There's no mystery on this issue. The Opta people are in business to make money. "Proper stats" have value. If the great unwashed are entitled to freebies then you can bet they'll be valueless.

Huh. Thanks for the insight. Today I learned.

All it takes is the right sponsor.

I can get every play in the NFL. Since game one, way back when. I can do thirty years of college football. Baseball has been an ever increasing cascade of statistics. There are decades of the NBA available. Soccer, the most state-less data free game there is, is dripping in them - every shot, and every location where it happened, etc. I can get all of this right now, legally, for free. It's not to the same quality every time, and sometimes the categories change over time. There are tons of it out there though.

But not RL. Because stats gathering organisations make money from rugby league.

They somehow fail to do that with the biggest sports in the world.

[i"The people at Opta watch every match and record every action, good and bad. They award points to each player for the positive things he does and take then off him for any obvious mistakes or errors.

They then add a weighing to this dependent on the time in the game, the position on the pitch and the score at the time. Scoring a 50-metre try under the post in the 50th minute when your team are already 50 points in front does not earn you as many points as it would if you were five points behind with 50 seconds remaining".[/i

This is why stats are not entirely to be trusted. Think they're not bad markers in forward play. But for backs it tells little

Eg. Shaul v hardaker

Shaul has 7 more tries
More metres
Double metres per carry nearly
Less errors
Less pens
Less missed tackles
More try assists
Double clean breaks

Hardaker has built up stats for making more carries few more offloads n more tackles
Not really effective or massively useful stats for a fullback. But opta scoring

The most ridiculous selection is Mellor over sandow. Sandow has a hand both in scoring and assists in 23 tries. Nearest is 16.

What about utility players- players like sutcliffe, burrow, Hinchcliffe, who play in more than one position-sometimes in the same game? If hardaker plays on the wing and earns "winger" points are they just added to his o stall points?
Michael Lawrence has played centre and then in the second row for the early part of the season. Played the last 3 games at loose forward and put in over 150 tackles in those three games alone!