I've had a similar observation. Seems like all of the "teams I'd like to see" that are named on TK have at least 3 (many have 4) large forwards on the bench. CC has sometimes had 1! Another common critique of CC has been his use of the bench, which seems to be minimal. I'm starting to think that part of the CC style is that by default 11 out of the 14 players are expected to play 80 minutes. Of the 3 players that don't, one of them is going to start and get subbed and that is them done. That player plus two middle forwards coming off in the first and back in the second makes 5 of the subs for the game. The other 3 are being reserved for injuries or tactics.
So far as why we don't have many big boppers, we have a range of small forwards that are excellent at defense, they hit well above their body weight, and have less issues with lateral movement and keeping up with the play. But most important of all is our line speed, as has been shown by the data, in the first 7 rounds we have the best line speed in the comp. We make our metres with our defense, first and foremost. When it comes to making metres with ball in hand we are relying a bit more on our backs, and forwards with a bit of footwork like Presto and Curran. Hughes and King are getting some decent hitups and fast PTBs each game, and the team is getting better at responding to that, though Mahoney needs to cut back on his attempts to win penalties in the ruck and do more work to get the ball into the right players hands quickly when the opportunity comes up. Burton's boot is also winning us some handy metres.
This does show up in the stats, as a team we are:
1st for average running metres conceded with 1307. Next best is Panthers with 1367, 3rd is Storm with 1375, then Cows with 1387. By far the worst is Titans with 1596.
But:
17th for PCM averaging 500 (16th is 543, Phins, and 1st are the Raiders with 664).
14th for Run metres averaging 1591 (1st is Warriors with 1906).
6th for Kick metres averaging 620 (1st is Raiders with 671, but that could fall off a cliff with Fogarty out now).
Thing is that despite our low running metres stat, we are right up there for line breaks. Cows are 1st averaging 6.3, then us at 5.7, then Phins and Manly at 5.2. So we haven't needed big PCM in order to make line breaks. JAC is easily our leader for line breaks, with 8 from 4 games, but the rest of them are quite spread out among the team, meaning we have 8 players with 3 or more line breaks for the season. For comparison, Bronks have 5, Sharks have 4, Storm have 6, Eels have 4, Panthers have 4. Threats across the park baby!
One other stat that really stands out is chargedowns. We have 8 for the season, more than 1 a game. Tigers have 6, Raiders 5, Knights 3, there are 3 teams with 2, and the other 10 teams in the comp have 1.
