I think our coach plays it straight.
Four reasons to escape to Queensland: Sun, Surf, Sand & the Titans.
https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nrl...091cc2b19311c2
Our worst offenders this year:
ERRORS
Ash Taylor 14
Bryce Cartwright 11
Anthony Don 10
Tyrone Peachey 9
Erin Clark 7
PENALTIES CONCEDED
Moeaki Fotuaika 3 penalties + 9 set restarts = Total 12
Tyrone Peachey 7 penalties + 2 set restarts = Total 9
Jarrod Wallace 5 penalties + 2 set restarts = Total 7
Bryce Cartwright 5 penalties + 1 set restart = Total 6
Kevin Proctor 1 penalty + 5 set restarts = Total 6
Keegan Hipgrave 2 penalties + 4 set restarts = Total 6
MISSED TACKLES
Ash Taylor 26
Tyrone Peachey 21
Bryce Cartwright 20
Keegan Hipgrave 18
Tanah Boyd 15
Brian Kelly 14
TRY CAUSES
Phillip Sami 11
Tyrone Peachey 7
Brian Kelly 6
Ash Taylor 5
Bryce Cartwright 5
Anthony Don 5
Last edited by psmitty; 15-07-20 at 10:20 AM.
Psmitty
Cartwright and Peachey on all four lists. Surprising to see the set restarts for Mo and missed tackles for second rowers and replacement hooker.
Certainly not unhappy with Mo's numbers. Effectively 12 penalties from nine games playing big minutes.
Taylor's numbers also expected to be high as he touches the ball every attacking set and the little guys get targeted every defensive set.
Those stats don't tell the whole story as they need to be corrected for exposure, whether that's time on the field or number of touches. For example, looking at just the total number of penalties conceded makes Mo look like our worst offender. However, when you correct for minutes played, he's far better than Wallace. According to NRL.com, Mo has played a total of 463 minutes this season while Wallace has played only 209 minutes. Therefore, Mo is giving away a penalty or set restart every 39 minutes of game time compared to Wallace's 29 minutes. The infringement rate tells more of a story than the total infringement count.
Similarly, Ash has 396 receipts and 14 errors for an error rate of 1 error per 28 receipts. NRL.com doesn't have Fogarty listed for some reason so I can't directly compare, but the others listed above are as follows:
- Cartwright: 111/11 = 1 error per 10 receipts
- Don: 157/10 = 1 error per 16 receipts
- Peachey: 209/9 = 1 error per 23 receipts
- Clark: 311/7 = 1 error per 44 receipts
This doesn't even account for try assists, linebreak assists, forced dropouts, etc. which are higher risk plays and hence more susceptible to errors. At face value, it looks like Clark is a much more disciplined player than anyone else, but then we need to consider that he plays as a hooker who simply distributes from the ruck, whereas Don plays on the wing and is often on the receiving end of high risk plays at the end of sets. The higher error rate therefore makes sense for Don.
What I do take from these stats is that they confirm what we can all see with our own eyes: Cartwright tends to overplay his hand resulting in frequent errors. For direct comparison with another player in the same position, I looked at the stats for Cordner, whom I consider to be the cream of the current crop of second rowers. He has 120 receipts for 4 errors, or 1 error per 30 receipts (I had to get the errors from Fox Sports lab as NRL.com doesn't have them listed for some reason). Cartwright is therefore committing errors at 3x the rate of Cordner. Cartwright is known for his skill, sleight of hand and ability to create something from nothing, but he has 0 try assists, 0 linebreak assists, and only 1 total try involvement. He also has 20 missed tackles, 8 ineffective tackles, 5 try causes, 6 linebreak causes, and 11 defensive errors. Again, compare this with Cordner who has 0 try assists, 0 linebreak assists, 3 total try involvements, 12 missed tackles, 8 ineffective tackles, 2 try causes, 1 linebreak cause, and 4 defensive errors.
I'm glad Holbrook dropped Cartwright this week and I hope he stays dropped.
Last edited by willhelm; 15-07-20 at 10:56 AM.
thanks for the post willhelm explains the stats a lot better
I live to serve
Since my last post was a hit and as I have a bit of time on my hands today, I did a bit of a deeper dive on Ash as he cops a lot of criticism, some of which I think is unfair. I've noticed that rugbah leeg fans tend to skew towards pessimism and hone in on the negatives, so hopefully these stats help to make the bigger picture a bit clearer. Namely that Ash is one of the best attacking performers and is far from the worst half overall. Criticism of my scoring methods/analysis is welcome. If mods think this belongs in its own thread, I'm happy to split it out of this match thread.
Method
I looked at 3 key areas: 1) Attack, 2) Defence, 3) Discipline. I didn’t have time to compile stats for all halves currently in the league, so I picked out some of the more prominent halves like Pearce, DCE and Keary as well as some of the younger guys like Flanagan, Clifford and Croft. I also included some players such as Cleary, Walker, Milford and Brooks who should be roughly equivalent to Ash in terms of experience / role in the team.
For Attack, the key stats I looked at were: Try Assists (TA), Try Contributions (TC), Total Try Involvements (TTI), Linebreak Assists (LBA), Forced Dropouts (FDO) and 40/20. An overall Attack Score (AS) was then taken as the sum of each of these key stats. Attack rankings are in order of highest Attack Score to lowest.
For Defence, the key stats I looked at were: Tackles (TK), Missed Tackles (MT), Ineffective Tackles (IT), Tackle Efficiency (TE, %), Try Causes (TC), and Linebreak Causes (LBC). The overall Defence Score (DS) was taken as the negative sum of Try Causes and Linebreak Causes, then adjusted by dividing by the Tackle Efficiency, i.e. a lower Tackle Efficiency results in a more negative Defense Score. For example, a total of 10 Try Causes and Linebreak Causes with a tackle efficiency of 100% results in a Defense Score of -10, whereas the same number of Causes with a tackle efficiency of 75% results in a Defense Score of -13.33 (-10/0.75 = -13.33). Note that the Tackle Efficiency was taken as the proportion of Tackles to all tackle attempts, i.e. TE = TK / (TK + MT + IT). For this purpose, Missed Tackles and Ineffective Tackles were treated as equivalent. Note that defence rankings are in order of highest Defence Score to lowest.
The Overall Score (OS) was then taken as the sum of the Attack and Defence Scores.
For Discipline, I looked at: Minutes Played (MP), Possessions (PO), Handling & Defensive Errors (HDE), Kick Errors (KE), and Penalties (PE). I then took Total Infringements (TI) as the sum of all errors and penalties and the Infringement Rate was calculated as the Total Infringements per 80 minutes, i.e. infringements per equivalent full match. The Error Rate was then calculated as the number of Possessions per Error (P/E) and the involvement rate was calculated as the Possessions per 80 Min (P/80). No overall score was calculated for Discipline but instead these stats were used as general indicators to supplement the Attack/Defence scores. Discipline rankings are in order of most Possessions per Error to least.
All stats were sourced from the Fox Sports Lab.
Results
Apologies for the formatting of the stats. I couldn't figure out how to embed a table. If anyone is interested, you should be able to copy and delimit by space in Excel. If anyone knows how to fix the formatting, let me know and I'll edit the post. The key stats that I ranked the players by in each category are highlighted in bold.
Discipline
MP PO HDE KE PE TI P/80 I/80 P/E
K. Flanagan 725 335 3 0 7 10 36.97 1.10 111.67
N. Cleary 559 473 6 5 1 12 67.69 1.72 43.00
D. Cherry-Evans 710 577 10 4 3 17 65.01 1.92 41.21
M. Pearce 645 558 13 5 3 21 69.21 2.60 31.00
C. Walker 550 293 8 3 7 18 42.62 2.62 26.64
B. Croft 654 387 10 5 2 17 47.34 2.08 25.80
A. Milford 720 278 9 2 5 16 30.89 1.78 25.27
L. Brooks 560 331 10 4 1 15 47.29 2.14 23.64
L. Keary 725 435 15 4 1 20 48.00 2.21 22.89
J. Clifford 560 274 8 5 4 17 39.14 2.43 21.08
A. Taylor 702 401 14 6 4 24 45.70 2.74 20.05
Attack
TA TC TTI LBA FDO 40/20 AS Errors per Attack Score
L. Keary 11 8 23 7 5 0 54 0.35
N. Cleary 5 10 17 4 7 2 45 0.24
M. Pearce 7 4 13 8 4 0 36 0.50
A. Taylor 8 2 11 6 7 1 35 0.57
K. Flanagan 4 5 13 5 4 0 31 0.10
D. Cherry-Evans 4 4 10 8 5 0 31 0.45
C. Walker 7 2 12 5 2 0 28 0.39
J. Clifford 4 1 6 1 8 0 20 0.65
B. Croft 4 4 9 0 2 0 19 0.79
L. Brooks 3 2 7 3 3 0 18 0.78
A. Milford 5 0 6 1 3 0 15 0.73
Defence
TK MT IT TE (%) TC LBC DS
N. Cleary 109 18 12 78 0 0 0
M. Pearce 187 32 8 82 1 2 -4
L. Brooks 148 17 4 88 1 4 -6
L. Keary 130 16 10 83 2 3 -6
J. Clifford 135 20 15 79 3 2 -6
C. Walker 118 12 8 86 3 3 -7
D. Cherry-Evans 137 11 6 89 4 3 -8
A. Taylor 133 26 17 76 5 5 -13
B. Croft 169 15 13 86 6 6 -14
K. Flanagan 219 19 18 86 7 6 -15
A. Milford 81 24 5 74 8 8 -22
Overall
OS
L. Keary 48
N. Cleary 45
M. Pearce 32
D. Cherry-Evans 23
A. Taylor 22
C. Walker 21
K. Flanagan 16
J. Clifford 14
L. Brooks 12
B. Croft 5
A. Milford -7
Discussion
• At first glance, Ash appears to be very poorly disciplined as he scored the lowest Possessions per Error with 20.05. Kyle Flanagan was far and away the best in this category, with a whopping 111.67. The benchmark halves (Cleary, DCE, Pearce, Keary) were generally around 30-45 Possessions per Error, except for Keary who was 22.89.
• In attack, Ash scored very well with an Attack Score of 35, placing him fourth behind Keary (54), Cleary (45), and Pearce (36). Apart from Cleary, Ash was well ahead of his counterparts: Walker (28), Brooks (18), and Milford (15).
• Normalising the Error Rate to the Attack Score better reflects the risk vs. reward of making errors in high risk attacking plays. Ash’s normalised Errors per Attack Score of 0.57 is around the middle of the pack and likely reflects that, while he makes more errors than other halves, his creativity also pays off more frequently. For reference, the most disciplined player, Flanagan, has a normalised Errors per Attack Score of 0.1, demonstrating that his attacking successes come at little discipline cost. The worst offenders in this statistic are Croft (0.79), Brooks (0.78) and Milford (0.73). These high scores demonstrate poor payoff for their attacking risktaking.
• In defence, Ash was towards the bottom of the pack with a Defence Score of -13. The best performer in this category was Cleary with a perfect Defence Score of 0 thanks to his 0 Tries Conceded and Linebreaks Condeded. The other benchmark halves of Pearce, Keary and DCE scored between -4 and -8, so Ash was a fair way off in terms of Defence, but it’s also important to note that he was ahead of Croft (-14), Flanagan (-15) and well ahead of Milford (-22).
• For Overall Score, Luke Keary was the best performer thanks largely to his immense Attack Score. His Defense Score of -6 let him down somewhat compared to Cleary, but he made up for it with his potent attack. Surprisingly, DCE scored quite poorly (23) compared to the other benchmark halves of Keary (48), Cleary (45), and Pearce (32). Ash was only 1 point behind DCE with an Overall Score of 22, ahead of Walker (21) and well ahead of the remaining halves of which none scored higher than 16. Notably poor performers were both Broncos halves with Croft only scoring 5 and Milford scoring a dismal -7.
• The scoring system described above does not account for the intangibles like leadership/organising qualities or effect of the players around the player in question.
Conclusions
Ash’s score of 22 is remarkably good when one considers that his Defence Score is likely significantly affected by the overall team performance. The Titans currently sit second last with 245 points conceded. Only the Cowboys have conceded more points with 253. With upcoming matches against the Storm, Panthers and Roosters, this is unlikely to improve in the short term. Compared to players of equivalent experience / team role (Cleary, Walker, Milford, Brooks), Taylor is second only to Cleary. Milford and Brooks are particularly poor performers, especially given the quality of players around him in Milford’s case. Taylor cops a lot of criticism in the press and from our own fans, but these statistics show that he is actually performing relatively well compared to other halves. If our overall team defence can improve, I expect his Defence and Overall Scores to also improve. I speculate that if Taylor were surrounded by the quality that Cleary is, he would not be far behind.
Last edited by willhelm; 15-07-20 at 03:09 PM.
Willhelm who Willhelm II ... great dual posts thanks ... a reality check never goes astray when emotion leads logic in a forum like ours.
Four reasons to escape to Queensland: Sun, Surf, Sand & the Titans.