BurgoShark
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Wow , a bit surprising .
Still feels if we can hold the ball , and not be under the pump , that in theory the missed tackles should go down . ( graph does say no )
Then again , if you defend your line set after set after set , it means you are defending well and not missing tackles or there'd be tries ..
Perhaps It would then be the open field where you might then feel the pinch and then start to miss tackles .
This is the more telling graph.
When you make more tackles, the fatigue doesn't make you worse at defence. It makes you worse at ATTACK.
Teams defend just as well when they are tired, but they struggle to make yards, get pinned in their own end, and the opposition gets more cracks at their line. This is only for middles, but I my guess would be that if I finished this and then added edges and outside backs to this, the trend would continue. That would be in line with the stuff the EyeTest guy did league-wide last year.
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140m difference. That's like having an extra Royce Hunt on your bench.
Note that this graph doesn't reflect "teams with more ball make more metres". It shows that even adjusted for possession rate, the individual attacking output for middle forwards goes down when they have to do a lot of defence.
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