The big mover: NSW Waratahs

The Waratahs finals chances jumped from 4.9% to 13.3% - an 8.4 percentage-point increase that is comfortably the biggest move of the week. After a 50-35 bonus point win over the Drua in Suva, they’re now the clear frontrunner among the outsiders.

A word of honesty before we get carried away: the Waratahs sat at 15.9% chance of finals after Round 12, collapsed to 4.9% after Round 13, and have now bounced back to 13.3%. Over two rounds they’re actually slightly below where they were 2 weeks ago. The jump this week is as much a recovery as it is a surge.

What makes them different from the other outsiders is that their remaining fixtures give them a direct say in their own destiny. They play the Brumbies this Friday in Sydney, then the Force away in Round 16 - two teams they’re directly competing with for position. Winning both games is an exercise in both collecting competition points and denying points to close rivals.

The squeeze: Crusaders, Brumbies, Reds

The flip side of the Waratahs rise is that those percentage points came from somewhere. All three teams currently occupying spots 4-6 slipped:

• Queensland Reds: 92.2% → 89.5% (-2.8pp)

• ACT Brumbies: 97.3% → 94.9% (-2.4pp)

• Crusaders: 97.0% → 95.6% (-1.4pp)

None of them are in danger of falling out yet, but the cushion is thinner than the ladder suggests. The simulations now show the Reds missing finals roughly a 1-in-10 times.

The model actually thinks the Brumbies are in slightly better shape than the Crusaders, despite currently sitting a rung below them on the ladder. The Brumbies have the easier run home against the Waratahs and Moana, while the Crusaders still have to face the top-of-the-table Hurricanes and Chiefs.

The state of the race

Locked in (100% chance of finals): Hurricanes, Chiefs, Blues. Not a single simulation out of 25,000 has any of them missing the six. The title race is also all but settled - the Hurricanes finish 1st in 95.6% of sims, with the Chiefs at 2nd in 95.6%. The Blues are in the finals for certain, but their seeding is still live.

The contest: Spots 4-6 are just as congested as last week between the Crusaders, Brumbies, and Reds, with the Waratahs the most likely team to make some noise if they can knock off the Brumbies this week.

All but gone: The Drua’s chances dropped from 2.2% to 0.3% following their loss, and the Highlanders are now mathematically eliminated. Moana Pasifika were already out.

What still has to happen

Every outsider’s most likely path runs through the same scenario: the Queensland Reds dropping a game.

The Reds play the two weakest remaining teams in the competition in Moana Pasifika (R15) then Fijian Drua (R16). On paper, that’s about as soft a run home as you could ask for. The model has them winning both games in 52.5% of simulations - and in every single one of those, they make the finals. So if they handle their business (and thats a big if given their patchy form and recent lineout woes) they are locked.

But the Reds winning both doesn’t shut the door on everyone. Of all the simulations where a bolter sneaks into the six, almost a third of the time it happens without the Reds dropping a game. The outsider leapfrogs the Brumbies or Crusaders instead. The Reds are the most likely path, but not the only path. And because the Waratahs and Force play each other in Round 16, at most one of them can win out.

Here’s what each would-be contender needs to have happen:

Waratahs (13.3%): Three-quarters of the Waratahs finals paths come from winning both remaining matches (vs Brumbies, @Force), but nearly 1 in 4 get there on a single win plus bonus points and a top-6 collapse. The Brumbies match on Friday is the key either way: a win directly damages a rival and opens up multiple routes.

Western Force (6.4%): Must win both (vs Drua, vs Waratahs), no margin for error. That R16 head-to-head against the Tahs will act as a direct eliminator if both teams are still alive (or they draw and both are cooked). The Force beat the Reds 19-14 in Perth last week and took down the Waratahs in Sydney two weeks ago, so they've shown they can punch up, but 78% of their finals paths still need the Reds to slip on top of a clean sweep.

Fijian Drua (0.3%): The Drua need to win out and have a lot of other results go their way. The model has it happening just 3 in every 1,000 simulations.

The game to watch

Round 15: Waratahs v Brumbies (Friday 22 May 2026, Allianz Stadium, Sydney).

This is the single most consequential fixture left in the regular season. A Waratahs win reshuffles the miss-probability for not just the Brumbies, but the Reds and the Crusaders also become more vulnerable. A Brumbies win effectively slams the door shut on the Waratahs and stabilises the top six.

Methodology: The model rates every team’s attack and defense, adds home advantage, blends in last season’s form as a stabilising prior, then plays out the remaining schedule 25,000 times. Back-tested on the last two SRP seasons, it correctly picks the finalists roughly 9 times out of 10 at this stage of the year.

So: is it actually as bad as everyone says?

The Reds 2026 Lineout win rate is 81.2%. The Super Rugby Pacific average sits around 85.5%. The Reds are ~4 percentage points below average. By that single number, the fans look like they’re overreacting. The top of the table Hurricanes have a near identical win rate to the Reds, but nobody is worried about them. The problem is that lineout win rate is a blunt instrument, and it is hiding the real story.

Why Lineout Win Rate Isn’t Enough

Lineout win rate treats every win as equal and every loss as equal. A clean catch at midfield is one win. A scrappy recovery off a mistimed throw at the 5m line is also one win. But we know those have very different importance.

Losses are the same: a not-straight call, a steal in the air, a throw over the top into the breadbasket of an opposing player are all one loss. Events that mean completely different things on the field, but all get the same statistical credit.

Take this example from Super Round: Second half, 50 minutes 14 seconds - Blues lead the Reds 28-21. Reds win a penalty, kick to touch, attacking lineout on the Blues 5-metre line. Matt Faessler throws. Ball is stolen in the air. Blues clear. A try-scoring opportunity dies.

Win rate sees one missed lineout. Anyone watching sees one of the single most damaging throws of the Reds season. A throw that teams win 91% of the time. A golden attacking opportunity turns into close to the worst possible outcome in a match were they ultimately lose in extra time. One throw rarely decides a match. But throws like this one, repeated, decide seasons.

Thats why we’ve developed the EALES metric, to better quantify lineout success or failure.

EALES - Named After the Great Man

EALES stands for Event-Adjusted Lineout Efficiency Score1 and the name is no accident. John Eales is synonymous with Australian Rugby success and one of the best lineout forwards in the history of the game. If Eales is the gold standard, EALES is the measure of how far every lineout unit falls short of him.

The metric has two ingredients:

First: outcome quality. Not all wins are equal, not all losses are equal. EALES grades each lineout based on how it was won or lost. The principle is fairly straightforward:

• Clean wins get full credit. Lucky wins (opposition penalty or free kick conceded at your lineout) get only partial credit, because they tell you nothing about your execution.

• Messy wins get partial credit. A recovered overthrow keeps the ball, but your process broke. You don’t get the full reward.

• Losses are graded by severity. A not-straight call is mild. A steal in the air is bad. A penalty conceded by your forwards at the lineout is worst.

Second: expected difficulty. Not all lineouts are equally hard. A throw on the opposition 5-metre line typically wins around 92% (higher number of no-contest lineouts to counter the rolling maul), while a throw in the opposition half between the 22 and the 10-metre line wins around 85% (defenses contest hard there because winning means an attacking turnover). The difference matters.

The expected-difficulty side of EALES is what football analysts call xG or Expected Goals. xG knows that a tap-in from 2 metres is “the same goal” as a 30-yard volley, but the volley was harder. EALES applies the same logic to rugby lineouts. The model behind it - lets call it xLineout - predicts the probability of winning a given lineout based on field position, opposition defensive quality, and home advantage.

EALES per throw is then simply: what you actually got (outcome value) minus what you should have got (expected value at this difficulty). Average across throws, and you have a rate that tells you how much a team is over- or under-performing relative to their situations.

Since there are 2 parts to every lineout, EALES splits cleanly into three numbers:

• EALES Attack - how well your throwing unit executes its own lineouts

• EALES Defense - how well your defending unit disrupts opposition lineouts

• EALES Net = EALES Attack + EALES Defense - both combined

EALES values are normalised against a global baseline built across all competitons, so a rating of +3 means the same thing whether you’re a SRP team in 2026 or a URC team in 2025. As a reading guide for the score:

• 10+ is an historically good team

• 6 to 9 is an elite team

• 3 to 6 is a good team

• -3 to 3 is an average team

• -3 to -6 is a bad team

• -6 to -9 is a broken team

• below −10 is an historically bad team

So, Are the Reds Bad?

Simple answer: Yes. But the Drua are catastrophic, the Hurricanes are doing something strange, and the Reds aren’t even the second-worst on the table.

Top of the SRP 2026 table on lineout quality: Crusaders +5.7, Western Force +5.2, and Hurricanes +2.8,. The Reds sit 9th at −6.1. But the Drua are the worst lineout team in the competition by an enormous margin at −16.4.

The Drua’s problem is so consistent across the years that almost nobody bothers to dissect it any more. The fans who’d be moved to debate the Reds lineout already know what to expect from the Drua. There’s no controversy in being last when you’ve been there before.

The Reds get the scrutiny that the Drua don’t because (a) they are supposed to be finals contenders, and (b) their head coach is the next Wallabies head coach. When something that looks broken at this club happens, everybody analyses it.

But ranking 9th of 11 isn’t the most interesting finding. The shape of the badness is.

The teams in SRP 2026 split into three clean clusters when you separate throwing from defending.

The good-throwing teams: Crusaders, Chiefs, Force, and Brumbies, all have a positive EALES score for their Attacking lineouts, with varying degrees of competent on lineout defense. Standard “competent lineout unit” territory.

The Lineout Paradox: the Hurricanes are SRP 2026’s most fascinating case. They have the second-worst throwing rating in the league (−7.2, behind only the Drua) which is a rate that should drop the team to the bottom of the table. But they have the best defensive lineout rating in the league at +10.0, a once-a-decade level of disruption, stealing and forcing infringement on opposition throws at a rate nobody else in SRP comes close to. Net result: +2.8, mid-table positive. A great defense is meaningless if your attack is equally broken. But here the great defense is doing more than just covering for the attacking issues. It’s pulling them into the upper half despite their throwers performance. No other team in our dataset illustrates the att/def split as cleanly.

The bottom-left teams: three teams are negative on BOTH throwing and defending, with no compensating strength: the Drua (catastrophic on both, but the attacking rating of −15.6 is the entire story), Moana Pasifika (−6.2 / −1.6), and the Reds (−4.4 on throwing, −1.7 on defending). Everyone else in the bottom half has something working: Highlanders near-neutral defense, Blues and Waratahs decent defensive ratings, Pasifika’s better-than-Reds raw win rate. The Reds and the Drua have nothing to lean on.

This is what EALES reveals that lineout win rate can’t. Most teams have a strength offsetting a weakness. The Drua, Moana, and Reds don’t. The Reds are the only one of the three being talked about.

Where the Reds Lineout Is Actually Breaking

The team-rating answers the question. To understand what’s driving it, we have to look at individual throws and field positions.

The hooker problem

Behind the offensive struggles lies a clear signal in the data: one specific hooker is bleeding lineout value at a rate normally only seen at team-wide collapse.

The Reds have rotated three hookers through 2026: Matt Faessler (the current first-choice from Round 8 onwards), Josh Nasser (the primary in Rounds 1–7), and Richie Asiata (the experienced rotation option whose minutes have shrunk through the season). Their individual EALES Attacking numbers:

• Richie Asiata: +17.1 (28 throws, 89% won). Well above league average. Clean executor.

• Josh Nasser: −4.6 (68 throws, 82% won). Mixed problems - some steals, some overthrows.

• Matt Faessler: −29.0 (73 throws, 77% won). Catastrophic-tier execution. Eleven of his 73 throws have been stolen in the air… that’s 15% of his lineouts. For comparison, the SRP 2026 league-average steal-against rate is 7.4%. His throws are being stolen twice as often as an average hooker.

Matt Faessler’s individual EALES score of −29.0 puts him in territory normally only seen at team level. The only SRP team worse than that this season is the Fijian Drua. And the timing matters. In the first seven rounds of 2026 the Reds split throws roughly evenly across Faessler, Nasser and Asiata. Nasser took 54% of throws, with Faessler and Asiata each around 22%. From Round 8 onwards, Faessler became the primary hooker, taking 74.6% of throws while Asiata almost disappeared (7.5%).

The team’s steal-against rate tripled from 5.8% in Rounds 1–7 to 16.4% in Rounds 8 onwards. The selection change and the collapse arrived together.

The data doesn’t tell us why Faessler’s throws are getting stolen - predictable calling, telegraphed delivery, opposition jumpers reading him, mechanical issues, a confidence rut - but it’s very clear that the steals are concentrated in his throws.

A sidenote on what the data can’t see

This is the right point to acknowledge something the metric can’t measure. A lineout is not a hooker throwing a ball into the air. It’s a coordinated act involving the hooker, lifters, a jumper, the timing of the call, and the discipline of the entire lineout pod. EALES sees the outcome of the throw. It cannot see whether a jumper was late, a lifter was off-balance, a call was telegraphed by the receiver’s body language, or the pod was shifted to the wrong slot.

Worth flagging in the Reds case: Josh Canham - the main lineout jumper in 2025 (he played all 15 SRP games last year, and the data shows the Reds throwing to him as the primary target whenever he played) has been out from Round 5 onwards in 2026.

That timing doesn’t quite map to the lineout collapse - the team had positive games in Rounds 5, 6 and 7 without Canham, and the trouble really starts in Round 8 - but it does mean two simultaneous personnel disruptions: their #1 jumper gone, and a few weeks later their primary hooker changed. The combination is plausibly bigger than either single change.

Where on the field

By zone, the Reds’ issues are not where fans assume. The 5-metre attacking lineout (what people call out most often) is too rare to matter much (12 throws). The bleeding is in the midfield (62 throws, where they take a third of their season’s lineouts) and between midfield and their own 22 (16 throws, where they’re winning only 69% of throws against an expected 84%). These are the bread-and-butter lineouts - outside attacking pressure, basic setup. They aren’t winning enough of them.

The defensive side is broken across all field zones, not concentrated anywhere. Opposition throwing teams are winning 92.2% of their throws against the Reds which is the worst defending number in SRP 2026 by 5 percentage points. This failure is independent of the hooker question. Defending an opposition throw doesn’t depend on who’s throwing for your team, and it has been bad from Round 1.

How Bad in Historical Terms?

The team-season story is settled: the Reds are bad this year. The harder question fans are actually asking is “is this the worst the Reds lineout has ever been?” For that, we need an absolute comparison across seasons, not just the season-relative rating we’ve already looked at.

The chart above is per-game net EALES for the Reds across 2024, 2025 and 2026, smoothed to a 3-game rolling average. Three things to notice.

2024 was fine. Average lineout, rolling line bouncing around zero. A normal Super Rugby season.

2025 was volatile but ended well. An early-season run against the Force, Crusaders and Highlanders took the rolling line below −40 (a R7 lineout disruption masterclass by the Force is the lowest single Reds game in our 2024–2026 window). Then a recovery - strong showings against the Blues, Waratahs and Hurricanes swung the rolling line back to positive. Season ended with the Reds emphatically in the green at +37.

2026 is trending in the wrong direction. The first seven rounds were unremarkable, with the rolling EALES bouncing between −15 and +16. But the last five consecutive games - Force (R8), Crusaders (R9), Blues (R11), Brumbies (R12), Chiefs (R13) - have all been negative, with two particularly catastrophic individual games: the Blues at −78 and the Brumbies at −34. The rolling line plummeted past −40 and hasn’t come back.

So is this the worst stretch the Reds have ever had?

We computed the worst 3-game rolling EALES stretch for every SRP team-season since 2022. The Reds’ current 2026 collapse (worst rolling-3 = −42.5, ending after Round 12) ranks 9th worst in the dataset. Top 16% of all SRP stretches since 2022. Bad. But not the worst.

The worst stretch we have seen was actually the Fijian Drua this eyar (2026) between R3 and R6 (Bye in R4) at −63.8.

And similarly this isn’t even the worst stretch the Reds have had in recent years - that distinction goes to the stretch ending R9 in 2022 at −56.1.

But three of those ten stretches belong to the Reds - this season, last season, and four years ago. Their lineout is not historically broken, but it is cyclically broken. The Reds have had a top-10 SRP-wide bad stretch in three of the last five seasons. 2023 was excellent for them. 2024 was solid. 2025 had a sharp mid-season dip that they recovered from. 2022 and 2026 are the bad years. The cycle is the pattern.

Moana Pasifika are slightly deeper in the bad-lineout pit than the Reds in 2026; the Highlanders are within a hair of them; and the Drua are in a different category of bad altogether. But none of those teams have a finals run on the line, none have a Wallabies coach in charge, and so the conversation about the Reds is the louder one.

So, Are the Fans Right?

Yes - and with three nuances that matter.

1. The 2026 lineout is bad. The Reds rank 9th of 11 in SRP 2026 on the EALES rating. Both their offensive (clearly below average) and defensive (worst-in-league by raw opposition win-rate at 92.2%) sides are negative. They are one of only three SRP teams (with the Drua and Moana Pasifika) without a compensating strength.

2. It’s not historically the worst. The Reds have had worse 3-game stretches before: last season (2025 R8) and a much worse one four years ago (2022 R9).

3. The data points at a specific change. When Matt Faessler became the primary hooker from Round 8 onwards, the team’s steal-against rate tripled. Add in that lock Josh Canham has been out from Round 5, and the team is operating with two visible personnel disruptions overlapping. The metric identifies where the trouble is concentrated. The data can’t tell coaches what to fix; it can only tell them where to look. Whether the answer is reverting the hooker rotation, working on Faessler’s mechanics, varying the call to make it less readable, or simply waiting for Canham to return, is a question for the people on the training paddock.

I think it’s safe to say the Reds’ lineout is broken right now. But they’ve had this issue before and they’ve come back from it before. Whether 2026 follows that pattern, and whether that recovery can occur before the finals, is the real question.

The Weekend Ahead

Unfortunately for Reds fans, this doesn’t look like the week that the lineout will get back on track. Thy travel to HBF Park to play the Western Force, and the last 2 meeting between the sides tell a hard-to-ignore story:

• Round 7, 2025: Reds threw 20, 8 stolen (40%). One-off catastrophe - the single worst Reds lineout day in three seasons.

• Round 8, 2026: Reds threw 15, 2 stolen (13%, double league average). The first game of the 2026 collapse run.

The Force defensive lineout has moved up sharply in 2026 and sit at +4.0 EALES Defense, second-best in SRP behind only the Hurricanes. They read opposition throws as well as any unit in the league. The Reds, going to Perth, are bringing the league’s worst opposition-win-rate defence (92.2%) and the league’s most-stolen primary hooker. The matchup favours the Force on both halves of the lineout battle.

Watch the steal-against rate. If the Reds are stolen at or below the league average of 7% this weekend, it’s a good data signal that the 2026 cycle is breaking. If it climbs back toward double-digit, the cycle is deepening.

This is the first piece on the EALES framework. We’re also building the equivalent framework for scrums, kicking, and overall player impact. If you have a club you’d like to see broken down, get in touch.

Now that the Super Rugby Pacific season has passed the halfway point, it seemed like as good a time as any to apply the same technique to scoring from Rounds 1–8 — particularly given how close the games have been overall this season.

For the uninitiated, these curves show the average number of points a team is ahead or behind (their points differential) at every minute of a match. To do this, we look at all the games a team has played. Every time a team or their opponent scores1, we update the average score differential for that point in time. Put another way: imagine overlaying every match’s scoring worm and averaging them together.

It’s not a perfect analysis. One or two blowouts can skew the results (see the Hurricanes’ second-half demolition of the Waratahs), and while every match is weighted equally, the final scoreline doesn’t always tell the full story. But these curves help visualise (and often confirm) the patterns and narratives we feel as fans. And yes, it turns out the Crusaders really do finish strong.

Below is my quick interpretation of how I read this for each team. Feel free to agree, disagree, or throw your own hot take into the mix.

ACT Brumbies

The Brumbies are just a solid team. Their average point differential stays mostly within a tight range early, and they keep their composure in the final 20 minutes of games. On an individual game level, we can see they’re not blowing teams out, but they’re rarely out of contention either. The average smooths over some back-and-forth tussles, but the key trend holds: the Brums finish stronger than they start. That steady late-game rise isn’t fluke—it’s consistency, game management, and bench impact doing their job. No wild swings. Just pressure applied until the other side breaks.

Blues

The Blues are a bit of a slow burn—but not in a good way (especially for a defending champion). They tend to start off okay, holding their own through the first half and often sitting in positive or neutral territory. But after halftime, the bottom starts to fall out. Their average point differential steadily declines all the way to the final whistle. And when you look at the individual games, it’s not just one or two blowouts dragging them down—it’s a clear pattern of second-half fade-outs. They just haven’t figured out how to close games out.

Chiefs

The Chiefs feel like a team that does their best work before the break. Their average point differential shoots up in the first 30 minutes as they pile on early scoreboard pressure. But what’s interesting is that they don’t necessarily keep that momentum going. The second half flattens out—while they’re rarely in trouble, they’re also not putting teams away. They hit hard early and then shift into game management mode. If you’re not switched on in the first half, the Chiefs will make you pay. They’re top of the table for a reason.

Crusaders

I guess the death of the Crusaders was greatly exaggerated. They don’t explode out of the gate, and things stay pretty even early on, but once the second half kicks off, they go to work. The average differential climbs steadily from around the 50-minute mark, and by full-time they’ve usually built a lead. The individual worms show the same thing: they let the game unfold, keep it close, and then slowly crush you in the final 20 (The JOC effect?). Like the Crusaders of old, they just find a way to win.

Fijian Drua

The Drua are chaos merchants, and their curve reflects it. Their average point differential tanks in the opening 20 minutes, which is a shame—because they often claw their way back into games. But the damage is usually done by then. The individual worms show just how early and how often they concede points. We all know you can never count the Drua out, but they make it bloody hard on themselves by spotting the opposition a head start. Right now, it feels like they’re spending too much time playing catch-up.

Highlanders

What’s the nicest thing we can say about the Highlanders right now? How about this: they’re quietly competitive through the middle third of matches. Unfortunately, it’s the opening and closing phases where things fall apart. There’s a dip in the first 15–20 minutes, a bit of a recovery, and then a steady decline again after the 60-minute mark. They’re in the fight for long stretches, but struggle to land the final punch. The last 10 minutes of games have been particularly costly.

Hurricanes

The Canes are just... solid. Their average point differential doesn’t move wildly in either direction—it just stays calmly above zero for most of the match. The individual worms back it up too. There’s a quiet confidence in how they play: never too far ahead, never too far behind, but more often than not, doing just enough. What really stands out is how often they win the final 10 minutes. It’s not a surge—it’s just steady, suffocating pressure that turns close games into wins.

Moana Pasifika

Moana Pasifika are the kings of the near-comeback. They start slow—very slow—and usually find themselves down early. But then they rally. From around the 50-minute mark, their average point differential rises sharply, and they often flip momentum in that first 20 minutes after halftime. The problem? They can’t quite hold it. Just as things are turning their way, they often let it slip again in the final 10 minutes. If they can plug those early and late leaks, they should keep climbing the table as finals approach.

NSW Waratahs

Cliché time! The Tahs are a classic case of two halves. The first half is fine—nothing dramatic, but they’re in the game. The second half? Not so much. From around the 50-minute mark, the decline in differential is sharp and sustained. The average line crashes, and the game-by-game breakdown backs it up with multiple capitulations in the final 20 minutes. They’re not necessarily poor starters, but they’re definitely poor finishers.

Queensland Reds

The Reds are hard to build a narrative around because they don’t really have wild swings. Their average differential hovers close to neutral for most of the match, but there’s a gentle, consistent upward trend as the game goes on. They’re rarely dominant, but rarely out of it either. This is a team that builds its advantage slowly—grinding rather than exploding. It might not be the most exciting curve, but it’s the mark of a team that wears you down over time. Right now, they’re clearly Australia’s top side.

Western Force

The Force hang in there. Their average point differential in the first half is often flat or even slightly positive. But, like the Waratahs, things take a turn after the break. From the 50-minute mark, they tend to lose ground, and in a few games the wheels have come off completely. The individual worms show they’re not getting blown out early—but they do struggle to keep up late. Still, overall it’s a positive sign for Australia’s fastest improving side.

We've split the paddock into 26 different scoring zones, and looked at who was the most prolific scorer in each zone. Charlie Curnow showing why he earned a 2nd-straight Coleman Medal 🏅👀

Today saw another sprint, and yet another win for Jasper Philipsen and Alpecin-Deceuninck. The 323 points he has earned by Stage 11 is the most since Peter Sagan amassed 339 by the same point in 2018.

Is the Green Jersey his all the way to Paris? Or can he be caught in the points classification? See how the points race has unfolded year on year below:

Polka Dot Jersey

Stage 13 sees the race return to the mountains and will finish atop the grueling Grand Colombier.

Neilsen Powless of Education First is an unlikely wearer of the polka dots, and should still lead the King Of The Mountains at the end of the day, but the competition is wide open. If I were a betting man I wouldn't expect him to still have the jersey come Paris. See how the KOM race has unfolded year on year below:

🛣️ Flat country roads 🏁 Summit finishes 🏔 Alps 🚵 Cols & everything in between...

Or, if you are interested in comparing the profiles of the different TDF stages in 2023, you can find them below.

What stands out to you?

I've also produced it at a yearly level for every track that has been raced on since 2006. Some (like Barcelona) have 25 years of races to compare. Some (like Portugal) have very little, while others (like Imola) have big gaps between year raced. Nevertheless each one of them is interesting in its own right. It's easy to assume that times are always getting faster, but thats not the case. The myriad of rule changes, new regulations, changes in track layouts, and weather conditions year to year provide some fascinating results. It's easy to get lost trying to remember what caused any given change.

What stands out to you?

Races on the 2021 F1 Calendar

Bahrain Grand Prix

Chinese Grand Prix (Cancelled)

Emilia Romagna Grand Prix

Portuguese Grand Prix

Spanish Grand Prix

Monaco Grand Prix

Azerbaijan Grand Prix

Canadian Grand Prix (Cancelled)

French Grand Prix

Austrian Grand Prix

British Grand Prix

Hungarian Grand Prix

Belgian Grand Prix

Dutch Grand Prix

No data... Come back in a year or two

Italian Grand Prix

Russian Grand Prix

Singapore Grand Prix

Japanese Grand Prix

United States Grand Prix

Mexican Grand Prix

Brazilian Grand Prix

Australian Grand Prix

Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

No data... Come back in a year or two

Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

Turkish Grand Prix

Defunct Races

Argentine Grand Prix

Indian Grand Prix

European Grand Prix

Korean Grand Prix

Malaysian Grand Prix

Tuscan Grand Prix

Need a primer on what efficiency is? Check out our introduction to efficiency calculations

Another week, another look at the efficiency ranking for rugby around the globe. This week we have updates for Week 7 of Super Rugby Australia and Week 6 of Super Rugby Aotearoa, as well as a first (maybe slightly too early) look at Major League Rugby following their round 3 clashes. No updates for Gallagher Premiership Rugby this week as they are off for the Challenge Cup.

Super Rugby

After teasing us for weeks, it's finally 1st place across the board for the Brumbies as they overtook the Rebels to nab the top spot in the Defensive Efficiency ranks. The question is whether anyone will catch them for the rest of the season. The closest team to doing so is the Reds, who move to 2nd in Attacking Efficiency after their strong win over the Rebels. However the Reds middle of the pack 5th ranking in Defense is holding them back from making a real run at the Brumbies.

The Crusaders upset loss to the Highlanders let the Reds sneak past them, as well as lifted the Highlanders to 6th spot in Net Efficiency and moved them from last to 8th in Defensive Efficiency.

The big losers of the week are the Rebels. After being number 1 in Defensive Efficiency for the past 3 weeks, they drop to 4th after their performance against the Reds.

Major League Rugby

This is our first chance to see what the Major League Rugby efficiency rankings look like. It might be too early to really get a good sense of what the real ranking are since the season is only 3 weeks old ( or 2 for the teams who have had a bye). I usually like to wait until teams have 4 games under their belt to account for any outliers. Indeed when you look at the spread of values between the top and bottom teams it is much wider than we see in other leagues, but these will likely start to revert back towards each other as the sample improves.

What stands out to you?

Need a primer on what efficiency is? Check out our introduction to efficiency calculations

Week 6 of Super Rugby Australia and Week 5 of Super Rugby Aotearoa are in the books, so it's time to take a look at the efficiency rankings coming off this week's games. I'll also be including the ranks and playing field for other competitions going forward, including a first look at Gallagher Premiership Rugby as they break for the Challenge Cup.

Super Rugby

The Brumbies continued to roll with a 42-14 win over the Force, cementing their position atop the Net Efficiency Rankings for the 5th week in a row. The 6 try performance keeps them 1st in Attacking Efficiency, while their stingy defense continued and moves them from 4th to 2nd in the Defensive Efficiency rankings - just one spot away from the trifecta of being #1 across all measures.

In the New Zealand conference the Hurricanes were the big moves this week courtesy of Jordie Barrett's points party. Their 30-19 win over the Highlanders saw their Attacking Efficiency jump 3 spots to 4th in the league. Unfortunately the Highlanders are moving in the opposite direction, dropping 2 spots in both the Attacking and Defensive Efficiency (where they now sit dead last) albeit still ahead of the Waratahs on Net Efficiency.

Premiership Rugby

Even though it's week 15 of the Gallagher Premiership Rugby this is the first look I'm taking at their efficiency ranks. Harlequins lead the comp ranked 1st in Net Efficiency and Attacking Efficiency, and 2nd in Defensive Efficiency.

On the Defensive side of the ball the Exeter Chiefs boast the top Defensive Efficiency, however their lackluster attacking efficiency put them dangerously close to being on the wrong side of the Net Efficiency gain line.

What stands out to you?

It is presented as a density based joyplot (named for the iconic Joy Division album cover) and each year is shaded based on which team had the fastest lap of the GP. Will Mercedes 2020 dominance carry over to 2021 and put in another fastest lap effort?

Take a look below and see what stands out

What is efficiency?

Efficiency of Attack is the number of points a team scores per 100 carries. A higher number signifies a more efficient attack, since it takes you less carries to score a point.

Efficiency of Defense is the number of points a team allows per 100 opposition carries. A lower number is a more efficient defense, since it takes your opposition more carries to score a point.

Net Efficiency is the difference between Efficiency of Attack and Efficiency of Defense. A positive Net Efficiency means you scored more points than you conceded given equal possession.

The quadrant above charts efficiency of attack against efficiency of defense, with the center lines being the average of all teams.

The top right quadrant is where you want to be, since it means you are above the league average in both efficiency of attack and defense. Conversely the bottom left quadrant is not where you want to see you favourite team, as it means they are below average in both phases of the game.

Being in either of the other two quadrants is a mixed bag - you are above average in one aspect of the game but below average in the other. In this case you want to look at the diagonal Net Efficiency line. If you are above the line, you have a positive Net Efficiency, and score more points than you concede. If you are below, it's the opposite.

What does The Efficiency Playing Field tell us about Super Rugby teams?

The Brumbies lead both conferences with the number one net efficiency rank. This is driven by a huge Efficiency of Attack score of 39.8, which is 5 points clear than the number two Crusaders. This number is slightly misleading though, since their 61-10 Week 2 trouncing of the Waratahs is having an outweighed effect on this number. I'd expect this number to come back to the field as the season goes on and more games are factored in.

The Rebels lead the league in Efficiency of Defense, only letting their opponents score 15.5 points per 100 carries. Even though their Efficiency of Attack has been sub-par, the stinginess of their defense means they still have a positive Net Efficiency score of 5.9.

The Force come in number two in the efficiency of defense ranking, however unlike the Rebels they are let down by their poor efficiency of attack leading to a negative Net Efficiency score of -5.4.

At the other end of the spectrum are the Chiefs and Waratahs, who rank 9th and 10th in Net Efficiency. The Chiefs are brought down by their league worst defense, allowing 35 points the their opponents per 100 carries, however one bright spot is their efficiency of Attack is middle of the pack.

The Waratahs on the other had are woeful on both sides of the ball. Their offense is ranked dead last, and their offense is second last.

What stands out to you?