The old saying goes that age is just a number, but in the world of rugby league it is vitally important. Since the salary cap era began over three decades ago, all but one winner of the competition can be defined by the average age of their roster.
It’s often been theorised that athletes hit their peak performance in their late 20s and early 30s, when they can apply all the knowledge they have accumulated and implement it during game day. However, the NRL player goes against this well-worn perspective.
What is the magic number a team needs to be under to win a premiership?
Despite the minimum age restrictions increasing the average age of players in the past few years, as the sport has tried to curb debuting players prematurely, the mean sits around 26-years old.
“The average age of NRL players has slightly increased…but that’s your benchmark figure,” Ramy Haidar said, while appearing on SEN’S The Jimmy Smith Show.
“Since the origin of the salary cap era began in 1990, only one premiership-winning squad has had an average age above the mean.”
That team was the Cronulla Sharks back in 2016, when they finally claimed their first premiership with a group of veterans including Paul Gallen, Luke Lewis, James Maloney, Mick Ennis and Chris Heighington. The average age of Shane Flanagan's roster was 27-years old.
“Every other squad, their total squad age has actually averaged out below that for the year. Meaning, younger players perform better,” Hadar said.
“The random chance of only one team in 30 years having an average age above the mean is…one in 34.6 million.”
So, it can't be simply chalked down to sheer chance that all but one squad in the NRL era has had a relatively young roster when they've won the premiership.
A side's roster must be split evenly in order to build team cohesion
It turns out the management of a club’s roster doesn’t just come down to identifying the best talent, fitting them under the salary cap and embedding them within structures the coach wishes to play with. There is a certain alchemy that exists in it.
A look at the current premiership favourites reinforces this fact. All of the sides have Top 30 rosters that sit under this benchmark figure of 26-years old.
Surprisingly, the Roosters have one of the youngest at 23.7 years-old, while Melbourne Storm sit at the opposite end of the scale at 25.9 years-old.
They manage to scrape just under the benchmark figure, but Hadar revealed that as well as the average age of a squad, it also needs to be distributed in an even fashion.
“Generally speaking, the spread of ages has remained tight across the premiership-winning teams of the last 30 years,” he revealed.
“The rosters have been more concentrated with 23-25 -year-olds more than other rosters have been.
“For example, they’d have a lot of 23-, 24- and 25-year-olds, as opposed to other rosters which have a mixture of 18- and 35-year-olds.”
The Storm is more tilted towards having a collection of 30-year-old players with the likes of Jesse Bromwich, Kenny Bromwich, Felise Kaufusi, Chris Lewis and Tom Eisenhuth balanced against the likes of Xavier Coates, Tyran Wishart and Jack Howarth.
However, Radar said this may not be the best grouping, as the past premiership winners have often derived their average age from a lot of similar-aged players.
“Why does that matter? It points to team cohesion being the biggest determiner of on-field success,” he said.
“The best way to have better relationships is to have players of the same age… What is an 18-year-old going to have in common, as a party boy, with the 35-year-old family man?”
An obvious caveat to this theory on age differences is the bond shared by Jared Waerea-Hargreaves and Sam Walker. Yet this is to be viewed as an outlier rather than a regular occurrence.
The importance of 'young veterans' in an NRL squad
On the topic of Walker, he is being developed into a position of what former coach Roy Masters referred to as being a ‘young veteran’.
“These are the players that debut early and still hold a young age,” Hadar explained.
“An example of this will be Nathan Cleary. He’s starting to enter that veteran category, but yet he’s still quite a young guy. Roy Masters cited Brad Fittler as the perfect example.
“To obtain a roster filled with young veterans, you’ve got to select talented rookies…It takes time not age.”
This may explain why the Roosters went all-in for Joseph Sua'ali'i. He is an exceptional talent who had been identified as being able to perform in first-grade from a young age. This made him a prime candidate to one day becoming a young veteran.
Just like the Panthers, Trent Robinson has clearly identified how this will be key to future success.
Along with Sua'ali'i and Walker, Robinson has dished out plenty of game time this season to Egan Butcher, Fletcher Baker and Terrell May. These youngsters are being favoured over low-priced veterans at the tail end of their careers.
However, the bottom-placed Wests Tigers show the perils of having too many young players of the same age and experience though. They have an average squad age of 22.63 years-old.
But without any young veterans to help guide the rookies through the campaign, they have endured a miserable season.
“Ultimately, it’s about having a lower standard deviation across your roster and the best way to do that is to connect the talented rookies,” Hadar said.
It’s clear that the Tigers are attempting to follow down this path, as opposed to a team like the Dragons who have relied on veterans on cheap salaries to try and teach their youngsters the ropes.
It’s likely that team cohesion won’t be able to be achieved with this approach. By the time these rookies come into their prime age- the veterans, who they will have played alongside for years, will be ready for retirement.
As a result, it appears a risky strategy to employ on the basis of past premiership-winning squads.
Which team ticks all the boxes for a premiership win in 2023?
Hadar singled one team out when it came to team cohesion, having a lower standard deviation across the ages, possessing young veterans and falling into this bracket of being under 26-years old.
“Penrith won the competition last year and their average age was 24.45, which is extremely young,” he said, as this year it has risen ever so slightly to 24.76.
“No surprises, I’m going to go with the Panthers again…It’s all about that cohesion and time spent together and what proportion of their time is spent with each other.
“They are a young squad, of similar ages, who get along. It’s obvious that they get along.
“So, in terms of the predictive analysis, you can say they’re the team to look out for.”
