Raiders: 2018 season by the numbers

How does a team, who is in the top-four when it comes to scoring points, finish 10th at the end of the 2018 Telstra Premiership season?

The Canberra Raiders need to ask themselves this question – again – after they were in a similar position at the end of the 2017 season.

In 2018 they scored 563 points placing them above three top-four sides. The Raiders' 93 tries had them equal with the Sharks in fourth spot behind the Rabbitohs (104), Roosters (98) and Storm (94).

So if they are doing things right in attack, defence must be the problem.

″We had too many tight games we let slip ... very similar to the year before,″ captain Jarrod Croker told NRL.com.

″It's those little defensive errors – one or two a game – that cost us each week.

″It's going to be a huge defensive focus for us this year. I know that gets said a lot most years, but it's really going to have to be that way because that's what's killing us in getting to the finals.″

Props Shannon Boyd (Titans) and Junior Paulo (Eels) will both be at different clubs in 2019. As good as they are at crashing through opposition lines, lateral movement in defence has never been a strength of either man.

The club has added another a pair of English forwards for 2019 - back-rower/utility John Bateman and front-rower Ryan Sutton. They join fellow internationals Elliot Whitehead, Josh Hodgson, Joe Tapine, Sia Soliola and Josh Papalii in a big-name forward pack.

Coach Ricky Stuart will have every finger and toe crossed that Hodgson emerges unscathed from England's three-Test series against New Zealand.

A knee injury during the 2017 World Cup kept Hodgson out for the opening 14 rounds of the 2018 season.

Hodgson still led the NRL hookers in the number of try assists during 2018, with nine. He did that from just 11 games.

Home and away record

7-5 at home, 3-9 away

The Raiders away record slipped in 2018 after registering five wins on the road in 2017. The upside was that Canberra enjoyed two more wins at home. With the full force of the Viking Clap behind them, the Raiders had three games at GIO Stadium in their opening five rounds to get them going – but they only won one of them. They also didn't win an away game until round eight – the Cowboys in Townsville.

Leading try scorers

Impressively, Canberra had four players reach double-digits in the number of tries they scored. Not even the Roosters or Storm could match that. The Dragons were the only other NRL club in 2018 to have four. The leading Raider was centre Joey Leilua with 14 tries from 24 games, eclipsing his previous best of 13 in 2013.

″We know we can score points. We haven't lost a lot of attacking players. We've lost some big bodies but attack-wise we've still got plenty of fluency,″ Croker said.

″So we've just got to fix those errors in defence.″

Post-contact metres

Josh Papalii's work rate (55.5m) puts him up among a lot of the back five from other clubs. He even beat metre eaters like Jordan Rapana and Jack Wighton from within his own team. But since he was the only Raider to break into the 50s, that's something the coaching staff alongside Stuart will be working on.

Try scoring – attacking channels

No surprises here that both flanks are the Raiders hot spots. Fleet-footed and acrobatic wingers Nic Cotric (left) and Jordan Rapana (right) successfully combined with their inside men on many an occasion. The pair scored 22 tries between them but the full picture is 93 tries from the Raiders overall – placing them equal fourth in the NRL. Of the 25 players used in first grade, 19 scored at least one try.

Tries conceded – defending channels

Harking back to the opening comments on defence, the Raiders' middle was particularly fragile, letting in 25 tries – but so too was the right edge surrendering 27. All up, the Raiders might have scored an impressive 93 tries over 24 rounds but they let in 86 at an average of 3.6 per game.

Tries conceded from penalties

Letting in 37 tries from penalties made the Raiders the 13th worst side in the league. The most penalised players were forwards Elliott Whitehead (23) and Joe Tapine (21).

″We've got some phenomenal attacking players. And those guys that give the penalties – Elliott and Joey Taps – are two of our better defenders as well,″ Croker said.

″It's probably circumstantial a lot of it in giving the penalty away, but it's still happening. And those individual errors add up.″

Canberra had seven sin-bins for the season – three to Rapana – which placed them in the middle range of the 16 clubs. But they did concede an average 4.9 points when they were down to 12 men.

The Raiders were the fifth best behaved in total errors (233) behind the Broncos (least errors of 16 clubs) with 222.

Metres gained from offloads

The Raiders made a total of 215 off-loads, placing them 11th in the NRL for 2018, which is a little surprising since five players rated above 90% in the effectiveness of them. Joey Leilua made the most of his side (42) and also topped the chart with the most ground gained by his one-handed passes – 266 metres.

Goal-kicking accuracy

The Raiders lost their blue-chip goal kicker in Croker when he suffered a season-ending knee injury in round 18. He had kicked 63 goals in 17 games.

Croker's average was 78.8% and the club averaged 79% with Sam Williams and Aidan Sezer filling the gap. That placed the Raiders in the top-eight, as the season average for clubs was 73.6% and even less for those in the top-four (71.5%).

″I haven't kicked yet,″ Croker told NRL.com on his return to Raiders pre-season training on November 1.

″I'll be looking to start that in December but I know I'll be fine once I get back into it. It shouldn't be an issue.

″Aidan is a quality back-up goal kicker. He was injured when I was so Sam [Williams] had a few shots there. Aidan is more than capable but hopefully, we won't need him.″

Williams kicked 17 conversions from 22 attempts and eight from eight in penalty goals, for an 83% accuracy rate.

Closing out the tight ones

Canberra losing their opening four games didn't help the foundations for a good season. Over 24 games the Raiders lost 14 but five of those were by two points or less (rounds 1, 2, 3, 14, 22). Winning those five would have given them 15 wins for 2018 and put them into the top-eight. As it stood they enjoyed 10 wins to finish 10th.

Points flow freely

The 563 point scored by the Raiders places them above three top-4 sides Roosters (542), Storm (536) and Sharks (519). They are very potent in the 20-metre zone scoring a try 11.5% of the time off a play the ball in that red zone, compared with a NRL average of 8.6% and a top-four average of 9.3%.