NRL.com Stats has crunched the numbers to pin-point the area each team must fix in 2018. The Sydney Roosters need to work on their discipline to live up to their pre-season billing as one of the favourites to lift the trophy in 2018.
Despite the Roosters' once justified reputation as serial offenders, they ranked eighth for penalties conceded in 2017 with an average of 6.5 infringements a game.
However, their penalty woes still proved their downfall based on NRL.com Stats' Discipline Index, which weights a penalty's influence based on when it was conceded in the tackle count, and where a team was pinged on the field.
The premise here is that a penalty awarded late in the tackle count is more costly than one early on, and that an infringement further away from your try line is worse than one while defending it.
By this measure, the Roosters were the worst offenders in the game last year, with their high score of 155.8 indicating they conceded a number of penalties that allowed their opposition to roll downfield into red, white and blue territory.
