Stat analysis: Vital numbers to beat the best, Rd 20

• DECISION TIME: Answering the week’s big questions
• SQUAD BREAKDOWN: Round 20 team insights

And so, we have one week left, and what a week for the Cooma Stallions – just 61 points shy of a potential $50,000 and SuperCoach glory.

By now, experienced SuperCoaches are used to the risk of players being rested in the final round – but we’ve never seen the likes of this carnage before. 

There are SO many players down that around 25% of teams will be short at least one player this week – and many will be even worse off. I know I have 14 and no trades left…thank goodness I’m not in the top 10!

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Like last week, this week’s article will focus on quantifying the impact of the various TLT restings, injuries and suspensions so that you can better understand how you might be impacted relative to others and plan accordingly.

For those of you with trades – well done! For those without – and I suspect that will be most people – good luck!  

Meanwhile, I suspect we have several more twists in the tail still to come. There are some interesting players lurking on benches and plenty of rumours around, so keep an eye on late team changes.

I’ll once again share the overall player ownership tables for those interested, but will focus my comments on the impact of players not named.

Quantifying the Carnage

Craig Bellamy and Ricky Stuart – two great coaches (and great blokes) in real life – but two blokes who have turned SuperCoach grand finals (and potentially the overall first place) into a lottery! 

Oh well – we did flag this on the podcast a number of weeks ago so it’s not like we couldn’t see this coming.

The table below sets out the percentage of teams ranked in the top 10, top 100, top 500, top 1,000, top 10,000 and top 20,000 teams that own each key player that are well owned – ranked by the players with the highest level of ownership across the top 20,000 teams.

Cameron Smith, Cameron Munster and John Bateman are the three most owned players not playing this week – and most leading teams own all three. 

19 of the top 20 teams own Smith, 17 of the top 20 own Munster and 16 of the top 20 own Bateman. 

In that situation, at least everyone is impacted. It’s those who own PODs like Dylan Edwards, Stephen Crichton, Nelson Asofa-Solomona and Joseph Manu (each owned by 2 of the top 20) who would have been hurting most on TLT. 

At least those who own Turbo (3 of the top 10), SJ (7 of the top 20) and Fifita (3 of the top 20) knew that they were gone prior to TLT…

So, where does this leave teams this week? The table below sets out the number of teams with different numbers of players unavailable for selection this week. 

Things can obviously get worse between now and then (e.g. someone like Jazz being a late withdrawal) but as of today this is my best estimate.

As an example, there is one team in the top 10 with 11 players unavailable prior to trades this week. That happens to be the team coming sixth. 

The leader currently has 10 players unavailable – so unless they have two trades left they are playing short this week. Hardly ideal with $50,000 on the line!

If any further big names get rested prior to game day – which must be a possibility – then we will see a lot of teams in grand finals or chasing top 10, top 100, top 1,000 etc struggling to field 16 let alone a full team.

VC looping and the dreaded AE disaster

As flagged last week, being short or having exactly 17 (or even 18) players can lead to a dream opportunity to implement the VC loop. 

As it turned out, this didn’t do much damage last week – no big name really stood out with a monster score. But who knows what happens this week. 

The VC loop is also a serious option for any teams with 18 or 19 players – which based on the table above could be a lot of teams.

The risk with the VC loop of course, is the dreaded auto-emergency disaster – that guy on the bench who you never wanted to play who comes on for five minutes and makes three tackles.

The table below sets out the ownership of various players that are well owned and playing this week who most teams in grand finals or seeking top 10 or overall glory would ideally not want to be playing. Some are bigger risks than others.

Players ownership levels by position

For those interested, the tables below set out the latest player ownership levels in each position. 

Given we only have two weeks left and most trades will be restricted to emergency replacements this week, I won’t bother with the commentary, but they may provide you with the data you need to make one final POD move or team selection with one week to go.

Fullback

CTW

Halves

2RF

FRF

HOK

Round 19 Captaincy Choices

Round 19 saw Kalyn Ponga the most popular captain followed by Nathan Cleary.  As it turned out, most of the popular captaincy choices scored relatively similar – except of course the big POD move in Turbo.  I’m still hurting over that one!

With Teddy back this week – but in a tough clash – the captaincy choice is going to be tough. 

Nathan Cleary takes on the Bulldogs and will likely be a popular option – but could he be rested early?  What about someone like Zac Lomax against a reserve grade Storm side?  No doubt lots of people will roll the dice so anything could happen from here.

Good luck again to everyone in Round 20 – but in particular the Cooma Stallions in second place. Bring it home Timmy!