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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

It almost slipped my notice, but a new NSWRL/NRL record was set on the weekend: the most ever team scores in a round that are divisible by 10, with 9 such scores. This total of 9 was also the equal most team scores in a round that are divisible by 5 (see second image).

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Regular season lucky charms and bad omens are in for 2026: Min 6 games played and missed to be eligible. Then I calculate the player's team's win record with and without them playing. Congratulations to Jack Bostock and Jake Averillo who take out top and bottom spots respectively. #NRL

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

The Tigers and Roosters snapped respective 8 game losing and winning streaks in the same game on Sunday This is the second largest pair of equal losing and winning streaks to be snapped in the same game, sitting only behind the 9 game streaks snapped when the Western Reds dealt with Manly in 1996

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

not often we see a hat-trick off the bench...Daine Laurie scores the first one in 9 years

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

With Lucy Spain's NRLW debut last week, I've updated a map from early 2024, showing player names with countries in them. This time I’ve included NRLW players, meaning the addition of Georgia, China and Spain alongside the 7 countries in place from NSWRL/NRL players. #nrl #maps #rugbyleague

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Sunday saw three NRL games with a combined margin of 7 points. This is the equal second closest day of footy in the NRL-era to have 3 games played. Very different result to the 66-0 from the previous afternoon.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

138 State of Origin games can be distilled down to one 12x12 grid (bar a couple of empty spaces), with the colour and intensity of each square representing the winner and final margin. Any feedback is very welcome, I’ve tried to keep it as clean and simple as possible!

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Origin Spiders Following my halves chord diagram, here are plots showing origin pairings by team since 2006 in the following positions: Wing (NSW 26, QLD 21 players) Centre (NSW 24, QLD 19) Front Row (NSW 30, QLD 21) 2nd Row (NSW 26, QLD 25) 'Side of field' data is not available on RLP sadly

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

With the first round of NRLW complete, we can take a look at the new changes to our NRLW initiagami. There were 22 debutants across the round, with 5 brand new sets of initials (pink) and 8 sets of initials newly made non-unique (ER, EV, GB, GS, HW, LW, NG, TC) - 'unique kills' if you like

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Jason Taumalolo enters his 300th match holding the NSWRL/NRL record for playing in the most career matches with 1-point margins (wins or losses) at 26. The highest ever % of 1-point games belongs to Jack McMahon (Glebe 1923-2929) with 12/62 for 19.4% of matches.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Jett Liu (GCT) has become the first NRL anagram debutant of the year. He is the 187th NRL or NRLW player whose full name is an anagrams of a single word. Liu’s word is JULIETT, the NATO phonetic alphabet code word for the letter J. The eight anagram debutants since 2022 are shown below.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

The Dogs’ score of 13 on the weekend included 1 try, 2 goals and 1 field goal from Stephen Crichton. This is the equal 3rd lowest team score to include a try, goal and a field goal from the one player. Special mention to Adam Reynolds' 2022 SF vs the Dragons with all 13 points scored inc. 3 FGs.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

With Klese Haas moved to prop this afternoon, the Titans have named a starting XIII of one-club players. This will only be the 28th such team to be named in the NRL era - where every starting player debuted at that club.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

A shrewd substitution by a team desperately searching for an equaliser...

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

Jahream Bula plays his 67th career match today, and none of those are Round 1 matches. He is now outright second for this stat, only sitting behind Trevor Paterson (69). It may be a bridge too far to never ever play in Rd1 the rest of his career but we can enjoy it while it lasts

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

The record for biggest difference between first name and surname length in NSWRL/NRL/NRLW history has been broken. Rex Bassingthwaighte (16-3=13) breaks his great uncle Ross' score of 12. Note this is also for double-barreled surnames but I've shown single-word surnames in the table

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Vlandys and Klein must dream of games like this (except its 38-36 Mexico)

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Named at 5/8, Daine Laurie has ended a 5 game streak of playing in 5 different positions. This is the equal 3rd longest streak in history (level with 65 others), while the longest is 7 (somehow). Bloody tough to code in R/{dplyr}, but I'm sure a bespoke function exists somewhere in the ether

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Payne Haas brings up match #150 tonight. After his first 3 matches on the bench and 1 at lock, Payne Haas has played his next 146 matches at prop. Of players to have played since the interchange era began (1991), only Blocker Roach (147) played more of his first 150 games at prop.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Oh dear. The table header says it all. I have no clue what the reaction was to the Seagulls beating Brisbane in '94, but I assume that everyone called for the heads of Walters and Langer then too.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Happy Origin Day! Presenting: Origin halves pairings since 2006, visualised as chord (spider) diagrams. There is no distinction between halfback and five-eighth, just unique pairings. Strange is the 27th NSW player used in the halves since 2006 Walker is the 12th QLD player in the same period.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

“Coates debuts on wing in the Broncos #5 jersey on a Sunday arvo” always good when journos can reuse headlines

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Guess I'll issue a retraction and repost Initiagami sometime in the future when Toddy P stops playing silly buggers with the team lists

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

!!! INITIAGAMI UPDATE !!! Xavier Kerrisk debuts this afternoon as the first ever NSWRL/NRL player with the initials XK. Xavier is the first unique initials player to debut in 2026, and the first since Utuloa (Michael) Asomua [UA] for the Raiders and Xavier Va'a [XV] for the Roosters last season.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Jurbo 250: Jake Trbojevic plays his 250th game this week, and his career has almost exactly evened out after 249 matches. Jake has a career points difference of -2 and an average of -0.008, the 5th closest average to 0 of all players with at least 50 caps.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Thanks David! I forgot the key @leagueeyetest.bsky.social rule of analysis - only compare similar rounds across seasons. Here's the analysis for Rds1-9, you're correct and in fact it makes more of a difference - 2001 was clearly characterised by some late-season blowouts.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Peak Vlandys-ball means we have now seen 10/72 (13.89%) matches this season with over 65 points scored in total, putting 2026 nearly 3 percentage points higher than the next closest season (2021) by this metric. More detailed visuals to come soon about these trends...

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

If he makes his debut off the bench in jersey #20 tomorrow night, the Bulldogs' Alekolasimi Jones will join Petero Civoniceva with the second longest player name to have alternating vowels and consonants

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Déjà vu: The Broncos' 4 point win over Melbourne on Friday night was an identical result and margin to the 2026 Grand Final - only the 4th grand final rematch ever to see an identical result. #nrl #nrl2026

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

The Knights have used 35 different halves pairings since 2020, which I have visualised here with a spider plot. No distinguishment between halfback and five-eighth, just unique pairings. Enjoy! #nrl #nrl2026

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

AJ213 Infographic - a visualisation of all Alex Johnston's NRL tries by try assister, opposition, and year. It's a bit busy, but there's lots of cool information the more you look. Top 5 assisters are Walker (50), Latrell (33), Reynolds (15), Tass (14), Inglis (13). #nrl #nrl2026

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Heat Map of Alex Johnston's NRL tries. A pain to make but learnt some cool R packages in the process. Not sure on the colour scheme so any constructive criticism is welcome. #nrl #dataviz #dataart

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

It just doesn’t look right… After 352 career matches, tonight DCE plays his first ever NRL match in a position that isn’t halfback, an all-time record for any position from debut #nrl #nrl2026

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Nick Meaney is lining up on the wing tonight for Melbourne... Career win rate on the wing: 37.5% Career win rate at centre: 76.2% Among players to have played 40 games minimum in two different positions, this is the third biggest difference in a player’s win rate between the two positions. #nrl

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Lots of talk about the 14-0 curse after Sunday’s result, so I had a look at NRL-era halftime margins (and specifically HT scores for 14-point margins), to see if the curse does exist Answer: 14-0 is no better than any other 14-point HT margin (other than 20-6), BUT a 14 point lead is worse than 12

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

Will Kennedy and Kaeo Weekes face off as opposing fullbacks for the second time this season. Interestingly, they have reverse initials of each other (KW vs WK). They are the fifth such pair of opposing fullbacks in the NRL-era, and the only pair to play more than one match against each other.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Fox League is putting me out of business - how am I meant to compete with something as useless as AI player rankings?

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Lucky Charms and Bad Omens: Shown are the players for each team that saw the largest improvements and declines in win-rate for their team when they played vs didn’t play. Drop a comment if you’re curious about any particular players/clubs and I’ll share how their team went with/without them

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

This afternoon, Joe Roddy became the 8th player in the NRL/NRLW era to score a double on debut from the bench

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Visualisation of all NRL 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.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

If Jesse Arthars can't score a try tonight, he'll become 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. Hudson Young has already become the 5th player to do so, after not scoring any tries since I bought him in NRL Fantasy

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Shown on each photo are the last times that each current NRL team scored the outright most and least points in a round. Interestingly it's been a different team in each round since Rd20, while the Titans have somehow not scored the lowest in a round since last year

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

In the 19-18 Sharks/Knights NRLW match yesterday, hat-tricks to Lilly-Ann White and Georgia Ravics yesterday out of 37 total points set a new record [since 1983] for the lowest total points in a match to involve two hat-tricks. This was also the first NRLW match to involve two hat-tricks.

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

The Roosters' 30-point win last night was the second highest winning margin by a team that was kept to nil at half-time in NSWRL/NRL history. This was also the fourth highest team score after being kept to nil at half-time, only behind the 46, 44 and 42 point matches all also in this table

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Useless NRL Stats @uselessnrlstats.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Penrith are debuting David Fale and Sione (John) Fonua in the centres tonight. Ignoring debuts from the interchange, Penrith are only the 8th team in the NRL-era to debut two players in the same position in the one match, and the first team to do so in a position other than wingers.

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