For the first time in decades, Cronulla fans greet the new season from a darkened porch. But before dreams of a repeat grow fins, let’s analyse the maiden title among a nail-biting trend in the NRL.

Of all the nutty annual predictions, “this’ll be the closest season ever,” is the one lathered in fact.

In 2016, 37 of the 201 matches were decided by two points or less, a staggering 18 per cent, the equivalent of almost one in every five games.

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Twenty years ago it was only 14 per cent. The ratio climbed to 15 per cent in 2006 then reached 16 with Johnathan Thurston’s final play of 2015.

The gap between top and bottom has narrowed to the point where just a few muffed kicks can derail a season. It’s a worrying trend for coaches, and not surprisingly, the past four premiership winners have all sheltered behind elite marksman.

With heart-stoppers on the up, there’s simply no excuse to skimp from the tee.

Cronulla’s breakthrough season illustrates the point like a butchered golf cliché, ‘spine for show, kick for dough’.

Lost amid broken droughts, Churchill snubs and fullback foibles is the fact Cronulla didn’t drop a match by two points or less – the first premiership-winning side in 11 years to do so.

It’s hardly worth handstands at Northies, but it is super impressive when you consider 26 per cent (or seven games) of Cronulla’s 27 matches were decided by a conversion or less.



Had just three of those cliffhangers gone the other way, Cronulla’s story could well have finished the way of the previous 49.

But in James Maloney, Shane Flanagan found the final chapter’s missing scribe.

The buy of the season’s 78 per cent from the field replicated his three seasons at the Roosters, including the 2013 premiership.

Success rates of 65-70 per cent were once bread and butter for top-flight kickers but in the early 1990s the bar rose with the arrival of Matthew Ridge and Daryl Halligan from New Zealand rugby union.

For a decade they set the pinnacle above an unprecedented 80 per cent.

Today, the top kickers still strike in the eighties but the proportion above 80 per cent is on the rise.

In 2016, 23 players had 30 or more shots landing a combined 1,181 goals at 77 per cent.

Seven struck at better than 80 per cent. Back in 2006, only three kickers exceeded 80 per cent; by the finish of 2011 there were five.



The stats don’t lie; where 77 per cent was once considered elite, it’s now the benchmark and teams short of the mark will squander competition points.

So as the 2017 season approaches, what can be gained from last season’s kicking stats?