Ok can you provide a link to this page that you've alluded to twice like I initially asked (exact quote "I would like to see where you got this Top 3 stat from"). You also said that Seyfarth was worse than Sezer but are now saying he was also in the top 3 so is Seyfarth then top 2? Anyway link please. Thanks.
I haven't tried to "justify" nearly every penalty. I'm pretty sure I said he was unlucky in 3 and also the instinctive reaction to his Canberra sin bin. The rest I think it's reasonably clear are all penalties and all due to bad discipline (except first rabbits one, it's a definite penalty but not necessarily due to poor discipline, he just missed his mark a bit). That's 4/13 and yes you could definitely apply this to every player. The stats will show it's one persons fault but in reality others could play a role (Storm penalty is an example, poor communication and too many players on the player for too long, sure Alex can take some blame but he's not the sole contributor).
Not entirely sure what your point is with Api doing double the work. It's pretty obvious he carried the team on his back to anyone. Seyfarth did a lot of work too, but as a 2ndrow/prop you would have a different physique and role to a hooker so it kind of makes sense he played just over half the minutes. Like I'm assuming you are saying Api made penalties because he had to work really hard, but it's not clear.
Head banging is fine. It shows he cares and probably suggests he was trying not to be stupid but did anyway. I'd rather they took the blame themselves than argue with the ref or try blame someone else.
I don't think I've undersold the Souths one, all you have to do is look at his body language. Here I'll show some images from the game video, but first let's do some math and I'll show all my working out for you just in case I make an error and to show where my information comes from.
So how fast is Alex Seyfarth travelling. What I have used is the youtube video (link) of the match replay, at 1:22:00-1:22:10, where the video shown should be going at real time speed as it is "live". So from when Seyfarth gets to the line running parallel to the touchline 10m out from touch until he gets to 5m from touch halfway (see image):
For that little line at the 10m mark, I've calculated (more on this soon) to be approximately 2.5m. The way I've done this is I've taken a still (below).
Then what I have done is I've measured the distance from the 20m line along these broken lines to the tryline using the pixels in the image via paint and come out with the result below.
I've attached all of the exact pixel positioning as well. The green (bad colour choice is the line in question). I've figured out the red line (it extends under the yellow line which I realize was pointless but couldn't be bothered to remove) is approximately 656.4944783 pixels long. The green line is approximately 13 x square root of 37 pixels long or 79.07591289 pixels. Then I've divided these numbers to find the ratio of the small line to the whole 20m which was 0.1204517563 and finally multiplied it by 20 to get the length to be 2.409035126m, which due to the perspective of the shot, the closer 10m is extrapolated slightly so we'll round it down to 2.4m which is a lot easier in future.
Subsequently, using a ruler to determine where approximately 5m in from the touchline. The little white line is 10m as per the standard dimensions of a rugby league field. Halfway was just before the slight change in colour gradient, due to perspective I am going to use it as a marker for the halfway though. Now given where he starts and where he finishes, it's approximately 5.54616985m. Since then, I timed with my phone the time it takes from his foot landing on the 10m out line until he gets to the change in gradient at 0.25x speed and repeated it 7 times for accuracy. I got 3.35, 3.33, 3.34, 3.17, 3.45, 3.23, 3.66, discounted the fastest and slowest time and averaged them to get 3.34s which in real time is 0.835s. Then by dividing the time by the distance in km he was approximately running 2:30 per km pace, which is 24km/h average. Now if you watch the video he slowed down a little bit before the end of the run so was probably doing high 20's to begin then low 20's at the end and his line isn't perfectly straight so chances are he runs a tiny bit faster on average (~25km/h). By the time Gray has first let the ball go to kick, Seyfarth is 2-3m from him.
Now at 20km/h being 3m away Seyfarth would have 0.45s to react at the very most. However, Gray is also running towards the path of Seyfarth so this would shorten the distance Seyfarth would actually run before hitting him. Furthermore, reaction time must be factored in to this which for most olympic level sprinters is around 0.15s. So he has 0.3s to change his path and miss Gray whilst going 20km/h and also get out the way of Galvin who's right next Gray.
So in the aftermath. If you watch from 1:22:53 slowing down the bunker replay to 0.25x, you can see him come in but actively trying to stop with his step just before Gray landing way in front of the body heel first. He then tries to rotate his body so that he can try bump off the back of Gray and avoid infringing him, but Galvin grabs at Gray and slightly pushes Seyfarth so he can't go behind, not to mention Gray is actually slowing down at this stage as well. As it all goes wrong, you can see Seyfarth is actually grabbing at Gray to try keep him up.
This is indicative of an individual who was quite clearly aiming to avoid contact after the kick was made, not of someone trying to take Gray out as you said. If he was really all about taking him out he would have followed through like you see Olam do in some of his big hits, but he quite clearly braked and was in a really unfortunate position that was borderline impossible to avoid. If Seyfarth wasn't there Souths would have almost certainly scored, but it is his effort to never give up on that he got there and saved a try.
Also the ball did not go dead, watch the video. Staines batted it out. It would have been a goal-line drop out which almost produces the exact same result these days with short drop outs.
Out of his penalties. 6/13 were in Tigers half, one of them was the sin bin one in which they already had a penalty there the only difference is he's off the field. I don't know how this compares to the rest of the competition but I'd say a 46% inside your own half would probably be about average as teams become a lot more desperate in defence on the tryline (loose arms, tripping etc.). I definitely agree that some of them are very stupid though (dragons first one and warriors first one especially).
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