Hunt had some very poor games after he got baited in the Raiders game but lately we have been seeing some of those strong carries and the offload has come back.
His defense is ok most of the time as well, an area that seems to have improved along with general handling and discipline.
Maybe because he is the size of a fridge people except more from him more often but then again some fans bag out BHU who is clearly playing well and making strong charges over the advantage line.
While Hunt is not a workrate type forward and likely never will be and the degree of his impact he brings can be argued, personally I am not in the 'won't be missed' camp.
He does some good things out there and people already complain about lack of size and impact in our pigs so I think we are worse off without him (although Hazleton will be a very good replacement)
Seems to just be in fashion to bag out our forwards even when our halves play like mongs and the team misses tackles for fun. Give us an elite level forward pack and we will still have plenty of issues in this Sharks team when it comes to scoring and defending against the better sides not to mention attitude, discipline, gameplans, structure, bench use ect...
We could use more aggression in the pack though (a fine line these days) and we do miss Rudolf for sure so I am not suggesting I am content where the pack is at.
Buuuuutttt it's the internet so a player is either the GOAT or TRASH or just solid.... which also means TRASH!!!
Because Hunt is no loss and Hazelton is a great in I thought I'd look at what the numbers have to say.... ooooo spooky stats everyone prepare to back them in or get outraged by them depending on if you agree with them or not. Make sure to not understand they are just one piece of information. Some of them would have at times had slightly different contexts, get real worked up about it now! Make sure to get outraged if they suggest someone did a couple more tackles per game than you realised while watching which would suggest they do more than you think!
Okay one more thing before I enter them, acknowledging Royce often started and regularly played more minutes - usually you use your 'better' forwards for this to help get you off to a good start and meet their better forwards head on. So arguably Royce has the harder job more often.
Measured across 10 metrics PER GAME (just the basic run and D stuff) Royce wins 7 metrics to Tommy's 3. In significantly less playing time Tommy misses less tackles and gives away less errors and pens.
He somehow has more ineffective tackles per game than Royce still. Per game is less comparable, you would hope Royce wins what he does as per game he plays more minutes. But this does represent very real work Royce gets through for us.
More informative for comparison is maybe PER MINUTE...
PER MINUTE Royce records better stats in 4 to Tommy's 6.
Tommy, the bench forward, runs more and makes more meters*, he also makes more tackles and is less likely to give away an error or penalty. Royce is the better defender and also much better tackle breaker and offloader. So per minute the lower minute bench guy gets through more work. Obviously if Tommy could hold those greater efforts up for more than twice as many minutes that'd be pretty good.
*actual meters per run is very close, Tommy makes average 10cm more per run.
Not in my original 10 however tries and line breaks... Hunt wins by tries, Tommy by line breaks.
Now there is actually a game they played 33 mins each!
A win against the Seagles.
Of course, came on at different stages yadda yadda
Hazleton took far more runs, 13 to 5, making 119m to Royce's 48. However for Royce 15 of these were kick return and for Tommy 54 were so seems like Tommy probably got kicked to more, but did do well on the returns - he was probably on for 2 tries and halftime, while we kicked off to start the game and scored one early try while Royce was on (probably that provided his one kick return against fresh opposition).
Hunt made 25 tackles, Tommy made 19. Hunt did miss 2, although Tommy was ineffective in 2. Hunt had a ruck infringement, Tommy had a penalty.
So in a game where they played equal mins, Tommy ran more although that was promoted a little by kicks going to him.
Hunt who started didn't get as many runs but tackled more. Oh, and Hunt scored in the 5th minute which feels useful.
From a statistical point of view it is unlikely "Tommy is a good in" but "Hunt is the worlds biggest pussy".
It seems like they are actually fairly comparable with the guy starting being a bit more defensively strong. However of course yes, the stats do not provide a definitive measure of the players, I was just interested as they are both very big bodies playing same position for us. The fact there was a game they both played 33 made for a different interesting comparison point.
Graph it burgo!
This post was generated by bortgpt
