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Replace the coach with a potato and we’ll do better.
This bloke would do a better job.
A potato!....not his twin brother!
I blame Hornby and Demetriou for the Dragons being so piss poor over the past 10 years. I’m sure I’ll be blaming Flanagan soon too. Surely it’s not McTeflon’s fault.
Is the Home Affairs Minister giving up politics?
Ou
Our coach is a potato
What a rubbsh article and a stat to pull. Take Smith out and Melb drop to middle of the fieldWhy the Storm win, and the Dragons don’t: Every NRL team’s ‘purity score’ revealed
NRL Premiership
- May 5, 2020 12:40pm
- by The NRL Economist
- Source: FOX SPORTS
Why are the Storm consistent winners, but the Dragons aren’t?Source: AAP
Why do the St George Illawarra Dragons consistently underperform, despite the array of big name recruits such as Corey Norman, Ben Hunt and James Graham in their line-up?
Simple. No team purity. Meaning they retain high quantities of experience, just not with each other.
Comparing the total number of club appearances to total NRL appearances, gives an indication of the purity of a team’s roster. The higher a roster’s purity, the longer that squad has played together, forming those connections and combinations so crucial to building a team. Not a list, but a team.
Paul McGregor’s squad currently has the highest total of overall experience with 2484 NRL appearances across their roster. Yet only 1167 of these games were actually played in the red V, meaning the squad has a very low team purity score of 47%. Their 2019 team purity score was even worse at 41.41%, which unsurprisingly led them to a second last position on the ladder.
Their roster strategy favours the importing of experienced high-profile players. These injury-prone and now civilised family men do not add to the identity of the team, but rather dilute it with their external experience, leading to poor on-field results.
In contrast, the Melbourne Storm have always maintained a pure team, scarcely recruiting expensive big names. The team instead commits to retaining its own experience, and recruits cohorts of talented rookies who can be moulded into the team’s unique identity. Their team purity score of 86% positions them to be a cohesive team, with long-held relationships, and more likely to adhere to a coaching strategy distinct as their own.
The Storm are aware that the capacity for any player to perform above their contractual value diminishes with experience, with the highest value extracted early in playing careers.
There is also a saturation point of overall NRL experience that teams must not burden their cap with. Anything above 2000 total NRL caps appears to be junk surplus, yet still drains your team’s salary cap, with around 1900 appearances being the sweet spot that most Premiers across the last decade have sat around. The Dragons squad now sits at 2484 games.
So what’s the solution for McGregor? In the tricky world of transfers, experienced campaigners encumber a salary cap with a lower propensity to perform above their newly appraised contractual value. Experience cannot be transferred and should only be valued if it was performed at their current team.
Linking a player’s salary with his talent rather than his experience is crucial. Targeting gun rookies and moulding them into a ‘Wollongong’ culture is the key. That Wollongong culture cannot be a collage of imported experience.
The Dragon’s fan base have forged a reputation as the most demanding supporters in the competition. From ‘Save our Saints’ to ‘Oust Doust’, their passion is only rivalled by their own unique identity.
Perhaps their recruitment team can take a lesson from that.
‘PURITY SCORE’: EVERY NRL CLUB RANKED
1. Melbourne Storm
Total Club Appearances: 1697 | Total NRL Appearances: 1973 | Team Purity Score: 86.0%
2. Canberra Raiders
Total Club Appearances: 1509 | Total NRL Appearances: 1830 | Team Purity Score: 82.5%
3. Brisbane Broncos
Total Club Appearances: 1508 | Total NRL Appearances: 1859 | Team Purity Score: 81.1%
4. Sydney Roosters
Total Club Appearances: 1763 | Total NRL Appearances: 2228 | Team Purity Score: 79.1%
5. Manly Warringah Sea Eagles
Total Club Appearances: 1352 | Total NRL Appearances: 1903 | Team Purity Score: 71.0%
6. North Queensland Cowboys
Total Club Appearances: 1380 | Total NRL Appearances: 2049 | Team Purity Score: 67.3%
7. Penrith Panthers
Total Club Appearances: 932 | Total NRL Appearances: 1409 | Team Purity Score: 66.1%
8. South Sydney Rabbitohs
Total Club Appearances: 1104 | Total NRL Appearances: 1742 | Team Purity Score: 63.4%
9. Wests Tigers
Total Club Appearances: 1407 | Total NRL Appearances: 2383 | Team Purity Score: 59.0%
10. Cronulla Sutherland Sharks
Total Club Appearances: 974 | Total NRL Appearances: 1757 | Team Purity Score: 55.4%
11. Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs
Total Club Appearances: 1013 | Total NRL Appearances: 1865 | Team Purity Score: 54.3%
12. Parramatta Eels
Total Club Appearances: 1052 | Total NRL Appearances: 2115 | Team Purity Score: 49.7%
13. Gold Coast Titans
Total Club Appearances: 988 | Total NRL Appearances: 2036 | Team Purity Score: 48.5%
14. St George Illawarra Dragons
Total Club Appearances: 1167 | Total NRL Appearances: 2484 | Team Purity Score: 47.0%
15. New Zealand Warriors
Total Club Appearances: 903 | Total NRL Appearances: 2174 | Team Purity Score: 41.5%
16. Newcastle Knights
Total Club Appearances: 764 | Total NRL Appearances: 1861 | Team Purity Score: 41.1%
The NRL Economist is an award-winning freelance writer across 15 years. He also teaches Media Studies as well as having majored in Economics | Follow on Twitter @theNRLeconomist
https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nr...d/news-story/0c6d64ade952b677ecbc6aea9a283010
TouchéRubbish.
You can at least power a clock with a potato.
Don’t be so harsh on yourself..
Taking Smith out would change both columns so there would only be a small percentage change. For the stats to change dramatically Storm would have to sign players with 100 plus games at other clubs and Storm don't do that.
