We’re finally off and racing in 2018. Every NRL fan has finally seen their team take the field in anger for the first time. For most, it wasn’t a pretty sight with a lot of polish still to be put on their respective games. That said, there were flashes of what is to come from… Read More NRL Recap – Round 1, 2018
Rugby league is back, baby. It’s good again. Awoouu (wolf Howl) Yes, the rugby league tipping equivalent of a dril tweet has returned for another season of being really bad at tipping but not so bad that you could take it to the bank as a contrarian indicator. Before we get down to business, there are… Read More NRL Tips (and ISC) – Round 1, 2018
Last year’s Rugby League World Cup introduced the sport to a lot of new potential fans around the world. If anyone in rugby league administration could see past their nose, they’d be trying to win over these new converts to the game’s top competition: the National Rugby League. The 2018 season starts this week and… Read More One thing new NRL fans need to know about each team
Two weeks ago, you may have (but almost certainly did not) read my Complete History of the NRL: Nerd Edition. Actually, there wasn’t much to read in the way of words and for those who aren’t so inclined to dealing with Elo ratings, Pythagorean expectation and counting premierships, possibly because you’re an Eels fan and… Read More A Complete History of the NRL
The only thing more reliable than March bringing rugby league back is the slew of season previews that each and every media outlet feels the need to produce. I’m no different in this regard and here is what is likely to be the longest post I’ve ever compiled. This year’s season preview takes a look… Read More A deep dive for each NRL team’s 2018 season
Last year, I did a report on each NRL club featuring a bit of history, a few statistics and some graphs. The series didn’t do super well in terms of clicks but also didn’t take a lot of effort to produce. One thing I did enjoy putting together were the class graphs. These use a… Read More A Complete History of the NRL (nerd edition)
This headline (the actual article is fine) from Tim Gore typified the attitude when the draw was released in November last year: Not only were the NRL never going to redo the draw, it speaks to the tendency that the they can do no right in the fans’ eyes (“Release the draw earlier! No, not that… Read More Season preview: who has the softest draw?
Can we predict a premiership winner from their Elo ratings? Obviously, yes. That’s what the Stocky is for and this site would pointless if this was not true. But what if we wanted to look into the future before a single game has been played? I think that the Elo ratings of premiership winning teams… Read More Predicting this year’s NRL premiership winner with class
The biggest off-season story in the NRL was the transfers of Cooper Cronk from Melbourne to Sydney and then Mitchell Pearce from Sydney to Newcastle. From the Roosters’ perspective, for two players likely on similar pay packets, how did the Roosters decide one was better than the other? Then I wondered if it were possible… Read More Primer – StatScore and Win Shares: rating NRL players
If you’re wired for numbers, like I am, it can be hard to deal with people’s feelings and understanding why they think the things that they do. That’s why I’ve decided to quantify the feelings a team generates into five distinct indices: Power, Hope, Panic, Fortune and Disappointment. Each index has two components. There’s a… Read More Primer – How do the Indices work?
Pythago NRL 