The Rugby League Eye Test

It's technically the mid point of the season, so I've rounded up the best (and worst) players by each of the Eye Test's advanced metrics for the first half of 2026. There's a lot of James Tedesco and Jason Taumalolo among many others. rugbyleagueeyetest.com/2026/05/25/nrl…

@onepercentas Nathan Cleary is probably the best rugby league player on the planet now. Also Mary Fowler's partner.

@LeagueEyeTest Ooh, love a radar chart. Nice work (I don't really know who any of these guys are).

You might have seen these on the site today, but if not I've got some new percentile charts for players. Here's a few left over that I didn't use in today's post. All feedback welcome

@SnipersClubNRL Thankyou, been wanting to do these for a while

@LeagueEyeTest Very pretty and cool. Can we have a Val Holmes please? That must be fugly.

This was far worse than my already very low expectations

It's technically the mid point of the season, so I've rounded up the best (and worst) players by each of the Eye Test's advanced metrics for the first half of 2026. There's a lot of James Tedesco and Jason Taumalolo among many others. rugbyleagueeyetest.com/2026/05/25/nrl…

@RNEditss @alltimeMP how dare you

@alltimeMP Form player of the comp tbh. Don’t listen to @LeagueEyeTest he’s biased

Now we have to listen to NSW Fans pretend that Ethan Strange been having a good year 😂👌🏾

@scout_aussie Cheers mate, means a lot coming from you. Am a big fan of your work and wish we could do similar things with rugby league!

@LeagueEyeTest This is amazing work.

@wilkinson_josh @The_Shoe24 Yikes, that's not good

@LeagueEyeTest @The_Shoe24 He has been playing with an ongoing groin injury. That's all ur lateral movement gone.

You're hearing it more and more...

@AdamSmith196417 @The_Shoe24 that certainly doesn't help things

@LeagueEyeTest @The_Shoe24 He is defending in the centres on a team that consistently loses control of the ruck.

@theSportress @NRL With myself in charge plus Liam at the helm of the QRL, the sport is in good hands.

The Eye Test's campaign for new NRL CEO has full support and endorsement from the Sportress. Cc @nrl

On a positive note, they did score their first try from their own side of half way last week, leaving the Dragons as the only side not to do so yet in 2026

In my time doing this I've not seen many teams with a profile like Canterbury in 2026 3rd best in the league at restricting opponents run metres on a per run basis (0.48m/run below expected) Also worst in the competition at conceding tries when there's a set restart

@Tedeschi8181 Montoya v Warbrick feels like the Tedeschi Cup

The Bulldogs are better off playing with 12 than with Montoya.

Tragic Round Reality and Origin Shockwaves open.substack.com/pub/nrlfromthe…

@BernieH39698502 I've sorted them based on who plays the most minutes in named positions 1-17, but as you say things are so fluid it's hard to pin things down exactly. Would be fantastic if I could find a way to do it

@LeagueEyeTest Love to see an overall based on position. Might be difficult to interpret as positional descriptions are very fluid.

Something I've wanted to for a while - visualise team interchange patterns, especially in light of Brisbane being the first team to use 30 players. Chart shows for each minute the % of games a player was on field for that minute. Red = high%, yellow = low %.

Cowboys @NRLFanalytics

@thecruncherau I was thinking of doing a post on them but wouldn't be for a while, would be nice to see another 4-5 games worth, but then we'll have Origin players out so it might look a bit wild.

@LeagueEyeTest i did have some ideas for more broad team analysis: when does each team's interchanges usually occur? is it consistent? how does it compare team-by-team; do clubs have different interchange timing strategies? if so, which are the same or different?