The NRL used to boast it was “one of the closest competitions in the world”. During the 2010s, nine different clubs lifted the premiership trophy. At the end of the 2018 regular season, just one win was all that separated the minor premiers from the team in eighth place.
What happened?
In the past eight seasons, the league has had only three premiers. The Roosters, then Melbourne and especially Penrith, have dominated the league in recent times. This year’s grand final match-up between the Panthers and Storm had seemed inevitable for months.
Penrith’s four-year premiership winning streak has drawn comparisons to the 11-year reign of St George, who once controlled the contest so well that administrators had to change the rules to give the rest of the competition a chance to catch up. In 1967, the NSWRL introduced four-tackle sets, replacing unlimited tackles, with tackle counts extended to the current six-tackle rule in 1971. The Dragons – premiers every season from 1956 to 1966 – didn’t win the competition again until 1977.
Should the league consider the same thing now? And if so, what rule should change? The old thorny topic of an NRL draft is being considered again, but there could be a simpler solution.
Does the six-again rule help the stronger teams?
First, the obvious: the Penrith Panthers are a fantastic team. The greatest of the NRL era. A team this good would excel whatever the rules.
But, just maybe, they’ve been given a leg up by playing in the “six-again” era.
The six-again rule, introduced midway through the Covid-affected 2020 season, meant penalties for ruck infringements were replaced by an immediate set restart. The following year the rule was expanded to include 10-metre offside infringements as well. It immediately led to some wild scorelines and a series of thrashings, and a year later the rule was tweaked so that it didn’t apply when a team was within 40 metres of its own tryline.
The nature of the six-again rule makes its nature hard to quantify – the game doesn’t stop when a set restart is awarded, so commentators and fans don’t get much of a chance to go back and assess whether a referee’s decision to reset the tackle count was harsh or fair.
Did a defender hang on in a tackle a few seconds too long? Was a defender really offside? And what was that set restart for, exactly?
The Panthers have dominated the six-again era with four straight premierships.Credit: Getty Images
The NRL’s own website doesn’t provide statistics for set restarts, either game-by-game or across the season, so the likely effect of the rule partly comes down to theory rather than pure numbers. So try this theory out for size.
Better-drilled defensive teams are less likely to give away set restarts. Fitter teams, and better defensive teams, are more likely to cope if forced to defend for multiple sets in succession. Those teams may also choose to slow down the ruck a little longer, backing their ability to hold out their opponents even if they are punished with a repeat set. Meanwhile, better attacking teams are more likely to take advantage of a set restart against a tiring defence and score more tries after being awarded a six-again.
So, in theory, the six-again rule rewards the better teams in multiple ways. It doesn’t mean every set restart will favour the stronger teams over the weaker ones. But it could mean the better teams might win more often than they used to, and start to dominate over the course of the season.
Which is exactly what we’ve seen since the rule came in.
Fewer stoppages, fewer competitive games?
Since the six-again rule was introduced in 2020, the good teams have improved and the rest of the league has got worse.
Looking at the past dozen seasons, the top six teams each season have scored an extra 3.4 points per game since 2020, with no change to their defensive record. The rest of the league has scored an extra 1.3 points per game but conceded an extra 2.5. Teams ranked 14 and 15 have conceded an extra four points per game since 2020.
The NRL website tracks the number of “close games” per season – matches decided by six points or fewer. There have been 52.6 close games per year since the introduction of the six-again rule, after the previous six seasons produced 65.8 close games per year. That’s 13 fewer tight games every year.
The three seasons with the fewest close games in recent times came directly after the introduction of the six-again rule, in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The past two seasons – after the six-again rule was pared back, no longer applying to teams inside their own 40 metres – have seen an increase in the number of close games, although still less than the pre-six-again era, even with an extra 12 games being played each season after the introduction of the Dolphins as the league’s 17th club.
Between 2014 and 2019, 33 per cent of NRL games – one in three – was decided by six points or less. Since 2020 that’s dropped to 26 per cent, about one in four.
Is the timing just a coincidence?
Maybe the Panthers are just leaps and bounds above their main rivals, and the Storm and Roosters are miles ahead of the rest of the pack. If that’s the case, no change in the rule book is likely to make a difference.
Before the six-again rule came in we already had dominant teams in the salary cap era – during the 2010s, the Storm and the Roosters had eight minor premierships between them. They just didn’t go on to win the grand final every year, like Penrith are doing now.
And the six-again rule has its advocates. It cuts down on penalties, keeps the ball in play more during attacking raids, and has led to more points being scored (although it’s up for debate whether more points equates to more entertaining contests).
But the numbers suggest the rule widens the gap between the best teams and the rest. If the NRL wants to make the league more competitive, they could just take the game back to where it was in 2018.
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