All of these points are valid. Raw "metres run" doesn't give you any measure of this though. You'd need to exclude things like kick returns, dummy half runs, intercepts, long range runs from line breaks etc. - plus have some measure of how many metres teams are making from sets starting at different parts of the field and in different situations. You'd also need to establish whether the forwards are actually doing the work. Brian To'o taking 20 dummy half runs per game tells you **** all about how good the Panthers forwards are - and I'm quite sure the Sharks don't win in 2016 without the stellar yardage game of the blokes wearing 2,3,4 and 5.
If there was a stat for "metres from running forwards in the middle 65% of the field while in possession outside the opponents 20m line" that might give you some ammunition. There isn't though - so metres is a pretty useless stat.
Yes I agree the raw stat available definitely does not definitively give you much information whether a team makes more meters because they are good in other areas, or is good in other areas because they make more meters (and then circumstantially who is making those meters).
Fox actually have per player meter stats you can filter by 'Forwards' or 'Prop' but you'd have to try and work out relevance of minutes from there. And then look up everyone's weight to try and correlate. That's a job for a club employee.
Even then as you say the circumstances and kick returns are factors you may have to dig into.
And then heaps of other factors also that determine how good that player actually is.
All the top 8 above us with their heavier packs, is that relevant? Maybe
We also probably used more halves combos than all above us, and as per some other calculations I did they also all had the top 5 or 6 highest paid players on the field for them more than we had ours so they were getting more out of their big spends.
On Hiroti, yeah he hasn't been
great, I am pretty comfortable with him being centre/winger number 6 or so though. If you are on your second fill in already he's not too bad an option to bring in. Is he about to be a breakout superstar at any moment? I'd be really surprised. But he is also 22 with 21 NRL games for 7 tries. We are all excited for Hynes who had 1 appearance by that age. Katoa really started breaking out in last couple years and was written off by quite a few, he's 2 years older than Hiroti. He'd played 28 NRL games for 7 tries by same age as Hiroti.
Now I don't have high expectations for Hiroti but it wouldn't blow my mind if he was a competent NRL starting winger/centre in a couple years.
Hopefully somewhere else...