Rugby league came back to life in 2022. After two years of pandemics and cancellations and postponements in 2020 and 2021, we finally got a real year of football. World Cup We made it. It looked for a while like we wouldn’t get a World Cup. There seemed like a good chance that the gods… Read More The Year in Rugby League Football, 2022, Part 3: The World Game
Rugby league came back to life in 2022. After two years of pandemics and cancellations and postponements in 2020 and 2021, we finally got a real year of football. NRL / NRLW Unlike the massive overhauls of the entire sport implemented before the resumption in 2020 and the off-season before 2021, Peter V’Landys and his… Read More The Year in Rugby League Football, 2022, Part 1: The Southern Game
Your women’s Newcastle Knights finished the NRLW season in second place with a 4-1 record and +44 points difference. That brings the women’s Knights total number of wins to four, in their best season yet. Newcastle crushed the Dragons, 30-6, in the semis, followed by a comprehensive 32-12 victory over the Eels in the grand… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2022 Newcastle Knights
Your men’s Parramatta Eels finished the 2022 NRL season in fourth place, with a 16-8 record and +119 points difference. The Eels’ points difference was the seventh best in the league, good for a Pythagorean expectation of 14.4 wins. Given the noticeable overperformance, it’d be worth keeping an eye out for an underperformance of same… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2022 Parramatta Eels
Your men’s Sydney Roosters finished the 2022 NRL season in sixth place. The Roosters had a 15-9 record with a points difference of +201 but were knocked out of the finals in the first week by arch rivals, South Sydney. Sydney had the third best attack in the league, scoring just one point fewer than… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2022 Sydney Roosters
Your men’s St George Illawarra Dragons finished the 2022 NRL season in tenth place with an even 12-12 record and -100 points difference. Their offence scored the least points outside of the bottom five and their defence was tenth best in the league. With only 9.8 Pythagorean wins, the Dragons significantly outperformed their true performance… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2022 St George Illawarra Dragons
Your men’s Gold Coast Titans finished thirteenth (really, that high?) with a 6-18 record and a -205 points difference. Conceding at a rate of 27.5 points per game, the Titans had the fourth worst defence in the NRL (behind two teams that fired their coach and one that will in the next year) and the… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2022 Gold Coast Titans
Your men’s Brisbane Broncos finished the 2022 season with a 13-11 record and in ninth place. With a points difference of -36, the Broncos had a Pythagorean expectation of just 11.2 wins, although this is somewhat slanted by two massive losses in consecutive weeks: 60-12 to the Storm and 53-6 to the Eels. During their… Read More A Shallow Dive into the 2022 Brisbane Broncos
We only witnessed the grand final of the last season four months ago, but we’re back again with a new season of women’s football to look forward to. This season is the first official Deep Dive™ into the women’s game, so let’s get into it. Note: in line with the convention of the NRL, I’ll… Read More A Deep Dive into the 2022 NRLW Premiership
The 2021 NRLW season, like the Tokyo Olympics, bears of the name of the year it was meant to be contested, rather than the year it is actually going to be contested. The premiership will comence on February 27 with a triple header at Newcastle and wrap up with a grand final in mid-April. Let’s… Read More A Dive into the 2021* NRLW premiership
Pythago NRL 