Friday 14 November 2014 15:34, UK
Round 27 of Super League XIX will be remembered as the best-ever finish to a regular season of summer rugby.
The tension, drama and excitement grew from a thrilling Thursday to a frantic Friday and culminated on a Saturday of sadness for everyone who cheered on the Castleford Tigers. While Tigers' game in Perpignan was never as close as the other two televised matches, and the fairytale ending never happened for the Tigers, it really did feel like you were watching a ‘Super' League in the last few weeks before the play-offs. For St Helens to come out on top and secure the League Leaders' Shield was a remarkable effort considering the injuries they sustained this year.
The last time that we had a similar finish was at the end of the 1993/4 season, when Wigan, Warrington and Bradford all went into the last round level on 44 points.
Warrington played first that weekend, won and went top. Bradford then travelled to Leeds and had all their fans on the edge of their seats for 24 hours after winning at Headingley, but their hearts were broken after Wigan won at Oldham and were crowned champions.
The final league table looked like this:
Played Won Lost Points Difference
Wigan 30 23 7 46 +377
Bradford 30 23 7 46 +229
Warrington 30 23 7 46 +198
The Super League XIX table doesn’t quite look as close as this but it’s clear to see that there is very little separating the top five teams. The Wolves could very easily have beaten Wigan last Thursday and it’s impossible to say which two teams will get to the Grand Final, let alone win the big trophy.
The match between the Warriors and the Wolves was a dramatic contest to watch, but one thing struck me as I observed from the sidelines: at times it was taking five or six seconds for a tackle to be completed. It became a slow and unattractive wrestling match between the ball carrier and four or five defenders who were wrestling him to the floor, especially when Warrington had the ball.
The town of Wigan has a world-wide reputation for wresting, and local legends like Roy Wood do a brilliant job of promoting the sport to young people, but I’m not a big believer that it looks good during a game of rugby. Instead of tackling, it’s becoming popular for the first defender to ‘catch’ the ball carrier, grabbing hold of him and waiting for the rest of the wrestling team to arrive. I realise that it’s not illegal, and I probably need to accept that it’s just going to grow in popularity across more teams, but I see it being an issue over the next few seasons. The speed of the match is something that the game’s administrators need to monitor as it is the greatest attraction of the sport to many people, and if the ruck becomes too slow then the game will become a bore. But the big question is how can it be fixed?
So what did you think of the Dream Team? Would it have won the Grand Final if they’d all played together this season? There’s obviously no right or wrong answer and everyone who watches is entitled to their own opinion.
We’ll soon start to discuss the other awards that are given out at the end of a season. These recognise the best young player, coach, club and senior player in Super League, but what about most improved player?
I imagine that for a coach the greatest pleasure is derived from not just winning matches, but seeing your players improve. It’s easy to see the teams that have improved the most over the last 12 months by just comparing the final league table to last year's table. Widnes have done well under Denis Betts to win three games more this season, but the transformation by the Tigers has been the biggest turnaround. If you take their points difference from last year and compare it to this season, they’ve improved by about 15 points a game. That sort of an improvement is unheard of in rugby league in this country and the coach, staff and the players deserve to be recognised for this progress.
Identifying the most improved player is far more difficult though. Has any player improved his game individually as much as the Tigers have collectively? Rather than this being a subjective opinion, like the Dream Team, I’ve taken a more objective approach and used the average game score that a player is given for all of his involvements by Opta.
It would be impossible to remember how all 350-plus players did last season and compare to this - nobody has that memory space - so I've looked at all of their scores from the last two seasons and picked out the three biggest improvers.
2013 Apps/Avg game score 2014 Apps/Avg game score Improvement on score
Luke Dorn 16/239 18/421 182
Ukuma Ta'ai 20/297 25/478 181
Eloi Pelissier 27/203 25/383 180
It’s hardly surprising that Daryl Powell’s team have the most improved player in Super League. At 32 years of age, few expected Dorn to do what he has for the Tigers. He’s been in the UK since 2005 when he was a try scoring sensation for the London Broncos and he had his first stint at the Tigers back in 2008. He’s scored four times as many tries this year in Super League as he did last season and made the sort of breaks he was making several years ago.
I admire perseverance and dedication. It appears to me that Luke Dorn has displayed both of these, and I can't wait to see him playing at St Helens on Friday.
Ukuma Ta’ai is now coming to the end of his second season with the Huddersfield Giants and it’s been a much more impressive campaign for him. He’s in his mid-20’s and arrived at the Giants after playing just 50 games for the New Zealand Warriors over a four-year stint. He played quite well for Tonga in last year’s World Cup and appears to have grown in confidence from that international experience. Regular game time this season has enabled him to improve his match fitness and devastate opposition defences when he carries the ball.
Eloi Pelissier has benefitted from an arm injury to his team mate Ian Henderson, which has allowed him to start 14 games and spend longer on the field. He’s like a Perpignan pin-ball the way he bounces off players when he picks the ball up from the ruck area and ricochets his way up-field.
Obviously a player can score more points on Opta’s scoring system if they are on the field for longer and his increased exposure to action has enabled this. Like Ta’ai, he appears to have improved after three games for France in last year’s World Cup. This is now his fourth season in Super League and he has the chance to celebrate his 23rd birthday in style if the Dragons win in Leeds on Saturday.
Both Ta’ai and Pelissier have played an average 18 minutes a game more this season which has obviously helped them to score more points on this method of measurement. It is an interesting question that the coaches are challenged by each week. Which players do you have on the field for the longest? Some players and positions regularly play for 80 mins unless they are injured, but there’s a large group that play for 25-55 minutes. One of the exceptions to this is Jamie Peacock, who seems to have convinced his coach to leave him on for longer and gets more minutes than most other props, even at the age of 36.
If we take away the increased game time from the list of my three above then it’s clear that Dorn is the most improved player using a systematic scoring system like the one devised by Opta. I’m not saying that it’s flawless, but it has no bias towards a player or team and simply awards points for good play and deducts them for errors and mistakes.
From what you have seen this season, who do you think is the most improved player of 2014?
