plus Dureau, Gale and Griffin. Craig Hall is better too but not by much.

For anyone who is interested:

Excellent (80%+)
Sinfield 86%
Dureau 83%

Good (75-79%)
Gale 77%
Brough 76%
Griffin 75%

Bad (70-75%)
Hall 73%
Smith 70%

Terrible (<70%)
Mantellato 68%
Sneyd 68%
Burns 68%
Rathford 66%
Owens 65%

I was actually thinking about last season's stats, which I recall checking quite carefully. Smith has been much the same; I hadn't checked how the likes of Sneyd were kicking this year.

stats tell you nothing as Wigans tries are mostly scored way out on the wings that's how Wigan play if the stats were broken down as to where the kicks where taken would give different readings.

73% is the average for the league (or was when I worked it out on Friday) if you're saying 2% better than that is good (Griffin, 75%) then surely 3% worse than that is bad (Smith, 70%).

This is something I always mention about goal kicking. Percentages are a bit mis-leading as they don't tell you how many kicks were of a difficult degree.

Mantellto at HKR I think is a good kicker but when he played at Headingley he missed all 4 of his first half attempts, yet tbf all 4 were from the touch line.

On Thursday both Smith and Sinfield converted all 4 of their teams tries yet 3 of them were straight forward gimmes really with both producing a great one from the wing.

Fact of the matter is, we've been incredibly spoiled in terms of goal kicking, well I certainly have in my lifetime anyway. I've only ever seen Botica, Faz, Tickle, Richards kicking goals for Wigan, so I suppose a gifted kicker is something I... and judging by opinion on Smith, many others have just taken for granted. We expect it, and all of a sudden, we have what most teams have always had, which is average and we don't like it. Something I imagine we're going to have to get used to... not that, that makes it any less infuriating.

Damn that missing "Like" button....

I can add Colin Tyrer and John Gray to that list

Surely this is a good point. Year after year Wigan's wingers are at the top of the try tables. Burgess and Manfredi this year, Josh over the last 3 or 4 seasons, Pat before him, even Karl Pryce had an exceptional try scoring record.

Matty's 70% record means he is kicking 7 out of 10. How many of those ten are from out wide?

I know this is Union, but still a good analysis & mechanism for ranking kickers. Someone with time on their hands could do worse than apply the same methodology to Leaguehttp://thepowerofgoals.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/rating-rugby-union-kickers-by-kick.htmlrl

"Rugby Union, much like football is a fluid, fast moving sport"

I didn't read anymore after this.

Once you ignore the waffle, the maths is pretty sound