UPDATED: Quantium stat analysis: Rd 23, vital numbers to beat the best

• SPY TALK: Head-to-head finals tactics to give you an edge
• CAPTAIN’S CHALLENGE: Who to skipper in Round 23?

Analysing the top 20,000 teams after Round 22 – UPDATED

With just three weeks left, it’s a matter of holding on for dear life as players keep falling from our teams. 

Those teams that can field 17 decent players are at a huge advantage over teams around them – but good luck with that! 

As you’ll see below, there are now plenty of teams that will be playing short this week…

Let’s look at the ownership levels of players in each position after round 22 to see how your squad stacks up.   

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Ownership of unavailable players

The first table below sets out the top 25 players currently unavailable this weekend. 

With Tommy Turbo now out, I have updated the analysis throughout the doc to reflect this.

Once again, a number of other very popular players went down in round 22.  Ryan Matterson, CHN, Jacob Liddle, Tyson Gamble and Victor Radley fell to suspension, whilst the likes of Jahrome Hughes, Brandon Smith and Taane Milne are also out.

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In better news for some Supercoaches, Alex Johnston, Luke Thompson, TPJ, Kurt Capewell and Dane Gagai return, whilst Jason Taumalolo has been named on an extended bench.

Once again, the total at the bottom of the table shows the average number of players unavailable this weekend by ranking zone. 

So, on average, the top 10,000 teams have 8.3 players unavailable this week – up from 6.7 last week. 

The table below shows what proportion of teams in each ranking zone are missing a certain number of players. Now this is where it gets interesting this week!

As you can see, a lot of teams are now playing short. 46% of the top 10,000 teams are at least one player short prior to trades this week – and a large proportion of those will be out of trades. 11% of teams have 14 players or less and a further 14% are down to 15 players.

In the top 100, 38 of the top 100 teams are short players this week whilst a further 24 teams have exactly 17 players pre trades. Not all of those with 17 will be able to field a full team though. As an example, the team coming ninth has 16 players but only has one 2RF – so they can take an AE for one of those but not the second – so they are actually down to 15 players.

Between 2RF, HOK and HFB I expect many teams with 17 players in theory to be in this bucket.

In my case, I have 18 players available – which sounds like a luxury – but that includes having to play Jackson Topine at 2RF.  Again, not ideal but that’s how tough 2RF will be this week.

Fullback

With Turbo out, whilst pretty much every team is impacted, almost all should have a viable option at FLB. The bigger issue for the team is having to play short overall given other issues.

Around 5% of players sold Clint Gutherson for James Tedesco last week – nice move.

The result is that a third of leading teams now own each of Teddy and Ponga, with the remaining third owning a combination of Latrell Mitchell, Gutherson, Will Kennedy, Reece Walsh, Ryan Papenhuyzen or a dual player such as Adam Doueihi, Alex Johnston or Nicho Hynes.

CTW

What an incredible season Reuben Garrick is having.  I never would have thought early in the season that Garrick would be owned by 98% of the top 1,000 sides and the entire top 100.  Even the Cooma Stallions finally got on board this week – nice medicine Timmy. 

Garrick now has the highest season average at CTW of 89 (7 higher than Nicho Hynes and 11 higher than Brian To’o) and is the highest scoring Supercoach player this year.

8% of Nicho Hynes’ owners took the opportunity to sell last week – with pretty much all of them switching to Garrick. Whilst Nicho looks like he might be a hold for a bit longer, I suspect those sellers would all be grateful to have picked up Garrick in time for his 199 (a mere single tackle off the double hundred!).

Euan Aitken is now owned by 7 of the top 100 teams.

3-4% of teams also picked up Valentine Holmes last week – with small reductions for each of Dane Gagai, Alex Johnston and Taane Milne.

Five-eighth

Not a huge amount of change of ownership at five-eighth last week. Another 6% of owners sold SJ.  2% of these bought Adam Doueihi.

Halfback

Nathan Cleary is back – but with a $1m+ price tag he was almost impossible for most teams to bring in. 5% of the top 10,000, 7% of the top 1,000 and 4% of the top 100 managed to do just that – and they will be hoping he posts monster scores as a POD. 

2% of the top 10,000 teams brought in Daly Cherry-Evans. 32% of the top 100 now own DCE. 

2RF

2RF is getting brutal.  As the table below shows, 5 of the most popular 7 2RFs are currently unavailable this week. 

It’s worse for some teams (including mine) where players like Isaiah Papali’i, Luke Thompson or Ryan James might actually be locked in at FRF.  Any side that can pick three decent 2RFs this week is laughing. Very few of the top 10 teams are in that position.

FRF

Not surprisingly, there was very little movement at FRF last week. 

HOK

Harry Grant is now owned by 27% of the top 10,000 and 30 of the top 100 teams. 

With Brandon Smith, Reed Mahoney, Ben Hunt, Victor Radley and Jacob Liddle unavailable this week, many teams will be running without a hooker.

Round 22 Captaincy Choices

Round 22 saw almost everyone stick solid with Tom Turbo as captain…and all of us that did would have been relieved with that decision with Turbo posting a monster 179 points in 74 minutes. Turbo now averages a ridiculous 135 points.  Quite simply, if he plays, you just have to captain him right now. 

With Turbo out though, it’s game on at captain this week.  Let the games begin!

Best of luck to everyone in Round 23! 

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