Stat analysis: Vital numbers to beat the best

• SQUAD BREAKDOWN: Round 11 team insights
• DECISION TIME: Answering the week’s big questions

Analysing the top 20,000 teams after Round 10

Looks like Teddy is human after all – finally a week where Teddy didn’t dominate and those brave enough to find a POD captain were largely rewarded.  

And this week there are even more juicy POD captaincy options available. More on that later.

Let’s take a look at team ownership by position and ranking zone after Round 10.

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Fullback

As per previous weeks, the table below sets out the percentage of teams ranked in the top 100, top 500, top 1,000, top 10,000 and top 20,000 teams that own each fullback and contrast that with the ownership levels as per the SuperCoach site – again ordered by 5 Round Average to see if we can find any hidden gems and potential PODs. 

Over 90% of the top 20,000 teams now own Teddy – up from 85% last week.

Over the past three weeks, however, we have at least seen some variation in everyone’s second FLB. 

We are now in a position whereby just over 40% of teams own Kalyn Ponga, 20% own Clint Gutherson, 15% own Ryan Papenhuyzen and a handful of teams own one of RTS or Matt Dufty. 

I’ve added Dylan Edwards to the table this week – I was surprised to see that more teams in the top 20,000 own him than own RTS?! 

No doubt they are looking for the trade button right about now. 

Personally, I’m in that unfortunate position where I want my second FLB (Ponga) to go large against my own team this week. 

As much as I love the Dogs, it’s hard not to see Ponga tearing us apart up the middle. 

He has to be a serious POD captaincy option I reckon. As a dogs fan, I just can’t do that though!

CTW and dual FLB/CTW

Last week I talked about how owners of Bradman Best, Josh Mansour, Siona Katoa, Josh Morris, Jarrod Croker and HTF were all left licking their chops after disappointing scores in Round 9. 

Fair to say that almost all of those blokes made amends for owners in Round 10 with great scores. 

Ok, Croker’s was just relative to the rest of his junk this year but Katoa and Best in particular killed it.

Looking at ownership levels versus last week, the big change was Stephen Crichton. 

Last week he was owned by just 7% of the top 20,000 teams, but this week that increased to 20%+ across different ranking zones. 

He certainly delivered in his first week for new owners. Many of those owners appeared to come from former owners of Latrap – whose ownership levels plummeted from 16% to 6%.

Maika Sivo’s owners were the big losers in Round 10. As an example, last week, 17% of the top 100 teams owned Maika – that number is now 8%. 

In fairness, those same teams were most likely up there in the first place because they owned him when he posted 145 three weeks ago. 

As much as I love watching him as a player, with 4 of 10 scores under 40 that is too much variability for me. Note last year he had 9 of 24 games under 40 too.

Halves

Last week I talked about the return of Cameron Munster creating interest and more variability in ownership levels of halves. 

Well the leading teams certainly agreed. Munster’s ownership level across the top 20,000 teams surged from just 6% to 22%.

This was even more pronounced depending on team rank – with 43% of the top 100 teams now owning Munster versus 5% a week ago. 

So, who did they sell to bring in Munster? Not surprisingly, Scott Drinkwater’s ownership went from 19% to 8% and George Williams’ ownership reduced from 41% to 32%. 

Off the back of monster scores, teams with Shaun Johnson and Nathan Cleary sailed past those without, meaning that the vast majority of leading teams now own Cleary and 76% of the top 100 teams own SJ.

In general, it feels like the ownership level of the top halves broadly reflects their 5RAs – i.e. Cleary has the best 5RA and the highest ownership, SJ has the second highest for each and so on. This is not the case in any other position.

2RF

A week is a long time in SuperCoach. Last week I mentioned that the top five 2RFs were heavily skewed towards the leading teams. 

Ryan Matterson then proceeds to not play (right after I finally traded him in for Tapine!) and Angus Crichton goes down injured with a sub-60 score. 

Cam McInnes also disappointed with a score of 61. To make it worse, Luciano Leilua finally punched out a monster score shortly after lots of teams (including me) traded him for the likes of Angus last week. 

The main ownership changes at 2RF related to Beau Fermor (increasing from 30% to 70%) and Angus Crichton (increasing from 34% to 43%).

Both disappointed last week and find themselves not playing this week. These guys largely came in at the expense of various mid-range players, most notably Eliesa Katoa, Coen Hess, Joseph Tapine, Jayden Su’a, Jamil Hopoate and Jai Arrow.

FRF

As predicted last week, JTB’s ownership level further plummeted from 36% to 24%. 

Not surprisingly, Daniel Saifiti’s owners had little choice but to bail ship following his injury, with his ownership falling from 17% to 6% (or from 18% to 2% in the top 100 teams).

So, where did these owners go? Tevita Pangai’s ownership level increased from 9% to approximately 15%, and each of Josh Papalii and Sio Siua Taukeiaho saw their ownership increase by 2%. Other than that, I suspect a lot of people nuffed JTB.

Arranging our table by 5RAs continues to make interesting reading. The six highest scoring FRF’s over the past six weeks are all at POD ownership levels. 

In saying that, the 5RA scores across the top 11 players only range from 77 to 67 so there isn’t much incentive to switch a Payne Haas or a Dave Klemmer to the likes of Papalii or Fonua-Blake – at least relative to other trade options out there.   

HOK

Well, Cameron Cook and Cameron Smith owners were finally rewarded this week – with each posting monster scores relative to Api Koroisau (given that almost all of the leading teams own Harry Grant in the other HOK spot). 

24 of the top 100 teams now have one of Cook or Smith versus 13 a week ago. That’s a function of those teams rising up the rankings as opposed to trade activity.

Api Koroisau, thanks for your service. With the little man going down injured (for 2-3 weeks?), expect the ownership level of both Smith and Cook to increase significantly – particularly that of the GOAT who is over $40k cheaper than Cookie.

Round 10 Captaincy Choices

Whereas last week was very boring (i.e. just all Teddy), this week saw a lot more variation in captaincy choices. 

Whilst approximately 56% of teams captained Teddy, Nathan Cleary was also very popular – and those that were brave enough to captain him moved their way up the rankings.  

I rate Cleary as a player (highly) but gee he scores some garbage time points in SuperCoach. 

He must score more points in the last five minutes than any other player in the competition – similar to that of another great half in JT back in the day. By my calculation, he scored 37 of his 112 points in the final minute.

In addition to Cleary, we also saw around 10% of teams captain either Cameron Smith or Cameron Munster against the Titans. 

Both went well, but Smith crushed it and that’s reflected in the ranking stats below. SJ and even Zac Lomax attracted interest too, showing that the leading teams are not afraid to captain attacking players against the likes of the Bulldogs, Warriors, Titans (and surely the Broncos going forward).

What’s of interest is the low level of interest now in Payne Haas and Jason Taumalolo. 

Whilst they are the second and third most popular captains overall according to the SuperCoach stats, in reality just 5% of the top 5,000 teams captained either of them last week).

Once again, it will be fascinating to see who everyone captains this week. Whilst Teddy has a beautiful match up against the Warriors, there are lots of other dream match ups for those wanting to make a move. 

Any (or all) of Smith, Munster and Papenhuyzen could go monster against the Broncos, whilst Cleary could go massive against the Titans. 

Meanwhile, Ponga is up against the Bulldogs…wow. I suspect Ponga will be the biggest POD option there given those who don’t straight captain Teddy may want to VC him – but that could make it even more attractive for those willing to roll the dice.

Good luck to everyone again in Round 11.  For those who want to get these stats on Twitter, feel free to follow me here @adamdriussi.

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