The NRL’s 2024 season launch in Las Vegas was incredibly successful, exceeding most expectations with two excellent games held before a crowd of over 40,000. I’ve been critical of the games current administration for several reasons, but credit where credit is due, and this event was a huge achievement.
Both games were high quality and entertaining, something that always isn’t the case with Round 1 matches. It’s even more impressive given the lack of trial minutes played by the participants, although this did become evident late in the first game when fatigue appeared to set in.
I don’t usually break down individual games but there were only two on the weekend, so my options are limited. Starting things off, here’s the expected point chart for the Manly v Souths game.
On expected points, Souths had field position that should have netted them 16.2 points compared just 14.4 for Manly and the Bunnies clearly had an edge in the first half for field position. The second half was less favourable to both teams, as defense largely went out the window as Manly piled on some quick points and the Bunnies had no response. Manly had 14.4 points worth of field position yet scored 36, and indication of Souths allowing them to cross the line from positions that don’t usually yield a lot of points.
The second game showed in the first half that Brisbane’s strong goal line defense (that we noted on this site early last season) was picking up where it left off, only trailing 8-4 at the break on the back of the simplest interception try in years to Joey Manu. The expected point chart for the game clearly reflects this, showing they had enough field position to be leading 11.7 to 7.0 on expected points.
The fact that the Roosters had so much sustained possession and almost nothing to show for it was concerning. However, they were able to keep the pressure on and eventually the game was sealed when Broncos line cracked in the 71st minute as Victor Radley crossed the line.
The most interesting thing for me for the weekend was how the teams would adjust to the smaller player field. The consensus was that the smaller field would lead to more play down the middle of the field with less use of the edges as defenses had less room to cover. Here’s a quick recap of the field changes from Darcie McDonald at Fox Sports.
“The size of the field has been a major talking point heading into this historic Round 1 double header. It is 94.5 metres from goalpost to goalpost and 64 metres wide as opposed to 100 metres by 68 metres. The in-goals have also been cut down from eight metres to six-and-half.
As for where the length has come off from, foxsports.com.au confirmed with NRL officials that each 10-metre block on the field is instead 9.45 metres — and the referees will adjust the defensive line’s position to ensure it is still at 10 metres.”
It certainly looked much smaller, and the safety of players in the corners left a lot to be desired. Whilst it may seem like the field didn’t have as much of an impact as predicted (especially in the higher scoring opening game), there were some differences. And I don’t just mean the variations in the ten metres kept by each referee.
Looking at the Run Metres Over Expected per run (RMOE/run) by team, using this site’s expected run metres model, all four sides made fewer metres than expected. Given the five metres of length missing from the field as noted above, that’s a predictable outcome.
The Roosters were the best of this bunch, at -0.31m RMOE/run, with Brisbane at -0.49, Manly at -0.54 and Souths failing to match their expected metres per run by over one metre.
I had mentioned in my explainer for expected run metres that this was an area Souths back line had struggled in and might be a concern in 2024. That turned out to be the case in Round 1 as only Jacob Gagai produced more metres than expected from their backline (+1.322 RMOE/run from his 11 carries). Since halves usually have low RMOE/run, Isiah Tass was probably the worst of their bunch at -3.658 RMOE/run from eight runs. They couldn’t run the ball well enough to combat their poor set staring positions (see below).
On the positive side, Jason Saab, who was the top performer by RMOE/run last season, was also first from the two Vegas games on the weekend, largely thanks to his intercept. The Sea Eagles will now likely be without him for a few rounds due to a hamstring injury picked up late in their win.
The rest of the top 10 by RMOE/run is below.
Now let’s move away from expected run metres and look at field position from these games.
If you compare the heat map of play the ball locations of Round 1 2023 and 2024 for the same four teams, there was more ball played inside their own halves, especially down the right tram tracks. There was also more activity on either wing as well, with more play the balls outside the tram tracks this year than last year. Please note, for my own sanity I’ve normalised the field position from the 2024 games to make these comparisons easier.
That aligns with each teams starting position of their first tackle, shown in the chart below.
The Roosters started their sets on average 41 metres downfield, ahead of Manly at 36, South Sydney at 33 and Brisbane at 32 metres out. That’s a big turnaround for the Roosters, who started their sets just 27 metres out in Round 1 last year against the Dolphins.
Surprisingly, with the loss of four metres in width, teams were still trying to exploit the edges of the field – especially in the first game.
To make this difference clearer, I’ve grouped the width of these play the balls for the same four teams for 2023 and 2024 into ten buckets of about 6.8 metres each, giving them descriptive labels (middle, edge, inner tram tracks, outer tram tracks and wing) for both left and right sides. Below is the percentage of play the balls that occurred in each 6.8 metre bucket.
This chart shows a much more even spread of play the ball locations across the field than for the same four teams in round 1 last year. No area of the field had more than 15% of play the balls, a big change from last year where both middle sections had over 40% of play the balls. In Las Vegas it was just 28%. The extreme edges were just 1.4% of play the balls in 2023, but 6% in 2024.
Contrary to what was expected, these teams were using more width of the field, rather than just trying to push it through the middle of the field. Manly in particular were spreading the ball wide and doing so early. The Sea Eagles average third tackle was over 11 metres to the right of the middle of the field, as seen below.
No other team in Vegas was wider than 2 metres on that tackle, and usually on this chart the five play the balls don’t tend to deviate either side by more than a few metres. Manly’s constant hunting of Richard Kennar in defense probably played a part in this outlier.
There was also a very small change to the kicking habits of these teams as well. From looking at the kick spray charts below, there’s not a dramatic difference. Charts for Round 1 2023 and 2024 are below, use the arrow to change between them.
Average kicking angle was down slightly this year to 22.74 degrees (tending right), from 23.45 (tending right) in 2023, but that was down from 29.22 degrees (tending left) in 2022.
The surprising part is that kicks were longer on average from these four teams this year, up to 29.2 metres from 25.7 last year. Although again the average for kick distance was 29.5 in 2022, so last year may have been the outlier. But as we noted above there was more of the game being played out of a teams’ own half, so kicking longer and playing for field position makes sense here.
The last interesting note from kicking is that it appears that South Sydney didn’t attempt a kick inside 30 metres. And from the data I’m looking at, they’re the only one of the four sides not to do so.
For total kicks originating inside 30 metres, this year there were just 26, down from 36 last year, which makes sense given the heat maps we saw above. Given the shorter in goal areas, this isn’t surprising. Adam Reynolds was kicking bombs from halfway at times against the Roosters. Clearly teams were avoiding any sort of deep attacking kick for fear of giving up a seven tackle set, which would have been even more severe punishment on a field that was more than five metres shorter.
In the end the dimensions of the field played a small but subtle part in the games in Allegiant Stadium on the weekend. We didn’t see the low scoring, dominating middle of the field games that were expected, and teams were happy to spread the ball more. What we did see a difference in is in the kicking game, partly because so much time was played in each teams’ own half, but also due to the short in goals limiting attacking options.
