A statistical look at NRL season 2024 with Wests Tigers comparrisons Part 1 Attack

[Tucker]

Below are the major attacking stats recorded for the season. Ive included the leader in each category and how many of our players ranked within the top 50 for each. It makes for some interesting and at times concerning reading. All stats courtesy of NRL.com, ZeroTackle.com and Legz.com

ATTACK: Our attack this year was very poor and ended up being the worst in the league with 463 points scored @ 19.3 / game. The stats below paint a picture

• All Run Meters and Hit ups. We only had 1 player crack the top 50 in the comp for all run meters. We had 5 players crack the top 100 in the comp. Shout out to Dylan Edwards who averaged 224m / game over 17 appearances. Hitups, we had 3 in the top 50 , however no one averaged over 10 / game. The best in the comp average more than 14.

• Kick return meters. We are not good at this. Edwards is more than double our best and he only played 17 games.

• Post contact meters. Again, we are poor at this. A pass mark for the comp is 60m / game minimum. We have no one over 45m.

• Line engagements. We have fared ok for this stat. We all saw Galvins high work rate and thats been acknowledged with his ranking inside the top 5. Sezer also asked a lot of questions of defences. Unfortunately, we didnt go so wll outside these two.

• Offloads. Historically we are a team that enjoys the offload and with 4 in the top 50, we are above average in this stat.

• Tackle breaks. Not a big stat for us. No one averaging over 4 / game. Teddy is banging out 7.

• Line breaks and line break assists. Our worst stat area is linebreaks. We dont make enough and with no representatives in the top 50, we really need to work on this.

• Tries and try assists. Neither have come easy for us this year. We only scored 82 tries which is the second worst in the comp.

• Decoy runs and Players in support. I was surprised to see we are one of the best teams for this during the season. We need to look into how we are using these decoys as we have players in motion, but arent fooling defences. We were ok in support, however our best are not our fastest. Staines needs to make this list next year.

• Total points scored. When the team struggles to score, then our highest point scorer wont push the envelope much.

See part 2 for Defence and Kicking

 

[upthetigers]

I'm not overly concerned with the poor attack in 2024. We had the worst backline in the comp and combinations kept changing. Bula showed improvement, the new backline signings are an upgrade and Luai will add another dimension to our attack. That's why I am prepared to be patient with Benji. Change doesn't happen overnight.

 

[Kaito]

Great analysis, I see you've taken your time to put
this together @Tucker will look into this later 2night

 

[Tucker]

I'm not overly concerned with the poor attack in 2024. We had the worst backline in the comp and combinations kept changing. Bula showed improvement, the new backline signings are an upgrade and Luai will add another dimension to our attack. That's why I am prepared to be patient with Benji. Change doesn't happen overnight.

Not being "overly concerned with the poor attack in 2024" is a very strange take.
Our coach is an attacking genius. We have 4 players in the backline who have played grand finals. We have recruited players who learnt their trade in excellent attacking systems in Penrith and Melbourne. Our fullback is currently repping Fiji and is highly rated. Our 5/8th is one of the boom rookies in the comp.
These guys produced the worst attack in the comp and the 18th best attack in Wests Tiger's 25 year history.
The new guys wont change things that much.

 

[weststigers]

@Tucker thanks for putting this together. Any idea if we can get attacking stats comparing first half and last half of the season?

It seemed like we scored more points in the back half of the year, but things aren't always as they seem of course.

Cheers again.

 

[Charred]

@Tucker thanks for putting this together. Any idea if we can get attacking stats comparing first half and last half of the season?

It seemed like we scored more points in the back half of the year, but things aren't always as they seem of course.

Cheers again.

As an overarching view, our for and against was 187 for (15.6/game) and 324 against (27/game) after 12 games and then 463 for and 750 against at the end of the season. So that’s 276 for (23/game) and 426 against (35.5/game) in the second part of the season, which is a 47.6% increase in points scored compared to 31.5% increase in against. So while we did improve quite significantly in attack over the season we also seemed to sacrifice our defence as a result. However continuing at this rate of increase per 12 games by the end of 2026 season we should be in the positive for that half of the season (slight deficit for full season), where we will be scoring an average of 109 points per game and conceding 106.

@Tucker nice thread, well done for going in depth. I think it would also be good to look at team statistics and rankings in these areas to see how the squad as a whole stacks up compared to others. We used 37 players this season so stats may be a little bit skewed as they are aggregate stats rather than averages and some players like Stef and Pole etc. are going to turn up more frequently as a result of playing more games. Looking forward to the rest of the stats, thanks for doing this.

 

[TigerSJ]

Great work Tucker!!
It’s been pretty clear in most games that our forwards had no grunt or decent work rate. Running metres were nearly always far less than our opposition even with equal possession. PCMs also low due to our lack of hard running and struggle to get over the advantage line - leads to being dominated in the tackle and slow ptbs. Making it very hard for our halves or any consistent attack.
Other attacking stats are average but you wouldn’t expect them to be much better considering they depend largely on the forwards going forward.
Bigger bodies with some power and leg speed to get some momentum, quick ptbs with waves of players moving forward off the ball to get the opposition backpedaling. That’s how you make yardage and get field position. Kick to corners and to space, then bash them in D to pin them down. Sounds simple - just got have the right blokes who can do that stuff for 80 minutes every week!

 

[Buttface]

Offload stats is another one I’m a little dubious on. Most people look positively at high offload stats, but I’d love to know the stats on the results of the offloads. An offload into a gap is good, but an offload that gets you creamed is just a hospital pass.

 

[Tucker]

Offload stats is another one I’m a little dubious on. Most people look positively at high offload stats, but I’d love to know the stats on the results of the offloads. An offload into a gap is good, but an offload that gets you creamed is just a hospital pass.

Yeah, our lack of linebreaks would certainly point to our offloads not being great. I can’t remember too many of them leading directly to points.
Good shout.

 

[Buttface]

Yeah, our lack of linebreaks would certainly point to our offloads not being great. I can’t remember too many of them leading directly to points.
Good shout.

If an offload goes to ground does that counted?

 

[Tucker]

If an offload goes to ground does that counted?

Probably. If it’s play on it counts.

 

[Magpie_Magic]

@Tucker thanks for putting this together. Any idea if we can get attacking stats comparing first half and last half of the season?

It seemed like we scored more points in the back half of the year, but things aren't always as they seem of course.

Cheers again.

Games became incrementally higher scoring across the competition as the season wore on.

 

[upthetigers]

Great work Tucker!!
It’s been pretty clear in most games that our forwards had no grunt or decent work rate. Running metres were nearly always far less than our opposition even with equal possession. PCMs also low due to our lack of hard running and struggle to get over the advantage line - leads to being dominated in the tackle and slow ptbs. Making it very hard for our halves or any consistent attack.
Other attacking stats are average but you wouldn’t expect them to be much better considering they depend largely on the forwards going forward.
Bigger bodies with some power and leg speed to get some momentum, quick ptbs with waves of players moving forward off the ball to get the opposition backpedaling. That’s how you make yardage and get field position. Kick to corners and to space, then bash them in D to pin them down. Sounds simple - just got have the right blokes who can do that stuff for 80 minutes every week!

Hey champion big Royce will help with winning the ruck. Parra are doing a cleanout I would take Nathan Brown too. Need some more hard heads.