There’s few lonelier men in rugby league than the sin-binned, sat in a dressing shed with a trainer and maybe a parting sledge from the opposition for company.
For their sins, 10 minutes where the game is run, and quite often won, without them.
But after 256 sin bins in three seasons – which amounts to roughly 42 hours off the pitch – South Sydney’s sinners, and to a lesser extent Penrith’s, have defied rugby league logic.
The other 15 teams understandably come out behind when they lose a player to the bin.
But a Champion Data deep dive of sin bin statistics since the start of 2021 reveals the Rabbitohs boast a +38 points differential from the 15 occasions they have been reduced to 12 players or less.
No team has come close to matching their 60 points while down a man, with Jason Demetriou’s side averaging one try while a teammate cools their heels.
The Panthers 3.67 points per sin bin is not far behind either, with the 2021 grand final opponents surprisingly in the black – bucking a competition-wide average that falls into line of rugby league logic: a three-point margin to the team with a one-man advantage.
The chaos of last year’s Bloody Sunday final against the Roosters and its record seven sin bins is a slight skewer of the numbers, as madness of that ilk often is.
But both with and without the ball, the Rabbitohs have their rivals covered when by all rights, they shouldn’t.
“I’m not too sure to be honest,” Demetriou concedes when asked to explain how the likes of Cody Walker, Latrell Mitchell and Damien Cook have engineered points while at a numerical disadvantage.
“I’d say our key players really take the ball in those situations. We do practice it with a transition game but I think it comes down to nailing your opportunity on whatever side of the ruck you get. Realistically, you won’t get too many when you’re short a man.
“You might put your extra number on the short side [of the ruck] and virtually ignore your long side, or you do the opposite to counter the advantage a defence has.”
For the 13 players stuck beneath the posts, having been outstripped by a 12-man attack, the feeling is worse than the opponent on his lonesome under the grandstand.
“Oh it’s a massive advantage,” Demetriou says.
Dale Finucane is sent for a spell by referee Ben Cummins earlier this month.Credit: Getty
“To be able to defend your line when you’re down to 12, and post points as well, that’s a huge boost in terms of the flow of the game. You burn down the clock and it definitely puts a dent in the opposition too, they’ve lost an advantage they’d been planning to really use for 10 minutes.”
Conversely, much has been made of the Roosters discipline this season, and with good reason. The 32 points they’ve conceded from six sin bins in 2023 (equal most alongside the Dolphins) amounts to a quarter of all points they’ve conceded this year.
Sin bins for Victor Radley against Melbourne, and Nat Butcher and Brandon Smith when the game was in the balance against Cronulla, have proven pivotal in back-to-back losses.
The Roosters’ 26 sin bins since the start of 2021 are the most of any side, but the Bulldogs (7.44 points per sin binning) count the cost of their indiscretions the most. The Dolphins, Broncos, Tigers, Titans, Dragons, Cowboys and Eels all concede more points on average whenever they lose a man as well.
Still, the Roosters are well aware the rot has to stop or they’ll keep infringing their way out of contests.
“Our discipline has to be better,” captain James Tedesco says. “We are making it hard for ourselves in this game. Radley was silly [against Melbourne] – he knows that. He really took that hard. The one’s last week – [including Butcher’s] hip drop – that is not something intentional. I think our emotions have been better this year than in previous years.”
With 44 sin bins in the first seven rounds of the NRL, head office is making no apologies for pinging 29 instances of foul play. The NRL’s data shows more games decided by 0-6 points, and 7-12-point margins, since 1908 – so that man sitting alone in the sheds is proving more costly than ever.
And yet teams like the Warriors (22 points from eight sin bins) and Canberra (30 from 10) sit at a surprisingly shallow end of the points scored pool when enjoying a 13-on-12 advantage.
On Sunday, Ben Hunt lamented a last-second play against a 12-man Raiders side when he hit Josh Kerr with a listless crash ball, a lame offering at attempting to force the game to golden point.
Even Manly, one of the NRL’s most prolific sides against a shortened opposition, were picked apart by Cooper Cronk on the Matty Johns Podcast for failing to the put the Storm away when Justin Olam was marched, leaving Harry Grant and Jonah Pezet out of position and defending opposite Haumole Olakau’atu.
“If there’s a weakness attacking a goal line, I always used to like to go at it first, [then] go back and give a different look [later in the set],” Cronk explained.
“You might play short to Olakau’atu, then you might play short to Olakau’atu again but he could play out the back to [Tom] Trbojevic and take advantage of something… But that whole set when Olam went off, they didn’t go anywhere near him.”
Credit to the defences perhaps is due, given structures and systems without the ball have never been tighter.
And last word to Demetriou, whose Rabbitohs defence (22 points conceded from 15 sin bins) is the NRL’s stingiest by a significant margin.
“From a defensive point of view, it’s about owning the long side [of the field] more than the short and working your backsides off from inside out,” he says.
“You want to make sure they can’t come through you [via the middle]. You want to make them throw those extra passes to try and get around us.
“We do that pretty well and it actually probably switches us on a little bit within our tackles, sharpens us up a bit when we’re short.”
