Barnes v Cooper: The stats tell the story

It is interesting to see how the on-field fortunes for these two have panned out after the first quarter of the season. After playing along side each other for the past couple of years, each is now responsible as being the go to man in their respective backlines. But just as Berrick went south for the new season, so has his form.

Which ever way you want to slice these stats, it is clear Cooper is having the more influence on his team’s performance, and having a better season in general.

Where Barnes looks erratic and distracted, Cooper looks assured and comfortable. Each has their own relative strength and weakness but based on the numbers below if you had to choose, it would be Cooper by some margin.

An argument can be made that these stats are skewed due the nature of the Tahs field position approach to games. This comes through with Barnes leading in defensive stats and kicking metres, however I think the overall comparison is  still very relevant.

What did surprise me was the error count for the two players with Barnes almost equal with Cooper, despite playing 27 minutes of rugby less. When you also consider the stats show Cooper is certainly attacking far more than Barnes, it highlights just how much the Kingaroy (or is that now Collaroy?) Kid is struggling.

Cooper is killing it in attack as his running metres and offload stats attest. It is clear that McKenzie obviously knows how to get the best out of his charge, whereas it seems Hickey is yet to arrive at that conclusion.