BurgoShark
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@bort posted some raw "average metres per game" for Sharks forwards in 2021 in the Player Movement Thread.
This got me thinking. You guys must be sick of me banging on about "metres" or "metres per game" being a poor stat for comparing forward output - so I came up with a slightly better way of looking at it. This is still flawed in many ways - but I would argue that this gives you more information and a better basis for comparison.
**
The old way: NRL.com average metres per game
This is a really simple stat, which takes total metres and divides it by games played. it doesn't factor in whether the player went off injured after a minute, what position he played, or whether his team had a fair share of the ball. Here is how Sharks players stacked up in 2021.
1. Willams / Rudolf - 120m
3. Wilton / Talakai - 119m
5. Woods - 111m
6. Tolman - 106m
7. Hamlin-Uele - 89m
8. Graham 88m
9. Nikora 80m
**
The new way: only count hit-ups - and factor in both minutes played and share of possession
Only counting hit-ups
You may think this is a little unfair. After all - the guy did actually run the ball for those metres. However, when you include kick return metres is massively skews a player's totals and averages, because often they will have a couple of 20+ metre runs in a game. Almost 1/4 of Toby Rudolf's total running metres for the season were kick returns, and other players hardly did it at all. Obviously that tells us that Toby Rudolf is the coach's preferred choice to return kicks, but it doesn't help us know who is doing more in the other 99% of the footy game. Kick returns are out.
Factoring in Minutes played
This one is a no-brainer. One bloke plays half a game for 100m and another bloke plays a full game for 200m. Obviously one may be fitter and be able to play longer stretches - which is again a coaching decision - but if you are comparing their "output in metres" while they are on the field, these two players are equivalent.
Factoring in share of possession
Something else to consider is which team has the ball. The NRL commentary team has told us for years that making more metres helps you win - but that's not really an accurate way of looking at it. In general, the team who has the greater share of possession makes more metres simply because they have the ball more often. To determine whether a forward is doing a good job of making metres, we have to look at his stats relative to how much possession his team had. You can't run the ball without first having the ball.
**
Introducing the Burgo-Metre (which is quite different to the Burgometer, a device for measuring your Burgo-ness).
A Burgo-Metre (Bm) is a score for how many metres the player would run, excluding kick returns, in 80 minutes of game time, assuming a 50/50 share of possession. The numbers below are a season average for each player.
Calibration
First off - I looked at a few well known workhorses to see what would be a good performance.
Payne Haas --> 230 Bm's per game
Paul Gallen in 2013 --> 203
Jason Taumalolo --> 195
Comparing the Sharks' Forwards
When we remove kick returns and factor in both minutes played and possession...
1. Williams - 179 Bm's per game
2. Talakai - 176
3. Woods - 175
4. Wilton - 154
5. Hamlin-Uele - 146
6. Rudolf - 143
7. McInnes (Dragons 2020) - 138
8. Tolman - 137
9. Finucane (Storm) - 137
10. Graham - 132
11. Nikora - 96
Just like normal metres, a score of 100 in a game is about average and anything above above 160-170 is quite good. In an individual game, for a player to play more than 40 minutes and score over 220 is very rare. It only happened 4 times for the Sharks in 2021. 3 of them were Aaron Woods and the 4th was Talakai. Williams scored over 200 in almost half his games, but only when he played limited minutes.
**
So after all of this, what did I learn? That unless he is returning a kick Toby Rudolf is about as effective as Aiden Tolman, that Aaron Woods was on the same level as Williams and Talakai in terms of go-forward, that Wade Graham is still rolling up his sleeves, that if metres is what you want you would pick Wilton over Nikora easily, and that Jack Williams is a weapon if you can keep him under 40 minutes of game time.
A lot of this I knew already, and tbh it probably could all have been shown by just excluding kick return stats and any games where guys went off injured early - but sometimes it can be interesting to learn this through investigation.
Again - this is a flawed model with lots of holes in it... but I reckon it gives us a better picture than the raw stats.
Thanks again @bort for sending me down this rabbit hole
This got me thinking. You guys must be sick of me banging on about "metres" or "metres per game" being a poor stat for comparing forward output - so I came up with a slightly better way of looking at it. This is still flawed in many ways - but I would argue that this gives you more information and a better basis for comparison.
**
The old way: NRL.com average metres per game
This is a really simple stat, which takes total metres and divides it by games played. it doesn't factor in whether the player went off injured after a minute, what position he played, or whether his team had a fair share of the ball. Here is how Sharks players stacked up in 2021.
1. Willams / Rudolf - 120m
3. Wilton / Talakai - 119m
5. Woods - 111m
6. Tolman - 106m
7. Hamlin-Uele - 89m
8. Graham 88m
9. Nikora 80m
**
The new way: only count hit-ups - and factor in both minutes played and share of possession
Only counting hit-ups
You may think this is a little unfair. After all - the guy did actually run the ball for those metres. However, when you include kick return metres is massively skews a player's totals and averages, because often they will have a couple of 20+ metre runs in a game. Almost 1/4 of Toby Rudolf's total running metres for the season were kick returns, and other players hardly did it at all. Obviously that tells us that Toby Rudolf is the coach's preferred choice to return kicks, but it doesn't help us know who is doing more in the other 99% of the footy game. Kick returns are out.
Factoring in Minutes played
This one is a no-brainer. One bloke plays half a game for 100m and another bloke plays a full game for 200m. Obviously one may be fitter and be able to play longer stretches - which is again a coaching decision - but if you are comparing their "output in metres" while they are on the field, these two players are equivalent.
Factoring in share of possession
Something else to consider is which team has the ball. The NRL commentary team has told us for years that making more metres helps you win - but that's not really an accurate way of looking at it. In general, the team who has the greater share of possession makes more metres simply because they have the ball more often. To determine whether a forward is doing a good job of making metres, we have to look at his stats relative to how much possession his team had. You can't run the ball without first having the ball.
**
Introducing the Burgo-Metre (which is quite different to the Burgometer, a device for measuring your Burgo-ness).
A Burgo-Metre (Bm) is a score for how many metres the player would run, excluding kick returns, in 80 minutes of game time, assuming a 50/50 share of possession. The numbers below are a season average for each player.
Calibration
First off - I looked at a few well known workhorses to see what would be a good performance.
Payne Haas --> 230 Bm's per game
Paul Gallen in 2013 --> 203
Jason Taumalolo --> 195
Comparing the Sharks' Forwards
When we remove kick returns and factor in both minutes played and possession...
1. Williams - 179 Bm's per game
2. Talakai - 176
3. Woods - 175
4. Wilton - 154
5. Hamlin-Uele - 146
6. Rudolf - 143
7. McInnes (Dragons 2020) - 138
8. Tolman - 137
9. Finucane (Storm) - 137
10. Graham - 132
11. Nikora - 96
Just like normal metres, a score of 100 in a game is about average and anything above above 160-170 is quite good. In an individual game, for a player to play more than 40 minutes and score over 220 is very rare. It only happened 4 times for the Sharks in 2021. 3 of them were Aaron Woods and the 4th was Talakai. Williams scored over 200 in almost half his games, but only when he played limited minutes.
**
So after all of this, what did I learn? That unless he is returning a kick Toby Rudolf is about as effective as Aiden Tolman, that Aaron Woods was on the same level as Williams and Talakai in terms of go-forward, that Wade Graham is still rolling up his sleeves, that if metres is what you want you would pick Wilton over Nikora easily, and that Jack Williams is a weapon if you can keep him under 40 minutes of game time.
A lot of this I knew already, and tbh it probably could all have been shown by just excluding kick return stats and any games where guys went off injured early - but sometimes it can be interesting to learn this through investigation.
Again - this is a flawed model with lots of holes in it... but I reckon it gives us a better picture than the raw stats.
Thanks again @bort for sending me down this rabbit hole
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