for its biggest change in two decades next year with a shake-up for the group stages - but,…
How many weeks are left until we stop caring about the NRL again? This is the golden period of the season, with every team…
Wayne Bennett might be rumoured with a move elsewhere for 2025, but his Dolphins are far from done in 2024 after another stunning boilover…
Benji Marshall has plenty of kids in his side and, sitting 14-6 to the good at half time over the Bulldogs, he might have…
Coaching jobs in the NRL don’t get much bigger than South Sydney. Jason Demetriou, sacked this week, knew that and accepted it at every…
Canberra have pulled off one of the great comebacks to steal a 26-24 victory over Manly at 4 Pines Park with Hudson Young touching…
Anthony Seibold has warned his Manly side that they need to break the habits of the last few years and put together a solid…
Borussia Dortmund have given themselves a huge chance of making an unlikely UEFA Champions League Final appearance with a pulsating 1-0 win over PSG.…
A double from Vinicius Junior has put Real Madrid in a strong position going into next week's Champions League semi final second leg as…
There’s been a trope going round in the NRL and you’d have had to have had your head in the sand not to notice…
The UEFA Champions League is the gift that keeps giving for football fans: few major tournaments in any sport can claim to so consistently…
If there was ever a testament required to the success of the New Zealand Warriors, we might have seen it this last weekend passed.…
Anzac Round is done and another NRL touchpoint is ticked off amid the onward march of the 2024 season. It helps to see things…
The Sydney Roosters have been dealt another major blow with club legend Luke Keary announcing that he will retire from the NRL at the…
Penrith have won plenty of games under Ivan Cleary, but few can have seen them have to grit it out as much as this…
It was already going horrendously for Benji Marshall and the Tigers, 22-0 down at the hour mark, when their captain walked off the field.…
Brad Arthur must wonder what he has to say to his team anymore. With his job under huge pressure, his Parramatta side managed to…
FWIW (and it was 2 years ago) I walked past Sloan at a Dragons media op and thought he was one of the smallest footy players I’d seen. Him, Soni Luke and Jayden Campbell.
Zac v Tyrell: If the Dragons want to get the most out of their spine, they have to get the best out of Sloan
“If you can’t make the tackle, make yourself a speedbump” was what I was always taught 😂
Zac v Tyrell: If the Dragons want to get the most out of their spine, they have to get the best out of Sloan
I would like to take at least 1% of ownership over anyone slagging off completion rates in rugby league. It is the hill I will die on.
Football’s xG statistic is the most ridiculous in all of world sport and the A-Leagues could do without it
Propellerhead here…
xG is really useful if you’re wanting to know if a team is over/underperforming over a decent sample size. Ange’s first season at Celtic, for example, it told a markedly different story to reality and was eventually proven right as the sample increased.
What isn’t useful is the way that it is used in the ALM comms, which is almost always a crutch for them to sound clever, while simultaneously alienating anyone who doesn’t understand and also totally misusing a stat that was never designed for single-game application.
For example: Liverpool just posted 7.11 xG to Newcastle’s 0.6, which tells you that they battered them, but you could have worked that out by a million other means (not least watching the game) because they had 62% possession, 34 shots to 5, 13 SOT to 3, 9 big chances to 2 etc etc.
In single games, it doesn’t really ever offer more than ‘Team A was a bit wasteful’ or ‘Team B scored off their only chance’.
But: it could also tell you that Darwin Nunez is the most underperforming striker to his xG, suggesting he would likely pick up as the season went on, or that it’s not really sustainable for Bruno Fornaroli to keep scoring at the rate he is given the chances he gets.
Again, you could work this out by watching but it’d take a lot more watching, and stats are designed to give you shortcuts to what is actually happening and to deepen understanding.
Anyway, the worst stat in sports is the VB Hard-Earned Index and I claim my $5. I have asked serious journalistic questions about how this is calculated and nobody knows.
Football’s xG statistic is the most ridiculous in all of world sport and the A-Leagues could do without it
Duly noted 😛
You’ll be surprised to hear I’ve not been – though, like Leon, I also prefer Blackpool to Bondi. Better fish suppers.
An action man, a donkey, a Tibetan singing bowl? What your NRL club wants in their Christmas stocking
I shall revert to the Pommy version, ‘pivots’, from now on just for you.
Pressure Points: Dearden's extension makes him the main man at the Cowboys – now, he has to live up to it
Run-first is the obvious thing when, really the standout two 6s in the comp are Cody Walker and Cam Munster, one of whom is pass-first and the other is run-first. That’s not to say that one can’t do the other, but they clearly specialise well.
Agree on Schuster, though…his strength was to do all the other stuff while still being a the size of a backrower…so he decided to play like he was 30kgs lighter.
Pressure Points: Dearden's extension makes him the main man at the Cowboys – now, he has to live up to it
The negative stats you mention aren’t really that negative, and I would say are fundamentally misunderstood (and misrepresented) by 99% of outlets.
Missed/ineffective tackles really just tells you how a team defends, not if they’re any good at it, for example. It’s easy to say that making tackles is better than missing them (true, too) but what if you don’t even get there to make them? Ask the Titans.
Errors too are just a measure of how you’re trying to attack. The Bronx play super progressive football so of course they drop the ball more. They also score a lot more.
The Roosters won the comp with the most, the Dogs came last with the highest complation rate…that Chooks side was also among the most penalised (and still are) because they pushed every ruck to the limit, which I would say is a good thing. Their goalline D was amazing because they challenged refs to blow penalties on them, and often they didn’t.
Stats can prove a lot of stuff, but you have to know where they fit in with the tactical side because that allows you to separate signal and noise. Neither stats nor tactics works without the other.
Pressure Points: Cameron Munster will know that 2023 wasn't his best - but he remains key to Storm's 2024
Hey – I’ve got one of them and it gets a fair run at touch footy on Monday nights 😂
Welcome aboard, Richo and Barry - here's the big questions facing the new regime at the Wests Tigers
It’s an interesting point, but RL bumbled along basically fine for 100 years before the Super Laegue showed up.
In terms of fanbase, the likes of Saints, Wigan, Wire, Hull clubs and Leeds have as many supporters as a lot of NRL clubs and there’s a huge junior and amateur game that SL doesn’t even touch. Something else would exist if SL didn’t.
The A-League could learn a little from rugby league – but not in the way you think
The Wakey/Cas/Fev triumvirate is still an open issue really, because they’re as rusted on as they come and basically exist to hate each other.
Easy sokkah example would be Marconi, Sydney Croatia and Bonnyrigg, who have three stadiums within a tiny radius and thousands of fans – more than Macarthur you’d say – but absolutely cannot coexist in the same organisation.
Cumbria is a bit different because (unlike most of the RL heartlands) geography is a major factor. Would be like putting Parkes and Forbes into one team (which might work) but then throwing in Bathurst to fill out the region. Sure, they’re all close to each other relatively, but they’re also miles away.
The A-League could learn a little from rugby league – but not in the way you think
We have a great example of that in Bradford Bulls – multiple world champions (when SL and NRL were closest, too) who got relegated during a period of financial difficulty, from which they have never recovered as a result of being relegated.
Thus one of the biggest, most traditional rusted on areas with a huge fanbase has withered on the vine for over a decade. The Bulls still get 4k fans in the second tier (the highest in the league) but averaged more than 3x that in 2005.
The A-League could learn a little from rugby league – but not in the way you think
We imported the GF model from Aus in the late 90s, prior to that the champs were the champs.
Ironically, the 2nd Tier GF has caused the most problems: Toronto and Toulouse both lost to London when the league very much wanted them to go up. Catalans also survived a playoff by the skin of their teeth, which would have set the game back 20 years.
Both Toronto and Featherstone have walked the Champo only to miss out in a one-off game to a side that, largely, weren’t bothered about getting promoted and couldn’t afford to go full-time. Easy to see why they’d like to get shot of it pronto.
The A-League could learn a little from rugby league – but not in the way you think
Your cheque is in the post mate 😂
The A-League could learn a little from rugby league – but not in the way you think
Au contraire – when they play internationals in London, they regularly announce how many of the tix were bought from southern postcodes, and its usually a pretty high proportion.
Some would be exiled northerners but RL does have a significant eventgoer base in the South – as evidenced too by the viewing figures on TV.
OT isn’t like that really, but then events there tend to be more for the rusted-on fans, like Finals (GF or WC) as opposed to England games that are meant to grow the brand.
The A-League could learn a little from rugby league – but not in the way you think
The 30k is not to be sniffed at but I take your point. One wonders how much of Ponga’s 70k a game at Newcastle derives from him having played Origin, however. In negotiations, a rep player is surely worth more than a non-rep player, right?
If Kiwis and Poms are allowed to play, Origin might be about to stumble into eligibility rules that work
You’ve spectacularly missed my point, and yet also kind of proved it.
I never said there weren’t Pacific players prior to 2005, what I said was “As recently as 2005, there were just two Pacific players in State of Origin“.
The point was not that they didn’t exist before, it was that they weren’t as prevalent – that you can specifically list the names of Pacific players prior to 2005 suggests that there weren’t that many, right? I mean it’d take you a long time to list all the Pacific players now…
If Kiwis and Poms are allowed to play, Origin might be about to stumble into eligibility rules that work
I’m possibly the biggest WCC fan there is so I’m here with you. Reckon I’ve attended 13 over the journey, plus a few of the 97 debacle too 😂
Saints v Broncos 2001 and Manly v Leeds 2009 stand out as particularly great games, as well as last year’s at Penrith.
Fourth time lucky: Penrith set for UK trip as World Club Challenge clash with Wigan confirmed
Not a Tour de France fan then 😁
Smart Signings: Why the Tigers need to throw the keys to the team - and the cheque book - at Jarome Luai
He meant it in the sense that somebody better would come around for Dodd and that playing 7 for the Tigers straight from SL was a hiding to nothing
Smart Signings: Why the Tigers need to throw the keys to the team - and the cheque book - at Jarome Luai
I’m worried at how much I convinced myself this was a great idea by the time I’d written it
Smart Signings: Why the Tigers need to throw the keys to the team - and the cheque book - at Jarome Luai
Did you read last year’s Smart Signings?! Think I told em to get Hiroti then 😛
Smart Signings: Why the Tigers need to throw the keys to the team - and the cheque book - at Jarome Luai
I did not, that is a real stat 😂
Smart Signings: Whoever Des Hasler gets, it's the collective that will make the difference at the Titans
Seibold and Demetriou were regulars of my childhood watching 2nd tier UK footy.
Seibs was a battling backrower at Hull KR, regular visitors to Rochdale Hornets in our golden era during the Northern Ford Premiership (what passes for a golden era at least…). He scored twice the day we beat them in early 2003, a huge upset at the time, with former Magpie Harvey Howard and ex-England international Nick Pinkney in their team.
JD actually played for Hornets, as I tell him regularly, and was at the club when I was a ballboy in 2000. He was more than a solid SL player at Wakey, I’d say he’d be considered one of their greatest imports ever.
He also has won a title, winning the NFP GF with Widnes in 2001 alongside current Warriors assistant Richard Agar and against Oldham halfback turned RU coaching guru Mike Ford.
A playing team of coaches: How would the current 17 NRL mentors actually go playing alongside each other?
You can only use stats for things that have already happened, of course 😂
Zac v Tyrell: If the Dragons want to get the most out of their spine, they have to get the best out of Sloan