Every player of the year award has flaws, and the Dally M Medal is no different. After seeing a lot of unhappiness with how close the Dally M judges allowed James Tedesco to get to snatching the Dally M Medal away from Jahrome Hughes on Wednesday night, especially after Kalyn Ponga’s upset win over Shaun Johnson at the 2023 Awards, I thought it would be a fun experiment to see what the count would look like if you took all bias and subjectivity away and relied on statistics. So I present to you r/nrl the Fanny M Medal.

Without creating my own system for comparing the value of certain statistics against others (because I may waste a lot of time in the office, but I don’t have that much), I went to the two competing fantasy leagues for rugby league, NRL Fantasy & Supercoach. You may think that the results would be almost identical, but not only do they have very different scoring systems, they also use entirely separate statistics, NRL Fantasy using the NRL’s official stats, whilst Supercoach uses the Fox Sports statistics, which are independent from the official NRL counts.

As the current Dally M format has 2 judges for each match handing out 3,2 & 1 votes, I thought it was fitting to do the same for both Supercoach & NRL Fantasy. In case of tie-breakers I usually picked the player who had the least deductions that match (errors, turnovers, penalties etc.).

Before anybody does their best Teddy impression and raises their arms and yells at the nearest person in a fluro shirt, this is all for a bit of fun and I am not suggesting this is a good way to determine the player of the year. Just like the bias or incompetence of a judge, using only stats is an awful way to judge the best player on the pitch.

Without further ado, here is the Top 20 from the leaderboard:

Your 2024 Fanny M Medal Winner: Jahrome Hughes

As we can see the results up the top are pretty much the same as the actual Dally M, with Jahrome Hughes narrowly beating James Tedesco by just 2 points. I think the biggest flaw of the 3-2-1 vote system is that it gives equal value to every single game of the season, and if you use that logic then it is fair to say that James Tedesco only had a slightly worse season than Jahrome Hughes did, whether you're using stats or personal judgement.

There are definitely some weird outliers that appear in this list such as Valentine Holmes cracking the top 10 and Reuben Garrick cracking the top 20. A lot more outside backs making the top 20 than in the real Dally M list.

Max Plath is a fair way from the top 20, but at 14 votes he is the outright leader among rookies, meaning your 2024 Fanny M Rookie of the Year is the Dolphin's Max Plath!

Lastly, your 2024 Fanny M Team of the Year:

Let me know your thoughts!

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https://www.afr.com/companies/sport/the-media-storm-behind-the-nrl-s-next-billion-dollar-play-20240930-p5keji

• NRL going to market early even though current deal is through the 2027 season
• Current deal re-negotiated during COVID estimated to be worth $1.7 billion
• AFL new deal starting next year worth $4.5 billion - up 36% on previous deal
• NRL on fire with viewership, crowds up - needs to translate to broadcast dollars for PVL legacy
• Big issues with all FTA networks essentially broke, Foxtel for sale, Gambling ad reform drastically reducing revenue across the board, creating perfect environment for them to not get true value - AFL lucked out with timing when they brokered their new deal
• To make up for short fall NRL might be headed for big fragmentation like NFL, NBA, EPL
  • E.g Thursday Night - Amazon Prime Exclusive
  • Friday 6pm, Super Saturday x 3, Sunday 2pm - Fox/Kayo Exclusives
  • Friday 8pm - CH Nine Exclusive
  • Monday Night - Stan Sport Exclusive
  • Sunday 4pm - Paramount+ Exclusive

Long Read

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This is the place to talk about everything other than footy!

This is the place to discuss anything footy related that is not quite deserving of its own top-level post.

There's a new one of these threads every day, so make sure you're in the most recent one!