Quantium stat analysis: Rd 19, vital numbers to beat the best

• SPY TALK: Analysing every club’s run home
• SQUAD BREAKDOWN: Teams news + SuperCoach insights

Analysing the top 20,000 teams after Round 18

What an interesting round. Some monster scores amongst players with 20-50% ownership saw some big deviations in scores amongst leading teams. The likes of Gutho, Matterson, CHN, Hynes, Walker, Laurie and Doueihi all posted big tonnes and have plenty of owners (and non-owners).  

Special shout out to our new leader The Villi Army. For a team ranked ninth coming into the round to post the fifth highest score of the week was a huge performance – and saw him score over 300 more than the old leader (who themselves posted a respectable 1,421). Nice work Tim – no pressure to keep that lead! 

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Let’s look at the ownership levels of players in each position after round 18 to see how your squad stacks up.  

With trades running low, it’s increasingly likely that some teams could soon start running out of players as injuries and suspensions kick in.

To assist in understanding this, I have nuffed out in grey players who are either injured, not playing first grade or players who you simply can’t rely on right now to score (e.g., the likes of Ben Trbojevic, Siosifa Talakai etc).  

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Fullback

Round 18 was a rough week at fullback for many teams. With Turbo and Teddy out, around 30% of teams were faced with a choice – trade Teddy out to avoid the AE or suck it up.

Around half of Teddy’s owners sold. He is now owned by 21% of the top 10,000 teams and 9% of the top 1,000 versus 31% and 16% respectively last week.  

So, who did they sell for? Somewhat cruelly, most of those selling Teddy brought in Kalyn Ponga – only to see him go down in a sickening head clash. 7% of the top 10,000 teams now own Ponga.  

Even rougher was the 2% of teams who brought in Latrell Mitchell only to have him withdraw from the clash against the Bulldogs.  

So, between Teddy, Ponga, Latrell and RTS it was a cruel week at fullback! Those who stuck solid with Gutho were rewarded once again. With trades at a premium, I’m starting to think I’m going to hold Gutho until the end of the year.

CTW

Finally, my AJ voodoo doll started working – but not before AJ put paid to my hopes of a top 100 finish. With AJ now facing a month on the sidelines, a huge number of teams are facing the decision of whether to trade or hold.  

When you add the likes of Suaalii, Burbo, Valentine Holmes, Bailey Simonsson and Jarred Anderson on average, teams already have 3 CTWs unavailable this week. 

That’s not a lot of depth for the run home. Yes, technically you can start a Talakai or Milne even though they are playing off the bench or not getting big minutes but you wouldn’t want to. 

The most popular trade-in target last week at CTW was Taane Milne. 6% of the top 10,000 teams brought Milne in. The second most popular trade-in was Kotoni Staggs, with 5% of the top 10,000 teams – but none of the top 100 – welcoming Staggs. 

Xavier Savage and David Nofoaluma were the other two CTWs to attract interest, with 2% of the top 10,000 trading in each of them.

Not surprisingly, half of Valentine Holmes’ owners sold last week, meaning he is now owned by just 9% of the top 10,000. Bailey Simonsson also fell from 18% to 12% ownership.

Five-eighth

Adam Doueihi – wow! 3% of the top 10,000 teams brought in Doueihi last week and boy were they rewarded with a monster score of 154. Throw in Cameron Munster’s 115 and SJ’s score of 17 and it was certainly a week for POD five-eighths.  

Not surprisingly, teams that owned Doueihi rocketed up the rankings – including the new leader.

SJ’s form and lack of goal-kicking would be a real concern for his owners – which is the vast majority of us. You would think he’s a play against the Bulldogs but you’d certainly like to see him goal-kicking to feel more comfortable.

Halfback

There wasn’t a lot of trade activity at HFB last week – around 1% of teams sold Mitch Moses and brought in Sam Walker. 

What did change however is the ownership composition within the leading teams – and the top 100 teams in particular. Teams who had Sam Walker and to a lesser extent Jahrome Hughes moved into the top 100 at the expense of teams with Matt Burton and SJ.

Funny enough, teams with DCE also increased slightly up the rankings – presumably because most of them don’t have SJ and benefited from not playing him and copping his 17 in their total.

2RF 

She’s a fickle game Supercoach. 7% of teams traded out Tohu Harris last week and were no doubt gutted when he was then named on Sunday. Little did they know it would give them a huge boost on the 75% of teams who kept Tohu only to see him score 6, tear his ACL and lose $63k in value. 

At the other end of the scale, Corey Harawira-Naera was one of the most sold off players amongst leading teams (approximately 20 of the top 100 teams sold him) – only to come out and play one of his best games ever.

David Fifita was the player that everyone wanted post Origin. His ownership increased from 43% of the top 100 to 94%. No doubt all of those new owners were furious at the video ref’s decision to take away his junk time try. 

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I thought it was an awful decision but feel slightly better now that I see 88% of the teams in front of me had him as well.

Other players sold off included Josh Curran (8%), Ryan James (6%), TPJ (5%), Karl Lawton (4%) and Mitch Barnett (4%). 

With Tohu gone for the season, teams have an average of 2.1 2RFs pretty much unavailable. In addition to the 3 CTWs earlier, that’s a lot of players gone with trades low. 

FRF 

The main change at FRF was the doubling in ownership of Payne Haas. Haas is now owned by 42% of the top 10,000 and 32 of the top 100 teams. Sio Sio Siua Taukeiaho’s ownership reduced from 28% to 21%.

HOK 

Not a lot of movement at HOK last week. Reed Mahoney’s ownership increased from 7% to 13% with sellers being a combination of Jayden Brailey, Karl Lawton and Connor Watson.

So across all positions (and eliminating double counting of DPPs), on average teams have 5.5 players who look unavailable for selection for the remainder of the season.  

Given two players went down last weekend who were owned by the vast majority of teams (Tohu and AJ) we don’t need too many more weekends like that for some teams to be playing short.

Round 18 Captaincy Choices

Not surprisingly, over 70% of the leading teams captained Cody Walker and a further 10% captained AJ. The 6% who captained Nicho Hynes (or those that looped him) would have been thrilled with his monster score. Watching that game, he could have easily scored 200. To think he’s not even the Storm’s first choice fullback…

With Turbo back this week, he will no doubt be a very popular captain against the Tigers. With Nicho Hynes playing the Cowboys and Cody Walker playing the injury struck Warriors there are certainly some POD options out there.

Best of luck to everyone in Round 19. I’ll be desperately hoping the Dogs can beat the Sharks again!