Quantium stat analysis: Rd 7, vital numbers to beat the best

• FINAL WORD: Key trade and tactical advice, Round 7
• SPY TALK: Answering the big questions ahead of Round 7

Analysing the top 20,000 teams after Round 6

Welcome back everyone – and apologies for the lack of commentary last week and delay in the article this week – too many work commitments!

Let’s go through the ownership of players in each position after round 6.

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Fullback

The table below sets out the proportion of teams in the top 100, top 500, top 1,000, top 5,000, top 10,000 and top 20,000 that own each fullback. I have then included the proportion of teams overall that own each player according to the official SuperCoach site.

Just a couple of weeks ago, fullback was looking pretty boring. Whilst there are a host of gun FLBs, it looked like almost every serious side was running with the Tedesco / Papenhuyzen combination. What a difference two weeks makes – and wait for the changes this week!

Strong scores from Latrell Mitchell and disappointing returns (by his lofty standards) from Teddy mean that only approximately 70% of the leading teams now have Tedesco in their side – versus almost every side in the top 5,000 owning Papenhuyzen.  

No doubt that is set to be turned on its head this week though with Latrell suspended for 4 weeks, Papenhuyzen out for 2 weeks and the blistering returns of Turbo and Ponga…not to mention the soft draw (and likely round 13 availability) for Clint Gutherson. Meanwhile a POD like RTS is rocking a three round average of over 90. Talk about stacked. 

Given all the action at fullback this week, I’ve created a new table this week for those interested in the proportion of teams owning the various fullback combos. I saw someone posted the question on the SC Playbook Twitter feed somewhere so here it is 🙂 

So 20%+ of the leading teams (including 25 of the top 100) are running with a Papenhuyzen / Mitchell combo – no doubt that won’t be the case now!

CTW

I must have missed a podcast on Brian Kelly somewhere last week did I? 

Updating the stats each week, I do a quick sense check to make sure there are no players that I’m leaving out of the table for each position that might be of interest. Generally when I check a player (for example, Reuben Garrick after he posted 113 last week) they come up with close to 0% ownership.

Not Brian Kelly – check out the last row in the table below. Kelly is owned by just 2% of teams overall yet 21 of the top 100 teams and 19 of the top 500 teams own him. No doubt they were chasing a cheeky POD against the Sea Eagles and would have been disappointed in his return of 32 last week. 

Brian To’o has quickly become the must-have CTW of 2021 – the guy is a beast. Along with Daine Laurie, almost all the top teams have two of their CTW positions locked away.  Beyond that it’s a nightmare in my opinion!

Five-eighth

2021 feels like a changing of the guard in various positions in SuperCoach. Over the past few seasons, Cam Munster and Cody Walker have dominated the five-eighth position. 

Whilst they both average in the top five again this year, Jarome Luai is simply dominating five-eighth. Leaving out Luke Keary who is gone for the season, Luai (with an 85 average) averages 13 points per game higher than the next best five-eighth in Cody Walker.  Considering the second to sixth ranked five-eighths all average between 70 and 72 a game, that is a massive difference.

Not surprisingly, the ownership table reflects that – with the leading teams heavily skewed towards owning Luai. Not that the fifth highest averaging five-eighth is also a Panther in Matt Burton. What a side..

Halfback

Nothing to say here – pretty much every team in the top 20,000 has Nathan Cleary and Sam Walker at halfback. It just goes to show how misleading the overall ownership stats on the actual SuperCoach site are. 

2RF

2RF this week will be all about Tino Fa’asuamaleaui. No doubt his two week suspension will see many teams hitting the trade button. With Jordan Riki having also peaked in price, no doubt the likes of Isaiah Papali’i, Luke Thompson, Joshua Curran and Tohu Harris will feature more prominently in the ownership stats this time next week.

FRF

Still not a huge amount of action at FRF aside from big Tino who we’ve already discussed.  Between Tino’s suspension and TKO’s potential injury we might see some action here this week though.

HOK

Speaking of changing of the guards, is hooker another position where that might be occurring? Damien Cook seems perfectly suited to the rule changes over the past year, yet that just isn’t translating into big scores.

He averages only 66 this year which is 9 less than Jayden Brailey and 24 less than Reed Mahoney! Mahoney is crushing it at hooker, yet his ownership is still not correlated with ranking. I guess most leading teams are just making cash at hooker via Watson, Brailey and Liddle and spending their dollars elsewhere – but Mahoney’s owners must be chuffed with how he is playing.

Round 6 Captaincy Choices

Round 6 saw a lot more variation in captaincy choices. Interestingly, David Fifita and Nathan Cleary each accounted for approximately 30% of captaincy choices, with the balances shared around guys like Ryan Papenhuyzen, Latrell Mitchell, Cody Walker and Jarome Luai.

Note that ‘other’ in the table below largely relates to people who utilised the VC loop.  That’s certainly the case in the top 100 – where the 18 others are all players who looped and took Nathan Cleary’s 125 as captain.

Good luck again to everyone in Round 7. 

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