Tag Archives: intrust super cup

Primer – PPG and WARG

Posted on by

Turns out that StatScore didn’t pan out the way I had hoped. There were some conceptual errors but the biggest was that I wanted a measure of rate and a measure of volume and you can’t have one statistic that does both. It’s like having one number that meaningfully states that a boxer is both the best in the world pound-for-pound but also the best boxer in the world who can beat anyone irrespective of weight classes. The world doesn’t work like that. As a result, there was some okay, but not great, player analysis. Unfortunately, the creation of a new tool requires that you use it for a while on new scenarios in order to evaluate it’s usefulness. Sometimes it doesn’t pan out as well as you would have hoped.

Also, the name sucked.

So I went back to the drawing board. There were some salvageable concepts from StatScore that have been repackaged, with corrections made for some fundamental mistakes, and repurposed into new player rating systems: PPG and WARG.

moneyball

Read more

Primer – Poseidon ratings

Posted on by

Poseidon ratings are a new team rating system for both the NRL and the Queensland Cup.

For those who don’t have time to read 2000+ words, here’s the short version: the purpose of Poseidon ratings is to assess the offensive and defensive capabilities of rugby league teams in terms of the number of tries they score and concede against the league average. By using these ratings, we can estimate how many tries will be scored/conceded in specific match ups and then use that, with probability distributions, to calculate an expected score, margin and winning probabilities for the match-up.

poseidon

Read more

What’s new in 2019

Posted on by

I had meant to do some wrap-up posts after I got back from my honeymoon but it felt like the moment had passed, being two or three weeks after the grand final, and I didn’t have much to say other than the navel gazing stuff that people really don’t care about it.

This tweet sums up the 2018 season on the blog pretty well though:

This post is about some of the stuff that’s changed and what’s a work in progress but mostly to let you know that we are indeed in business in 2019.

Embed from Getty Images

Read more

NRL Tips – Round 25, 2018

Posted on by

And we made it. It’s last the tips post for 2018. I plan to do a finals preview, once the top eight is actually decided, and maybe one more recap and then that’s it for a while.

Let’s not delay then and get into it.

Embed from Getty Images

Read more

NRL Recap – Round 24, 2018

Posted on by

While I was sleeping off my Napa-headbutt-induced apoplexy (again), the Catalans Dragons, from Perpignan in the south of France, won the Challenge Cup at Wembley. They became the first non-English team to do so since the competition’s inception in 1896. It’s an amazing milestone in the game’s reconstruction in France and the slow globlisation of the sport. In the last two seasons, we’ve seen:

  • The first pro rugby league team in the Americas
  • PNG Hunters won the Queensland Cup
  • Fiji and Tonga made the World Cup semi-finals
  • Catalan Dragons won the Challenge Cup

For the rugby league lefties – as Mascord likes to call them – all that’s required now is a Warriors NRL premiership, which remains a possibility but perhaps not likely, the promotion of at least Toronto, if not also London and Toulouse, to the Super League and a couple of successful end of season Tests. Should we at least get a Wolfpack promotion and Test matches, we could call 2018 a qualified success.

And then Souths won a scrum against the feed, which made me forget all the other items of interest that’s happened in the NRL this year, e.g. Immortals, retirements of future Immortals, topsy-turvy results, Blues winning Origin and a new women’s premiership.

What a time to be a rugby league fan.

Embed from Getty Images

Results

recap-nrl-rd24-2018

Read more

NRL Tips – Round 24, 2018

Posted on by

We’re in the penultimate round of the regular season and can definitely feel the approaching finals footy. There’s still some unfinished business to be resolved, specifically ensuring that the Tigers finish ninth as they are destined to do until the heat death of the universe, or maybe when Jeremy Marshall-King’s backended contract at the Bulldogs forces a transfer to Wests and history can try to repeat with the lesser relative. Or maybe they will have to wait until Benji’s and Robbie’s kids grow up?

In the meantime, my tipping has gone to crap so maybe you should ignore me and go with the Greeks.

Embed from Getty Images

Read more

NRL Recap – Round 23, 2018

Posted on by

News came through yesterday that the All-Stars game is going to change from an Indigenous against the World format to an Indigenous Australia vs Maori NZ game. All I can say in response is, “Finally.” It makes a decision over who to support much more straightforward, allowing for some emotional investment in the game that’s been missing in the past.

Now if there’s a way to ensure some diversity in the commentators, so we don’t have to listen to the same old tired points of view, and the NRL might just be on to something. If the players turn up for it, as Beetson did in 1980, over time it may well build into something Origin-like. Commercially, it’s a winner. Just think of the jerseys. The All-Stars game is now a much easier sell for New Zealand. The real beauty is that, much as the NRL currently flogs off one of the Origin games to Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and elsewhere, they can sell the hosting rights to the All-Stars game to smaller areas, e.g. Newcastle, Townsville or Hamilton, where the stadiums aren’t big enough for Origin but the sport can still offer an appropriately scaled showpiece match in exchange for taxpayer dollars. I imagine something similar might happen with women’s Origin.

It’s a brave new world of relatively smart decision making. Just need the powers that be to organise a decent end of season Test/s and we may be able to make a fist of this rugby league thing without folding a bunch of Sydney clubs.

Embed from Getty Images

Results

recap-nrl-rd23-2018

Read more

« Older Entries