Effect of Halfbacks?

With all the statheads on the forum now, I was wondering what your guys opinion on halfbacks was? Whenever I look at the stats, I see they don't really do much statwise so was curious as to what your experience is with halfbacks? Do you notice a significant difference in your team's play if you play a weak halfback etc?

I've noticed from the NT games that statwise Roland seems to do fuck all but when I review the commentary, he seems to create quite a few of our chances which obviously isn't recorded in the stats.

A short/heavy halfback can rack up an absurd number of beaten defenders. My player Sakkie Hengari is 179cm/116kg and plays at halfback.

Last season in division 3 he beat 200 defenders -- the next highest in the entire division 3 was Andy Hull (Demons - another halfback) with 131, Russ Parsons (Manuwera RFC - flanker) with 129, and Sylvester Lawless (me again - flanker) with 93.

Since I managed to get 2 players in the top 4 it also means that my tactics -- reasonably high pick & go -- is also a factor. I note than when I move a more traditional sized halfback in with the same tactics, they don't pick up many beaten defenders. It's hard to tell whether they're running less than Hengari or not making any ground when they pick and go (I really wish BR had run/pass/kick stats)

Some recent games: move Hengari to hooker with the same tactics against a pretty easy team and he only picks up 6 beaten defenders vs 13 at halfback against a team slightly better than me on paper.

Whether or not the halfback picking up lots of beaten defenders is a good use of the halfback or not is questionable. The tactics seem to be working well but they haven't been truly tested that many times. In theory it'll seem that getting over the advantage line increases the pressure meter on the livescoring so stringing together a few phases like that can prove handy.

As an experiment I'm going to run three anytime friendlies today against my affiliate. My affiliate is on a fairly even footing with my main team.

First, default tactics with Hengari at halfback. Second, Tuimavave at halfback -- he's probably closer to the more traditional halfback at 195cm/77kg than Hengari, Hengari will swap with Tuimavave and slot in at 12. Third, drop Hengari all together and put in my back up half to see what kind of impact putting a second-rate player in there has.

It's a limited experiment (one game can't tell you much really) but could be interesting.

Unless you go the heavy & PNG route as explained by Bren, halfbacks don't tend to feature much in the stats. Try assists are only counted when a player makes the final pass in a linebreak, and halfbacks themselves don't break the line very much at all. Therefore they don't feature heavily in either stat.

However I suspect they contribute a lot to the success (metres gained and linebreak possibility) expansive and to a lesser extent, creative plays without any stats (apart from ball carries) being recorded. If you need to hide a low skill player, halfback is still a reasonable position to put him.

Roland had one of the best games for the AB's at 9 against Hong Kong, really made an impact in the game and pretty much set up the win. Some good stats too.

I take it that Roland is the ironic type.

Bet he can't do it twice in a row...

Tanginoa did it once - that's all that's needed

Been I experienced the same when I experimented with granecome at 9 for a few seasons. Iirc he was around 175cm/120kg, initially trained as a flanker, moved to hooker before I decided to play him at 9 as an experiment. Looking at the historical nz cup stats he scored 11 tries in my victorious cup run in s5 and I'm pretty sure 90% of those were p&GS from scrums or rucks. And yeah I defo remember him racking up beaten defenders and metres gained. Idk what prompted me to move him out of there, my actual hooker must have been getting old or something!

But I made this post in a more general sense rather than just moaning about Roland's lack of involvement. I'm genuinely interested into whether halfbacks in general have a big impact on the game.

In general, I don't think so.

Depends on png tactics. Play large png and your halfback will eat the metres, providing he is short fat and technically strong.

Lots of evidence for this. A specialty, play 60+ % png in their 22, watch the 9 score tries

Certainly. But smelly is asking when using "normal" tactics and therefore in general, I think. If using the default 25/25/25/25 attacking split, would a 9 have a big impact on the game?

Not entirely sure on what you mean by technically strong? As in good tech so he doesn't get turned over and keeps possession for his endless barrage of PNGs?

Oh sure if for an even split not involved much. thats why I like nines with very good attack.

Technically strong, just high in both tech and Str. And yes, because he will handle the ball over 100 times sometimes he needs to be able to keep the plays going.