The 2024 Paris Olympics may have started and I might be incredibly sleep deprived already, but that won’t stop me bringing you the Eye Test’s July NRL team efficiency update. Just over one year ago I wrote about how the Broncos defense was just as elite as Penrith’s in 2023, albeit in different ways. They were able to sustain significantly more goal line attack than any other team in the league without conceding points, and was one of the hallmarks of their run to the grand final. However, over the past two months it’s an area of their game that...
Continue reading...July 2024
The best NRL teams at defending kick returns
A few weeks ago friend of the site Jason Oliver wrote a tremendous piece for Rugby League Writers on the trend of teams not contesting bombs. It’s a fantastic insight into a part of the game that has become somewhat boring of late, but we all know how risk adverse football coaches are these days. Rather than do a poor job of rehashing Jason’s article, I’ll just use this quote which sums everything up nicely. “While they disrupted the contest and forced a mistake, the Titans don’t present a line on the kick chase. Those close to the sideline have...
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The uncomfortable and unbiased truth about set restarts in 2024
Nearly three years ago I wrote “Six again? More like 2.3 again” which exposed a lot the truths about the set restart rule, and how it wasn’t working as intended. It showed that teams had worked out they could game the system and use it to cynically control their opponents. Before that in 2020, and just weeks into the introduction of the rule I covered how the top teams had negative set restart differentials, aptly titled “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying“. That’s still applicable today. The good defensive teams quickly worked out that defending for an extra 2-3...
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June NRL efficiency update – Melbourne stand out from a group of limited contenders
Round 16 was a bye week at the Eye Test offices, and I’m back from a much needed break after cataloguing the footwear of every NRL player in Round 15. And somehow, we’re already at the end of June, which means another month has passed and I’ll be using this week’s post for a league wide efficiency update. Which is going be very useful as the last month of NRL matches have muddied the waters on some of the likely contenders this year. In a season with a glut of very mid teams outside of (and occasionally including) Penrith, trying...
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