Wednesday, August 17, 2005

http://www.nrl.com
I like the idea that National Rugby League has a dedicated site bringing every bit of information possible under the sun about the game. I'm a massive league fan, watching and playing and this site has alot of features that I think New Zealand could develop from with regards to the tri-nations and NPC. If I miss a game due to work, or if it isn't televised live I can go to the site and check it out with live updates. These updates mimic the NBA updates (http://www.nba.com) in that it isn't just text based commentary that you might find on the usual cricket sites, but a detailed list showing you everything from the simple stats as in try scorers, goal kicks, score and time, but every single player has his own line of stats such as tackles, tackle breaks, missed tackles, hitups, metres gained, try assists, kicks in play, offloads, dummy half runs and errors (even his season and last five game averages). It even shows the conditions of the ground surface and weather at the venue. These are just the game day stats aswell, you can do player comparisons, ie If you want to see how Stacey Jones is going compared to Andrew Johns for this Saturday nights game you can click on player stats under statitistics and directly compare the two in almost every category imaginable.

I think this is quite amazing the ability to give the spectator all the information he could possible want instantly these days. This doesn't just have implications for www.nrl.com but external applications like Virtual NRL (http://www.virtualnrl.com/ (closed this year) are new extremely detailed fantasy sports games that are developed just through from the availability of this detailed information. With the higher profile that rugby has in the world compared to league, I would like to see the NZRU do a similar thing with the NPC/Super 12/Tri Nations, maybe it would bring a bit more excitement into the game.

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