A Deep Dive into the 2025 NRL Season - Part 1
CNT, NEW, SSR, ESR, MAN, MEL and WST
Welcome to Stats Drop, an inundation of rugby league numbers.
For a change, I’m not talking about Queensland rugby league in this newsletter. The Broncos, Dolphins, Cowboys and Titans have already received longer, standalone season previews featuring the full suite of charts below. This is for the rest of the league. This is part 1 and you can read part 2 here.
Some detailed explainers on the stats: Players, Teams and PVRTS/Sims. I didn’t include any coaching stats in this post because it is dense enough as is, but you can refer to this earlier table. We’ll come back to this later when the rookies have some runs on the board. I am setting this year’s line for coach firings at 2.5 and I’m taking the over.
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Reminder: Datawrapper embeds look and work best on desktop, next best if you tap through on mobile and least best in email. There are so many graphs and charts, I have selected the most relevant for each team and then linked out to the others.
Bulldogs
Would you think of the Bulldogs as one of the league’s three best defensive teams?
The Bulldogs were the only team to top a metric without having won a premiership in the last decade. Two in particular - SCWP against and Defence Workrate - indicate their opposition had to generate a lot of metres, breaks and other production relative to the number of tries actually scored. More simply, the Bulldogs conceded the second fewest points per game in the league, behind Penrith and equal with Cronulla.
The Sims, by comparison, are way down on the Doggies but I think this is due to a relatively low starting point (refer History) that has not yet reflected the improvement this team has shown. It’s worth remembering that this improvement has been coming for years and its delivery would be marked as late by most mail carriers. Still, defensive prowess is usually replicable and provides a solid foundation for the Bulldogs.
Further analysis: Players by Z / Players by WARG / History / Sims
Knights
Woof, this was not a team that was good at scoring points.
Weirdly, Newcastle were midfield in terms of net sets but were down the bottom of the league in net time of possession. That means they had an average number of chances but managed to blow them so catastrophically, they held the ball for substantially less time than any other team in the league.
Even accounting for that, the Knights still didn’t score a lot of points. They were 16th in points for per game and in a similar position for efficiency (points per set), conversion (ratio of ARM+LB to points scored) and workrate (ratio of FTy to tries scored).
This is not a difficult puzzle to work out: Newcastle’s playmakers are not good. In fact, the Knights’ platoon ranks 17th of 17 teams in the league by Wins Above Reserve Grade. With an average projected Z score of 63 for 2025, it doesn’t look like that’s improving any time soon.
Further analysis: Players by Z / Players by WARG / History / Sims
Rabbitohs
A few weeks ago, I said something to the effect that “despite the numbers rendering them the worst starting 17, the Rabbitohs obviously aren’t the worst line up on paper.” Then this happened and this happened and this is a space for an inevitable third thing to happen between time of writing and time of reading.
When you take all of those guys out, there’s not a lot of meat on those bones. It is so dire, I am not prepared to spend even a couple of minutes putting together the 1-17 tables for Souths. If, as rumoured, Keaon Koloamatangi has a shoulder issue, he can’t even fill the void created by Cameron Murray’s Achilles rupture and that leaves two chasms to backfill with guys I’ve never heard of. Wayne will presumably work his magic and make a decent soup out of it, but it will be thin gruel, bordering on consomme.
Further analysis: 2024 Metrics / History / Sims
Roosters
While their nearest and most hated rivals struggle with an injury crisis, the Sydney City Roosters got ahead of the game by having an injury crisis much earlier.
As a result, Easts find themselves in a similar situation to Souths. Newcastle might be a better comparison as both have some nice pieces but you wouldn’t bank on the listed 6+7+9 as producing much in the way of results. Not being particularly familiar with the Roosters’ depth chart, I popped in Tyler Moriarty, the only other player on the Roosters website listed as a hooker, at utility but frankly, it doesn’t really matter who it is.
Considering that the Roosters were one of the finest attacking teams in 2024, the firm of Townsend, Smith and Watson isn’t going to be the basis for a successful litigation but may be able to hold the fort until some of the senior partners, Smith and Walker, return (we are more likely to see the former than the latter in 2025).
Further analysis: 2024 Metrics / Players by WARG / History / Sims
Sea Eagles
What would really restore my faith in rugby league right now, would be a complete and utter collapse from the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles. I don’t have a particular animosity towards Manly, other than a low medium level simmering resentment toward the Sydney establishment in general and a few Celsius added by Manly’s small mindedness (both outwardly to the gays and inwardly to the insular peninsula), and am actually quite fond of Cherry-Evans these days.
However, I really do not care for Anthony Seibold. I have to think the success of last year’s Broncos season review was largely down to me referring to him as a “little piggy blowhard” because I expect the French Revolution motif mostly turned people off.
So I’d like to see the biggest bloviator outside of Phil Gould fail, again. I have no evidence that this will happen or even any particular reason to think it might, other than just wanting it. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, so here’s hoping some bad juju sinks the entire enterprise into the sea, like Marine Parade rapidly coming to terms with the effects of climate change in, let’s say, a decade or two.
Anyway, here’s what the fifth best team by Wins Above Reserve Grade and the second best back five by the same metric looked like:
Further analysis: 2024 Metrics / Players by Z / History / Sims
Storm
Just ink them in for another preliminary final now and flip a coin to see if they’re going to make the grand final.
Further analysis: 2024 Metrics / Players by Z / Players by WARG / History
Tigers
‘It can’t get any worse’ is an ancient proverb whose truth is disproven by the existence of the Wests Tigers. People want to bang on about the Panthers’ four-in-a-row but no one seems to be highlighting the historic ineptitude required for three spoons in a row. This puts the joint venture in company with such luminous rugby league outposts as Liverpool (Stanley and City, combined from 1948 to 1954), University (Sydney, 1934-37), Gold Coast (1991-93) and Newcastle (2015-17).
Much as Luai is not the linchpin of the Panthers’ endeavour, I doubt his arrival is what turns this team from perennial losers into serial winners. However, it probably does get them off the floor. No, this isn’t like when I said that about Koroisau but there are another half dozen imports to help out. It may be better to deploy another ancient proverb: ‘she’ll be right’.
Further analysis: 2024 Metrics / Players by Z / Players by WARG / Sims (it’s hard to overstate just how far off the pace the Tigers have been but this comes close)