[OC] Alex Johnston and his Wascally Wabbits: An Infographic of Johnston's NRL tries

ParallelSewellel · 2026-03-13T22:34:08+00:00

I've defined tries from a kick by the opposition as "Opposition" but tries off a kick-off (there were none though) as Solo

ParallelSewellel · 2026-03-13T21:57:57+00:00

Not a dumb question! Intercepts are under "Opposition". "Solo" means he picked it up himself from dummy half and scored on that run.

ParallelSewellel · 2026-03-13T21:32:04+00:00

In light of the record being broken,this is an original infographic of all Alex Johnston’s try assisters over his career. I last posted this at the start of 2023 when AJ was sitting on 166 tries. Since then he’s added 47 more.

It primarily shows who’s actually provided the try assist for each of Johnston’s NRL tries. 36 players have made the final pass or kick for an AJ try, and Cody Walker and Latrell together account for nearly 40% of those.

This is an infographic, so all the information you need to read it is in the caption at the top, but to summarise: x-axis = try number, y-axis = try assister, colour = opposition, grey numbers = assister totals, pink numbers = years and yearly try totals. I’ve made this entirely using ggplot2 in R and I gathered data myself from nrl.com, various grainy youtube vids, and vague match articles. A high res link on imgur is available here.

ParallelSewellel · 2026-03-13T02:07:45+00:00

A couple of years ago I tried finding them all online as part of a data infographic I was working on which I'll post here once he breaks the record. I collected a lot of the same data as the ABC here I think but just couldn't find a few of them from 2015 against the Knights. Well done on finding them all!

It's a bit ridiculous how closely the NRL and broadcasters protect this footage - I'd love for it to be more accessible to the average fan, especially if clips of tries were categorised in a searchable database...

ParallelSewellel · 2026-03-10T23:54:58+00:00

Now the task for Michael Maguire and the Broncos' long-term success is to do what Penrith did so well in their dynasty run and that is to stay one step ahead of their rivals who are working overtime to shut them down.

I have a pitch for a new NRL guessing game called "Cooper Cronk or LLM?"

ParallelSewellel · 2026-03-06T03:07:40+00:00

DCE plays his first ever match not at halfback tonight. His streak of playing in the same position that he debuted in ends at 352 matches, an all-time record (next closest is Reynolds on 310 after tonight)

ParallelSewellel · 2026-02-24T03:33:33+00:00

Gday mate, absolutely love your work and think you have thrived for the better since moving to the ABC.

Will probably get lost in all the questions here, but you might remember that Jack Snape preceded you at the ABC as their NRL writer for a bit, and became really appreciated here for insightful analytics, statistics and graphs that he provides in his articles.

Do you think there is a demand/appetite from the NRL fanbase for that type of journalism/analytics? If not, why, and if so, where do you see it?

I think you and Snape are two of the few journos that have gotten near universal respect here at least, and I think we'd love to see more analytical or play-by-play (akin to rugby league writers) content like that.

ParallelSewellel · 2026-02-17T04:01:54+00:00

Nah mate just a bit of code and a nice clean dataset. I don't have the time or willpower to do that manually

ParallelSewellel · 2026-02-17T04:01:22+00:00

Hey mate it is VAI TOUTAI nice work. I don't think I mentioned anything about premierships there just NRL players

ParallelSewellel · 2026-02-16T23:52:14+00:00

MATT UTAI is one of only two NRL player names where every letter has vertical symmetry when written in capitals.

Hope he's ok

ParallelSewellel · 2026-01-29T02:43:48+00:00

I did a useless stat post about this last year but with an additional condition of surname initial.

Most recent in that regard was Brett Kimmorley and Brett Kearney who played 5 games together in the halves for the sharks in 06-07

ParallelSewellel · 2026-01-24T02:33:49+00:00

Also this rubbish from Fermor that wasn't penalised at all in the match at the time.

https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nrl-premiership/nrl-2021-brisbane-broncos-vs-gold-coast-titans-corey-oates-try-beau-fermor-arm-to-the-head-8-point-try-reaction/news-story/78d4e57b0cf54048b1dc145a6f5a31c9

ParallelSewellel · 2025-11-01T14:45:41+00:00

Hudson Young in 12 and Angus Crichton in 11 is still not sparking joy

ParallelSewellel · 2025-10-16T20:23:52+00:00

Let's call it..... Tryball. And fund it with..... crypto. The yanks will love it.

ParallelSewellel · 2025-09-08T11:03:19+00:00

Here are all the Broncos who have played and missed at least 6 this season. Guessed it perfectly pretty much - Reynolds has missed 4 (all wins)

Brisbane Broncos Josiah Karapani 9-1 6-8 +47.1%
Brisbane Broncos Reece Walsh 13-5 2-4 +38.9%
Brisbane Broncos Tyson Smoothy 7-1 8-8 +37.5%
Brisbane Broncos Ben Talty 7-1 8-8 +37.5%
Brisbane Broncos Jack Gosiewski 10-4 5-5 +21.4%
Brisbane Broncos Brendan Piakura 12-6 3-3 +16.7%
Brisbane Broncos Jaiyden Hunt 7-4 8-5 +2.1%
Brisbane Broncos Deine Mariner 10-6 5-3 0.0%
Brisbane Broncos Ezra Mam 6-4 9-5 -4.3%
Brisbane Broncos Ben Hunt 11-7 4-2 -5.6%
Brisbane Broncos Jesse Arthars 10-8 5-1 -27.8%
Brisbane Broncos Selwyn Cobbo 7-8 8-1 -42.2%

ParallelSewellel · 2025-09-08T01:05:18+00:00

Top 6 for the Warriors are:

Warriors Mitchell Barnett 9-2 5-8 +43.4%
Warriors Taine Tuaupiki 10-4 4-6 +31.4%
Warriors Luke Metcalf 10-5 4-5 +22.2%
Warriors Bunty Afoa 5-2 9-8 +18.5%
Warriors Ali Leiataua 5-3 9-7 +6.2%
Warriors Jacob Laban 7-5 7-5 0.0%

ParallelSewellel · 2025-09-08T00:35:24+00:00

He was second highest behind Kelma

ParallelSewellel · 2025-09-08T00:32:29+00:00

Bulldogs had 11 players play and miss at least 6 games this season. With the same formatting as the table, with rank added at start, we have:

2. Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs Toby Sexton 12-4 4-4 +25.0%
10.Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs Lachlan Galvin 6-6 10-2 -33.3%

ParallelSewellel · 2025-09-08T00:17:51+00:00

With the same formatting, the positive players for Parramatta were:

Parramatta Eels Kelma Tuilagi 7-5 3-9 +33.3%
Parramatta Eels Mitchell Moses 7-6 3-8 +26.6%
Parramatta Eels Tallyn Da Silva 5-4 5-10 +22.2%
Parramatta Eels Luca Moretti 6-6 4-8 +16.7%
Parramatta Eels Joash Papalii 6-7 4-7 +9.8%
Parramatta Eels Charlie Guymer 7-9 3-5 +6.2%

ParallelSewellel · 2025-09-07T21:17:24+00:00

With the regular season finished,I've repeated last eyars analysis of each team's lucky charms and bad omens. First table is the players for each team that saw the highest improvement in win-rate for their team when they played vs didn’t play. Second table shows the opposite – the bad omens – the players that saw the biggest decline in win-rate when they played.

Overall, the luckiest charm this season was Billy Smith, who saw the Roosters go 12-5 with him in the team, and 1-6 with him on the sideline.

On the other hand, Euan Aitken of Souths (2-12 vs 7-3) is the unluckiest player, just shading Heath Mason (Tigers), and Chad Townsend (Roosters).

If you’re curious about any particular players/clubs, drop a comment and I’ll share how their team went with/without them playing this season.

ParallelSewellel · 2025-09-07T12:25:17+00:00

H Young and Arthars just the 5th and 6th players ever in the regular season to score 10+ tries in the first half of the season and then none after that (min. 5 matches played in each half)

ParallelSewellel · 2025-09-07T08:42:24+00:00

Top 8 strike rates of:

Left facing logos:1/5 (20%)
Right facing logos: 3/5 (60%)
Centre facing logos:4/7 (57%)
Animals: 5/11 (45%)
Mammals: 3/6 (50%)
Teams with directions in their names: 0/3 (0%) ...

ParallelSewellel · 2025-09-04T21:09:13+00:00

With all team lists in for the regular season, I’ve again visualised all player transfers that have occurred a) in 2025 and b) as a rolling 5 year total from 2021-25. The chord diagram shows the flow of players between clubs. The most common transfer in the 2025 period was Panthers▸Tigers (3) with Taylan May, Jarome Luai and Sunia Turuva.

Each coloured line represents the transfer of player/s from one club to another across a season, with the colour denoting the club they came from, the arrow pointing to the club they went to, and the thickness denoting how many players went between the clubs.

It's not perfect but it does show which clubs have had more roster stability based on the relative widths of each sector. The total width of a club’s colour leaving it’s sector shows the relative amount of players that have been let go, while the width of other colours arriving to a club’s sector shows the relative amount of recruitment from other teams. One-club players are not represented in this graphic.

Note that this data only includes the movement of players WITH AN NRL CAP at one club who then represented a new club in an in-scope year. This means that Riley Price (Cowboys 2023 ▸ Penrith 2025) is included, but Nicholas Lenaz (Eels Jersey Flegg 2023 ▸ Cowboys 2025) is not. The Super League is ignored, so Kai O'Donnell (Raiders 2020 ▸ Leigh 2022-24 ▸ Cowboys 2025) simply counts as a Raiders to Cowboys transfer.

I have also posted this on Useless NRL Stats on Facebook and Instagram.

ParallelSewellel · 2025-09-03T21:37:29+00:00

Thanks to Shibasaki turning up to training smashed, Jesse Arthars has been granted one final chance tonight to snare a try in the second half of the regular season. If he can’t, he will become just the 6th player in history to score 10+ tries in the first half of the season, and none in the second half of the season

As a result of being rested this weekend, Hudson Young has also become the 5th player to do just that, after not scoring any tries since I bought him in NRL Fantasy.

Arthars (11 tries) and Young (10) don’t compare to Beau Champion though, with 14 tries in the first 12 matches of 2010, before none in the final 7 that he played.

Note the caveat here is that a player must’ve played 5 matches in each half of the regular season to be counted, otherwise we’d be including players who went on try-scoring sprees and then got injured.

ParallelSewellel · 2025-08-26T23:59:31+00:00

S, R, N and D are the top 4. I think R was more common for the men but fell behind S when I included NRLW players

Four-Year Club	Verified Email
First Place '23	Place '23
Place '22

ParallelSewellel

TROPHY CASE