"Dangerous territory": The stats behind NRL's rapid points increase

Under a third of NRL games this season are being won by less than 10 points due to the NRL’s plan to increase the speed of the game, SEN can reveal.

Changes to the rules this season, with the threshold for where penalties become six-agains moved back to the 20 metre mark, has seen an increase in total points per game, and ultimately the average winning margin.

It has been the goal of Peter V’Landys to increase the speed of the game since he took over the game in 2020, and naturally, with greater speed comes more fatigue, and subsequently more tries and points.

These changes have seen the number of close games, defined here by matches decided by 10 or less points, has dropped to just 31.6 per cent, by far the lowest since 2020.

It’s the first time since 2020, the number of games decided by 10 or less has dropped below 50 per cent.

In fact, across the first 10 rounds, NRL games are averaging 50.6 total points per match, with the average winning margin being 21.3 points per game.

Those 21.3 points per game is three more than the 2021 season, and 6.68 more than the average of every season since the introduction of the six-again rule in 2021.

While these statistics indicate an unprecedented rise for the NRL, SEN’s Jimmy Smith says they’re not yet indicative of dangerous territory for the game.

“I'll say two things on that just to push back on the numbers,” Smith said on NRL Crunch Time.

“One is that we're rounds 1-10, and I would say that if you looked at any season in the NRL, there is a lowering of the total points scored in a game during the colder wetter months.

“I also think there's been a little bit of a winding back on the set restart. The last couple of weeks you could see refs…put in the whistle way a little bit more.

“The other part about it is the blowouts and what impact they have. So, when you think about the rule changes where we want to make the ball in play more because the broadcasters love it.

“The other thing that broadcasters love, and they maybe love it even more, is close finishes. They want people to be sticking on there (until the end).

“Then we start talking about the management of games as opposed to the officiating of games, and that's when we get into dangerous territory.

“Statistically, we're in dangerous territory now, based on that.

“On the back of (Saturday’s games), 44-10, 36-12, 32-4. These games are over a long time before full-time.”