Set completion in rugby league: how to read your set stats like a first-grade coach

Four rounds of first grade (the Harrigan Cup, with the Wests Devils), every set, every hit-up, every error, logged live from the sideline. Not with a laptop and a stats intern. With a phone, a boom mic and a voice.

Around 200 sets and 1,800 match events later, the most useful thing that came out of it isn’t a number. It’s this: the overall completion rate, the one stat everyone quotes, lied to us in the round we most needed the truth.

This is what I’d hand any senior coach who wants to use set stats properly: what completion actually measures, the one split that makes it mean something, what “good” looks like at local level, and word-for-word what to say at half-time when the numbers show each of the three classic patterns. Everything in here comes from real matches, logged live with Kickd Callout. The numbers are unedited.

1 What completion actually measures

A set is your six tackles. What decides whether it counts is how it ends.

Completed: you got value from the set. A try, a kick downfield, a penalty won.

Incomplete: you handed it back early. A handling error, a penalty conceded.

completion % = completed sets ÷ total sets

Two things coaches consistently get wrong about it

A kick is a good outcome. Finishing your set with a kick means you won that exchange: you moved the game downfield and made them start from deep. A team that “only kicked” all day at 80% completion is controlling the game.

Completion is a comparison stat. “We completed 66%” means nothing on its own. 66% against their 52% is field-position dominance. 66% against their 78% is a long afternoon in your own half.

What’s a good number?

At NRL level, sides average about 76% (the league-wide average has sat near 75% for over a decade), and below about 70% is usually quoted as a problem on the broadcast.

At local first grade, from our four logged rounds, overall completion ran 64% to 74%. Park footy has more errors than the NRL; don’t beat your team up against a television benchmark. What matters is your trend, and the split in section 2.

2 The one number that lies

Here are two of our real rounds, side by side.

Looking at overall completion, Round 8 was “fine”: a couple of points below Round 9, nothing alarming. We scored 1 try in Round 8, and 9 in Round 9: a loss, 8–14, turned into a 48–10 win seven days later. The overall number cannot explain that gap. The split can:

Round 8 in one sentence: we worked out of our own half beautifully, earned seven good-ball sets in attacking position, and completed three of them, scoring from none. The effort stat (yardage) was excellent. The execution stat (good ball) was a disaster. And the overall number (66%, “fine”) split the difference and hid it.

That’s the whole argument for classifying sets

Yardage set. Grinding out of your own end. Job: get through six and kick. Completion here measures ball control under no pressure to score.

Good-ball set. Attacking field position. Job: come away with points, or at worst a repeat set. Completion here measures composure when it matters.

A team can be excellent at one and poor at the other, and the fix for each is completely different. One number for both is how you end up running fitness drills to fix a composure problem.

3 Reading the set breakdown

Completion tells you that sets died. The set breakdown tells you which sets, when, and on what tackle, laid out tackle by tackle: hit-up, hit-up, six again, hit-up, hit-up, error on tackle 4, in good ball. That’s the one to talk about.

Where the error falls changes the message

The real pattern from our month: two-thirds of our errors came on tackle 4 or later, 23 of 35 across the month, and tackle six alone owned 8 of them. A late error is the one you can least afford: the set was already banked, the kick one carry away. That’s someone forcing it as the set gets old. Decision-making, a conversation, not a drill.

Good ball dies late too: 5 of our 9 good-ball errors came on tackle 4 or later (attacking position, set running out, a play forced that isn’t on). Completion here is composure when it matters.

Early errors were rare for us (7 of 35 on tackles 1 and 2), but they’re the cheapest to fix when they spike: play-the-ball and first-carry basics. Drills work on these. Watch where your errors fall, not just how many.

At half time you don’t read all 30 sets. You find the red-flagged good-ball sets (there are rarely more than three or four) and you talk about those.

4 Three half-time talks, keyed to the numbers

Pattern A: yardage green, good ball red (our Round 8). The composure talk.

The team is working hard and executing nothing. Do not give the effort speech: they’re already doing the effort part, and they know it.

“Look at the split. Seventy-one percent getting off our line, that part’s won. Seven sets inside their twenty, we finished three, scored off none. Nobody needs to run harder. When we get down there: earn the play-the-ball, hold the shape, and take the tackle when the play’s not on. Last tackle, we kick for the in-goal and start again. Points come from patience down there, not from forcing it.”

Pattern B: yardage red, good ball fine or unused. The ball-control talk.

You can’t get out of your own half, so you barely see good ball. This is the grind talk, but aimed at ball control, not attitude.

“We’re dying on our own twenty. Every error down here hands them a set start thirty metres out. The defence you’re proud of is being spent on mistakes we control. First two carries: two hands, hit it hard, no offloads. Get to five, kick long. Boring six sets in a row wins us this.”

Pattern C: both green, still losing. The flip-the-sheet talk.

Your attack isn’t the problem: flip the sheet. Check their completion, the penalty count, and your missed tackles.

“Our numbers are fine. Look at theirs. They’re completing at eighty because we’re giving them a piggyback: three penalties in our half and the misses in the middle. Nothing changes with the ball. Without it: discipline in the ruck, and we come up with our numbers filled in the line.”

5 The month, in trend

Two things a season of this gives you that a single match can’t

The trend is the fitness and skill signal. Overall completion climbing four weeks straight (64 → 74) is training showing up on the field.

Good-ball volume is its own stat. We generated 3 → 5 → 7 → 10 good-ball sets across the month: the attack was earning more chances every week, even in the round it converted none. Volume up and conversion down: keep the plan, fix the finish. Volume down: the plan itself needs work.

6 How these numbers get captured

Everything above assumes someone logged the sets. Here’s what that took, honestly.

By tap: two people, a caller and a logger. One watches the game and calls the stats and shirt numbers; the other logs them on the tablet: arm Hit-up, tap the carrier, close each set with its ending (try, kick, error, penalty), one call per opposition set. It’s how bench stats have always been done, and it works. It just costs you a second set of hands every week.

Or start smaller: one person, by tap. Kickd’s Set Completion level logs only how each set ended, both teams: a score, a kick, a handover, an error or a penalty. Five taps a set, no carries, no tackles, and the completion number on the half-time card is the same one above. Every new team starts there; Full logging (the hit-ups, tackles and the Good Ball call) is one tap on the TEAM tab when you want the split.

By voice: one person. A boom mic and Kickd Callout. You’re the caller, and the app is the logger: “hit up nine… tackle seven… good ball… try eleven.” This is how all four rounds were logged, alone, watching the game comfortably the whole time. Roughly 450 events a match.

The half-time card (Yardage, Good Ball, Overall, colour-coded), the set breakdown with the wasted good-ball sets flagged red, per-player hit-ups, tackles and minutes: all of it is generated live. Your players see their own numbers on their phones the moment the whistle goes.

Run it on your team at your next game

Kickd is purpose-built for rugby league, U6 to Opens. No hardware, no GPS, nothing to charge.

1. Set up your team in ten minutes: players, age group, done.
2. Run the Practice Game once to learn the calls. No real data, no pressure.
3. Log your first real match on Set Completion: call how every set ended, both teams, and read your completion % at half time.
4. Switch to Full on the TEAM tab when you want the Good Ball split and the player stats.

Your first three matches are free, no card needed. After that, the stats in this guide (completion %, the set breakdown, possession and the rest of the advanced stack) are part of Team Stats, for senior or rep sides. Rugby league advanced stats are on from U13, with a U10 to U12 opt-in for rep-pathway teams. Team Pass covers the essentials: scores, subs, sin bins and send-offs, and fair game time. Both cover your whole team for the season, and both include Kickd Callout, the voice logging that turns the two-person stats job into one. Try it on your phone mic at training; on match day a Bluetooth headset with a boom mic keeps it hands free.

The Set Completion Playbook is the designed, printable version of this guide. Pricing is on the pricing page.