The Sharks, like the Raiders and Titans, won ten games and lost fourteen in 2021. They finished with a points difference of -36, landed at ninth on the ladder (needing just 34 more points to overhaul the Titans for eighth) and their Pythagorean expectation had them winning 11.2 games, 1.2 more than they actually did.… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2021 Cronulla Sharks
We’ve gotten through the truly awful teams, so now we can focus on teams that underwhelmed but weren’t disgusting. First cab off the rank is the Canberra Raiders, finishing the 2021 season with a 10-14 record with a -97 points difference. That means the Raiders were only four points per game worse than the average… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2021 Canberra Raiders
The St George Illawarra Dragons finished the 2021 NRL season in eleventh place, with a 8-16 record and a -142 points difference. Thus ends the facts. The Victory Lap From the pre-season deep dive: The league’s least interesting football team is back, whiter and blander than ever. Anthony Griffin returns from the wilderness, having previously… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2021 St George Illawarra Dragons
What a season for the Warriors. A top twelve finish gave them something to write home about. The New Zealand franchise won just as many games (8) as basket case club, the Wests Tigers, but with a slightly less disastrous points difference (-171). The second season on the road was probably just as tough as… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2021 New Zealand Warriors
Good lord, the absolute scale of the mess of this football club is immense. Considering the Tigers finished thirteenth, and not last, with an 8-16 record and -214 points difference, it seems like an overreaction in isolation. But for a Sydney club that hasn’t played in the finals since 2011, and bearing in mind there’s… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2021 Wests Tigers
The Broncos didn’t finish last. They didn’t even finish second last. The Broncos wound up in fourteenth, 7-17 with a -249 points difference. Their points difference was only third worst in the league. The attack was also third worst, somehow behind the seventh placed Knights, and the defence an astonishing fourth worst. 2020 was so… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2021 Brisbane Broncos
The North Queensland Cowboys finished in second last place, pipped by arch rivals – remember when that was a thing? – the Brisbane Broncos in the final round. With a 7-17 record, the Cowboys finished with the worst defence in the NRL, conceding 748 points in 24 games. That works out to 31.2 points conceded… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2021 North Queensland Cowboys
The Bulldogs finished season 2021 in last place with a pathetic 3-21 record and a points difference of -370. Scoring just 14.2 points per game in the Vlandoball era, a number inflated by a last round thumping of a hapless Tigers, puts a strong case for the Doggies to be one of the worst attacking… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2021 Canterbury Bulldogs
Previously, in our series on Brisbane expansion: BNE2 or On Expansion and its relationship with Brisbane BNE2.1: The game done changed BNE2.2: The Gemba Report ***** A football club has an identity. Three things comprise a club’s identity: purpose, mythology and reality. Let’s explore those ideas with some NRL case studies. The mythology of the… Read More BNE2.3: What is the point of it?
The move to do away with the ‘unlimited’ tackle rule that had been played in Australia for 59 seasons was the brainchild of the urbane secretary of the Rugby Football League in England, Bill Fallowfield. The move was designed to counter what Jack McNamara in the Manchester Evening News described as the ‘evils of the… Read More It’s not just the six again
Pythago NRL 