Despite being an avowed radical when it comes to rugby league culture – best encapsulated as “burn it all down and guillotine those that disagree” – I can see why the Challenge Cup has appeal. Running a format similar to that of the much more famous FA Cup, there’s something between the destructive chaos wrought… Read More The Challenge Cup in 2020
This article is about the northern hemisphere rugby league competition. For the short-lived southern hemisphere competition, see the League Digest podcast. To complement the complete histories of the NRL and the Queensland Cup, I humbly present the complete history of the northern hemisphere Super League competition. I will also, at no charge to you, include… Read More A Complete History of Super League
After a dominating win over Great Britain, followed by a tough and exciting win over Australia, some extremely exuberant pundits decided that Tonga were the best nation in the world and worthy of Tier 1 status. Putting aside the fact that a poor island nation of 100,000 is not capable of generating enough native talent… Read More Tonga are still a long shot for the 2021 World Cup
If you’re not interested in how the rankings work and just want to see the outputs, click here. It began as a simple exercise to try and rate Super League players, much in the way that I rate NRL and Queensland Cup players. It turns out that the Super League website makes that an impossible… Read More Ranking every rugby league team in the world
Fortunately for almost all of my readers, I have reached the limit of the French taught to me in one semester of university in just the title. I’m still not sure if I should have used the definite article, so this post will be in English but it will be about French rugby league. This… Read More Qui va gagner Elite 1?
At this time of year, is there anything else you want to know more than the answer to this question? For our crystal ball, we turn to Monte Carlo simulations. These simulations work on the principle that if we know the inputs to a complex system and how they relate to each other, then we… Read More Who will win the 2019 NRL Premiership?
Over the last month, we’ve been looking at rating players using a metric called Production Per Game, or PPG. We’ve used it to find players at the higher end, justifying million dollar salaries, and at the lower end, identifying fringe first graders. The tricky thing about rating players is determining what information from the past… Read More The Art of Projection
Another week, another expansion bone has been tossed to the ravenous dogs that are NRL nerds on social media to endlessly chew over. I say that like I wasn’t in there first and not still gnawing on it. I just can’t help myself. This week, the target was the south-east Queensland expansion team dropped into… Read More On Expansion and its relationship with Sydney
Last week we looked at valuing players, specifically Tom Trbojevic, Daly Cherry-Evans and Addin Fonua-Blake, by their contributions to Manly’s winning ways. There were two problems though: How do we deal with someone like Marty Taupau? He’s played all of the games this year so we can’t find an understudy to compare him to. What if… Read More Rugby league’s replacement player
“He’s not worth a million a year!” -NRL Twitter proverb The trick in any sport is spending your available bankroll wisely. Soccernomics established that good soccer managers, among other things, bought players low and sold them high and that was at the heart of prolonged success. Moneyball was a two hour long movie with Brad Pitt… Read More What makes a million dollar NRL player?
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