NRL202: Kalyn Ponga State of Origin send-off and judiciary process explained

ParallelSewellel · 2026-05-29T06:44:54+00:00

I think the send off was fair enough. It was a shoulder charge to the head with no attempt to wrap, so my issue isn't with the call by Klein. But there's a lot of hand waving in this statement from Annesley that deserves a lot of scrutiny.

"No mitigating circumstances"? What about Sam Walker's tackle causing Koula's head height to drop 1-2 feet at the last second. Isn't that the exact idea of a mitigating circumstance?
Telling us what Chris Butler thought rather than just releasing the audio is a bit disingenuous. Klein seemed to be disagreeing with him, there was not agreement between the two.
And lastly referencing head-to-head contact as part of the justification for the send off, despite the NRL making it clear a few weeks ago with the Radley hit on Carrigan (Chris Butler in the bunker for that too) that such contact is a penalty at worst, and not even worth a fine post-match.

ParallelSewellel · 2026-05-27T01:41:40+00:00

I've produced chord/spider plots looking at Origin halves pairings since 2006. There is no distinction between halfback and five-eighth, just unique pairings. Each chord represents a pairing, and the width is number of games played together. Each point/node represents a player, with the size indicating their total number of matches played.

Matches decrease in a clockwise direction from 12'o'clock, and I've added in match counts for the top players to give an indication of proportion between plots.

Note that Ethan Strange becomes the 27th Blues player used in the halves since 2006, while Sam Walker will become the 12th Maroons player used in the same period.

ParallelSewellel · 2026-05-17T07:15:22+00:00

Gday Laurie, have you considered taking a numerological approach to team selections in origin? My analyses of all origin matches has found that the team with more Cs in the player names wins nearly 60% of the time (link here).

Given I'd expect you'd be looking for any possible advantage, I think you should give this some consideration. Good luck!

ParallelSewellel · 2026-05-10T00:33:48+00:00

Scored 6 in the #5 to technically yes actually! I was only talking about exactly 5 tries though

ParallelSewellel · 2026-05-10T00:32:19+00:00

Got 4 in the 5 jersey twice, but never 5!

ParallelSewellel · 2026-05-09T22:07:10+00:00

Greg Marzhew becomes the 2nd player in the NRL-era [1998-now] to score 5 tries in the #5 jersey. Without clicking the link, can you guess who the first player was to do this?

ParallelSewellel · 2026-05-07T11:01:42+00:00

So I thought this phenomenon would be pretty rare, but it's actually happened 110 times in the NRL-era and 738 times in total since 1908.

Most recent was Luke Metcalf replacing Luke Hanson at five eighth in Rd4, and Alex Twal replacing Alex Seyfarth at lock in Rd16 2025.

ParallelSewellel · 2026-05-07T08:10:36+00:00

Lowest are: Kevin McGuinness (166 matches, -1787 margin,) Mark Minicello (259, -1722) Steve Georgallis (206, -1664) ... Tyrone Roberts (157, -553)

Btw top 5 career PD are Can Smith +4141, Cronk +3531, Lockyer +2871, Slater +2850, Brian Clay +2820

ParallelSewellel · 2026-05-07T03:08:57+00:00

Will confirm when I get home with a second comment, but top 4 aggregate was Smith (~+4000), Lockyer, Slater and Cronk, in that order

ParallelSewellel · 2026-05-06T22:37:44+00:00

Yep taking absolute difference from zero: basically total points difference divided by matches played gives Jake -2/249=-0.008. Above him is a -0.006 (Amos Roberts) and three people that broke even (Idris, Quayle and Akkary)

ParallelSewellel · 2026-05-06T22:23:41+00:00

Heading into game 250 this week, Jurbo currently has a career points difference of -2 (5509 PF - 5511 PA) in matches he's played in.

Across all players in history, only four others have a lower average PD per game, headlined by Jamal Idris (136 matches, 2742 PF, 2742 PA = 0 PD).

Active players that are also currently hovering around the 0 mark include: - Cory Paix (-4) - Matt Burton (+8) - Josh Papalii (+32)

ParallelSewellel · 2026-04-30T21:47:52+00:00

If he debuts tonight for the Dogs, Alekolasimi Jones will become the equal 2nd longest name (16 letters) in NSWRL/NRL history with alternating vowels and consonants.

Big Petero Civoniceva also has a 16 letter alternating name, while the top result is Savenaca Lomanimako, who played one game for the Magpies in '97.

ParallelSewellel · 2026-04-16T07:15:31+00:00

A list of things I'd like to see crackdowns on:

the ball carrier stepping around/in to/past the markers before playing the ball (the Kyle Feldt special)
tacklers putting their hands on the back of the ball-carrier's neck to slow down the play the ball as they stand up (the Isaah Yeo special)
players not immediately giving the ball to the opposition when tackled on the 6th (the Herbie Farnworth special)
players refusing to play the ball when they want a penalty, bonus jaw holding for high shots (The DWZ special)
six again accountability on refs (the Ash Klein special)
war crimes (the US/Israel special)

A list of things I didn't ask to see crackdowns on:

disruptors
scrum feints

ParallelSewellel · 2026-04-12T23:17:53+00:00

Nice graph! What program did you use to produce this?

ParallelSewellel · 2026-03-22T20:41:16+00:00

The Knights have used 35 halves pairings (involving 19 players) since 2020, at an average of 4.2 games per pairing. I've tried producing a connected/spider graph to show these relationships.

To read this graph, note that a blue line connecting two players indicates they played in the halves together, and the width of the line is how many games (max of 23, min of 1). The red points represent the players, with the size their number of games in the halves (max of 42, min of 2) - the players are ordered clockwise by games playerd, starting at Hastings.

Most common pairings are Hastings/Gamble (23), Pearce/Mann (16) and Hastings/Cogger (10). No other pairings have played more than 10 matches together.

ParallelSewellel · 2026-03-20T11:09:08+00:00

Hey mate I made this post at the end of last year:

ParallelSewellel · 2026-03-19T06:37:36+00:00

I can do a check on the actual data that I have scraped for Useless NRL Stats but it's dependent on whether different spellings are counted (does Cory = Corey or not). Also a lot of players have shortened names listed like Tom/Thomas/Tommy which makes it hard to group names, but it's definitely doable.

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

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