An R package to scrape, clean and analyse publicly available rugby league data. Available on CRAN.
📖 Full function reference: danieltomaro13.github.io/nrlR
🚀 Overview
nrlR gives R users one consistent set of functions for rugby league data from public sources. It covers:
- 🏆 NRL and NRLW
- 🏟️ State of Origin
- 🌏 Super League, Championship, League One, Challenge Cup
- 🏉 NSW Cup, QLD Cup, Women’s Super League
- 🔥 Historical seasons back to 1998
With nrlR you can pull:
✅ Match fixtures and results, including referees, venues and attendance
✅ Ladders with home, away and total splits
✅ Player and team statistics from Champion Data, with 60+ metrics per player per match
✅ Team lists, injuries and suspensions
✅ Venues and coaching records
Every function returns a tidy tibble, ready for dplyr, ggplot2 or a model.
💿 Installation
From CRAN:
install.packages("nrlR")Or the development version from GitHub:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("DanielTomaro13/nrlR")🔥 Quick examples
All output below is real, captured from the package.
📊 The 2025 NRL ladder
fetch_ladder(season = 2025, league = "nrl") |>
select(position, team, total_p, total_w, total_l, total_f, total_a, pd, points)
#> # A tibble: 17 x 9
#> position team total_p total_w total_l total_f total_a pd points
#> <dbl> <chr> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 1 Canberra 24 19 5 654 506 148 44
#> 2 2 Melbourne 24 17 7 671 459 212 40
#> 3 3 Canterbury 24 16 8 534 414 120 38
#> 4 4 Brisbane 24 15 9 680 508 172 36
#> 5 5 Cronulla 24 15 9 599 490 109 36
#> # i 12 more rowsThe full ladder has 29 columns, including separate home and away records and points per game.
🏟️ Fixtures and scores for a round
fetch_fixture(season = 2025, round_number = 5)
#> # A tibble: 8 x 11
#> comp round venue city home_team home_score away_team away_score kickoff_utc
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <int> <chr> <int> <dttm>
#> 1 NRL Round 5 GIO Stadium Canb~ Raiders 24 Sharks 20 2025-04-03 09:00:00
#> 2 NRL Round 5 CommBank Stadium Sydn~ Panthers 18 Cowboys 22 2025-04-04 07:00:00
#> 3 NRL Round 5 Accor Stadium Sydn~ Rabbitohs 20 Roosters 14 2025-04-04 09:00:00
#> 4 NRL Round 5 CommBank Stadium Sydn~ Eels 23 Dragons 22 2025-04-05 04:00:00
#> 5 NRL Round 5 Cbus Super Stad~ Gold~ Titans 10 Dolphins 36 2025-04-05 06:30:00
#> # i 3 more rows
#> # i 2 more variables: kickoff_local <dttm>, match_link <chr>📅 A full season of results
fetch_results(seasons = 2025, league = "nrl")
#> # A tibble: 213 x 12
#> season league round date time home_team home_score away_team away_score referee venue
#> <dbl> <chr> <dbl> <date> <chr> <chr> <int> <chr> <int> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 2025 nrl 1 2025-03-01 Sat 4:00pm Canberra 30 Warriors 8 G. Atk~ Alle~
#> 2 2025 nrl 1 2025-03-01 Sat 8:30pm Penrith 28 Cronulla 22 A. Kle~ Alle~
#> 3 2025 nrl 1 2025-03-06 Thu 8:00pm Sydney 14 Brisbane 50 G. Sut~ Alli~
#> # i 210 more rows
#> # i 1 more variable: attendance <int>Pass a vector such as seasons = 1998:2025 to build a historical dataset in one call.
📈 Champion Data player and team stats
# 1. Find the competition ID
fetch_cd_comps() |>
filter(season == 2025, grepl("NRL|Origin", name)) |>
select(id, name, rounds, season)
#> # A tibble: 6 x 4
#> id name rounds season
#> <int> <chr> <int> <int>
#> 1 12755 2025 Telstra NRL Premiership 27 2025
#> 2 12757 2025 NRLW 11 2025
#> 3 12735 2025 State of Origin 1 2025
#> 4 12736 2025 State of Origin Womens 1 2025
#> 5 12756 2025 Telstra NRL Finals 4 2025
#> # i 1 more row
# 2. Pull every player's stats for a round
stats <- fetch_player_stats_championdata(comp = 12755, round = 4)
dim(stats)
#> [1] 288 63The 63 columns include tries, try assists, line breaks, tackle breaks, metres gained, post-contact metres, tackles, missed tackles, offloads, kick metres, errors and penalties conceded. fetch_team_stats_championdata() returns the same metrics at team level.
🛠 Function reference
| Function | What it returns |
|---|---|
fetch_fixture() |
Fixtures and scores for a round from NRL.com |
fetch_results() |
Match results for one or more seasons, across 10 competitions |
fetch_ladder() |
Ladder with home, away and total splits |
fetch_ladder_nrl() |
Official NRL.com ladder for a season and round |
fetch_player_stats() |
Player stats, with a choice of source |
fetch_player_stats_championdata() |
Champion Data player stats for a competition and round |
fetch_team_stats_championdata() |
Champion Data team stats for a competition and round |
fetch_cd_comps() |
Every Champion Data competition ID, 2009 onward |
fetch_lineups() |
Team lists from an NRL.com team-list article |
fetch_injuries_suspensions() |
Current injuries and suspensions |
fetch_venues() |
Venue usage and attendance |
fetch_coaches() |
Coaching records by league and season |
Full argument documentation is on the pkgdown site or via ?fetch_ladder in R.
📊 Data sources and coverage
- NRL.com for fixtures, ladders and team lists
- Rugby League Project for historical results, ladders, venues and coaches
- Champion Data match-centre feeds for advanced player and team statistics
- Zero Tackle for injuries and suspensions
league = |
Competition |
|---|---|
"nrl" |
NRL Premiership |
"state_of_origin" |
State of Origin |
"nsw_cup", "qld_cup"
|
NSW Cup, QLD Cup |
"super_league", "championship", "league_one"
|
UK competitions |
"womens_super_league" |
Women’s Super League |
"challenge_cup", "1895_cup"
|
UK knockout cups |
🚨 Ethical usage
Please use nrlR responsibly:
- ✅ Respect each site’s terms of service
- ✅ Cache what you download rather than re-scraping it
- ✅ Attribute data sources in your analysis
- ❌ Don’t hammer servers with rapid repeated requests
- ❌ Don’t redistribute scraped data commercially without permission
🆘 Getting help
- 📖 Documentation: danieltomaro13.github.io/nrlR or
help(package = "nrlR") - 💬 Bugs and requests: GitHub Issues
📄 Citation
citation("nrlR")@Manual{nrlR,
title = {nrlR: Functions to Scrape Rugby Data},
author = {Daniel Tomaro},
year = {2025},
note = {R package version 0.1.2},
url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=nrlR},
}📝 License
MIT © Daniel Tomaro
This package is not affiliated with the NRL, Rugby League Project, Champion Data, or any official rugby league organisation. All data is sourced from publicly available information.