BIGGER, stronger but - surely not - slower? Every NRL season the game seems to get faster as the players' physical capacities grow with training methods that produce the contemporary six-pack rather than abdomens that look like a wine cask bladder from the Bob O'Reilly era fighting a losing battle with gravity.
The refrain is almost constant. "I couldn't believe how fast that was," explains Player X after the match. Coaches, too, echo the theme. Souths' Jason Taylor suggested at the weekend that the speed of the game had gone up another notch and that players were out on their feet.
He reckons this year's matches to date have been lightning fast. "The speed of the game - it's amazing that it can continue to get faster, but it does," he said.
But does it? Early days for sure, but the stats don't back up Taylor's assertion.
In fact, the ball seems to be in play for less time than last year, teams are making fewer tackles and, with ball in hand, are making fewer metres. They're also making fewer line breaks (down 19 per cent) and giving away more penalties, while the decision to allow the video referee to replay strips before a scrum is packed has added another stoppage to the game.
Compounding that, when the scrum does go ahead, in a gesture towards the game's historical roots, it's often repacked - although not so much in the name of a contest, just the appearance of one.
And, despite the constant training drills that run virtually from puberty to first grade, the error count is rising. According to figures provided by Sportsdata, a whopping 16 per cent more errors have been made this season, compared with the first three rounds of last year. Of course, it might all settle down and may be a result of rule tinkering before the centenary year. But the differences in some areas are so striking that something might have changed.
Take metres gained, for example. The Cowboys' yardage, despite the return of the game's best playmaker, Johnathan Thurston, is down by more than 20 per cent. Of course, they are running equal last (and don't play Souths until round eight), but statistics present a similar picture for well-performed Cronulla (-17.6 per cent) and the unbeaten Broncos (-10.9 per cent).
Play-the-balls, the standardised measure of the quantity of action packed into a game and, frequently, a good indicator of a match's quality, have fallen by five per cent. Even the Eels-Knights game, which made it into golden-point territory, last Friday had only 247 play-the-balls, with time eaten up by 17 scrums, 17 penalties and 28 errors.
Another major change to the structure of the game this year has been the reduction in interchanges from 12 to 10, which is forcing forwards to play on into the exhaustion zone - and which may explain Taylor's comments.
Penrith coach Matthew Elliott agreed with the thrust of Taylor's remarks. "It's the thing about damn lies and statistics," he said.
"I think there are stretches of games where there's a lot more live ball happening, the ball's not going into touch as much. But I would say the intensity of the game when the ball is in play seems to have jumped."
So perhaps there is less footy but it's more intense, with Elliott suggesting the fatigue factor is really starting to bite between the 50th and 70th minutes
Former referee Bill Harrigan says the clock is being wound down at some restarts.
"Teams are aware that they've got 40 seconds to take a line drop. They've got it down pat, to do what they've got to do until they get to the 30- or 35-second mark and, bang, out goes the line drop," he said.
"And we've reset scrums twice, and you might do that six, seven or eight times a game, so you've doubled your time there."
