Stats Column: Sene-Lafao leads the way

Well another weekend of rugby league fixtures produced another lot of stats to mull over, so let’s start at Huddersfield on Thursday where it was a case of so near, yet so far against Castleford Tigers.

Jake Mamo is proving himself to be some player for the Giants and helped himself to a hat-trick only to end up on the losing side. Special mention must also be made of Ryan Hinchcliffe who topped the Huddersfield tackle count with 46 and second row Dale Ferguson who made 133 metres.

For the Tigers, shorn of three England stars, Jesse Sene-Lafoa led the way. He has proven a dynamic signing for Castleford and weighed in with some good numbers on both attack and defence (148 metres, 31 tackles and four off-loads).

Grant Millington and Adam Milner were also very good, while we saw Danny Brough at his most enigmatic. The Huddersfield skipper kicked well from both hand and to goal, led his side around yet conceded two bad penalties, spent ten minutes in the sin-bin and got placed on report.

Moving onto Salford’s impressive win at Wigan and it looked like Joe Burgess was given a lesson. The man in the centres missed six tackles and was pretty quiet on attack as well. The same cannot be said of Tom Davies. I made mention of him running over 300 metres the other week and he was at it again, claiming 188 this time round.

As per usual Liam Farrell proved effective with 34 tackles, 18 carries for 134 metres and Joel Tomkins also worked hard, carrying the ball 20 times for his 117 metres. Youngster Josh Ganson also impressed with 43 tackles, but it’s the Red Devils that made the most of the game. Seven of their matchday seventeen made over 100 metres each.

Niall Evalds has grabbed his recall with both hands recently. After an excellent game against Widnes, he backed it up with another scoring two tries and laying two more on in addition to running 147 metres.

Kris Welham was even more dynamic and it’s not the first time he has been mentioned in this column. What a solid signing he has proven to be since joining Salford amidst the fall of Bradford Bulls.

Lama Tasi too has really been setting the platform in recent weeks and the Salford defence was superb, leaking just 14 missed tackles in eighty minutes.

Those are the pick of my stats this week. Next time out I’ll look at the thorny subject of international selection.