For the third season in a row, I’m changing the player rating system. We mourn the passing of Statscore (not really) and PPG (again, not really) as we slowly converge on to a system that I can take for granted and don’t have to refine any further. The core of the system hasn’t changed. The… Read More Primer – TPR
When a coach arrives at a major league club, fresh and excited to make his own mark in the history books, you’d have to think that, as a minimum threshold for success, he’d want to leave the place in better shape than when he arrived. Sometimes, the vagaries of reality make it difficult to assess… Read More The coaches that fucked up your club
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
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
I wrote about Sydney as an obstacle to expansion yesterday. It started as an intro to this post but ended up being over 1000 words and I thought it should stand alone. It’s the result of thoughts that have been bubbling since I started paying proper attention to rugby league when I started doing this… Read More NRL Tips – Round 25, 2019
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
Some additional rugby league reading for you: With two rounds left in the #NRL, it's pretty much a four horse race with two clear favourites (no surprises). The bottom two could be swapped for any of the teams in contention and it probably wouldn't matter much overall. pic.twitter.com/plb9bBm9JL — Liam (@pythagoNRL) August 26, 2019 And… Read More NRL Tips – Round 24, 2019
Apologies for there not being any tips last week. I was in Perth. And before you start with your jokes, especially when a bunch of you go to the Nines next year: HuR DuR wE sHoUlD rElOcAtE a TeAm ThErE Actually, we should relocate two there. Perth Sharks. Fremantle Sea Eagles. Friday 10PM games every… Read More NRL Tips – Round 23, 2019
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
Pythago NRL 