The man begind random stats guy
What started as me scribbling numbers during games turned into a full-blown obsession. Now it’s a community of fans who love sport and stats as much as I do.
How it all began
2013 - 2018
My first job was playing rugby league. I've loved the sport since I was a kid, and got to play at rep level through my teens before spending time in an NRL club's youth system, until they worked out I wasn't quite up to scratch.
After that, I switched to Rugby Union. Played through school and then premier grade for a year before finishing up in Subbies. The body eventually said enough.
March 2020
While the world was in lockdown in 2020, I was stuck working in Queensland, away from family and mates in NSW, with nothing much to do after work. So I started a spreadsheet. A massive one. Tracked every rugby league game over three years to predict match outcomes and tryscorers.
By the end of 2020, the predictions were actually working. Turns out stats beat vibes.In 2021, I showed it to family and friends. My partner reckoned I should start an Instagram page. I wasn't convinced, but after a quick look around, there weren't many rugby league stats pages out there.
So I gave it a crack.
March 2021
I'm not a creative type and ChatGPT wasn't around yet, so naming the account was a challenge. I also wanted to stay anonymous in case it flopped – no one needed to know it was me.
Inspired by the Random Souths Guy craze, I landed on Random Stats Guy.
On 8 March 2021, @randomstatsguy went live on Instagram. First post: Craig Bellamy's unbeaten Round 1 record, complete with #likesforlike and #followforfollowback (cringe). For the first few days, I averaged two likes a post.
Then came my first viral moment. The Warriors fielded a team with five double-barrelled surnames – an NRL record at the time. The NRL Roast shared it to their story, and I gained over a thousand followers in a day.
Haven't looked back since. Today, Random Stats Guy is live across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X and TikTok.
August 2022
My first job was playing rugby league. I've loved the sport since I was a kid, and got to play at rep level through my teens before spending time in an NRL club's youth system, until they worked out I wasn't quite up to scratch.
After that, I switched to Rugby Union. Played through school and then premier grade for a year before finishing up in Subbies. The body eventually said enough.
- SC Playbook podcast with Tim Williams
- SENZ’s Run Home with Kirsty & Bev every Thursday
- Katchup with the Rugby League Guru and Kat Haddad
Dylan Mullan’s Life, Money and Love podcast.
March 2024
For the first three years, Random Stats Guy was just a hobby – my way to switch off from the nine-to-five. But I always had plans to take it further.
At the start of 2024, I took the leap and left full-time work. I launched a Patreon page that gives subscribers access to deep stats across the NRL, NBA, NFL and cricket – detailed breakdowns of team performance across weather, day/night games, referees, favourite/underdog status, try-scoring zones, and more.
The kind of stats you won't find anywhere else unless you spent all of COVID typing them up yourself.
Alongside Patreon, I now work part-time creating content for SC Playbook, provide stat sheets to Triple M for their rugby league commentary, and use the platform to promote exciting new businesses.
Get to know nathan
For general game information, such as results and tryscorers, I use Rugby League Project as it has every game, every player, every scorer of basically every rugby league game ever played.
For more detailed stats such as run metres, tackles, and Supercoach points are a mix of stats from the Fox Sports Lab and NRL.com. Both interpret stats differently and ultimately I use NRL.com as the “official” stats.
For try scorer analysis and results based on condition and favouritism. That has also been manually collated by myself.
My first job was playing rugby league – a great random fact in itself. I played for the North Sydney Bears Harold Matthews and SG Ball teams from 2013-2015. I was fortunate enough to spend 3 months in the Rabbitohs U19s High Performance Unit in 2015, until they finally found out I wasn’t good enough…
Other than that, I predominantly played Rugby Union. Playing 1st XV for School before playing the QLD Premier Grade for a year in 2018 with Bond University. I played out my final years of rugby in Subbies for the Mosman Whales.
When I left school, I followed the herd and did a Business degree. After 1 year in, it wasn’t for me and I dropped out of the course and picked up Sports Management which I thoroughly enjoyed until it was time to get a job.
During my 3 years running the account, I worked in a Digital Marketing agency in Sydney working across SEO, paid search and social channels in a range of different industries.
Before COVID, I had interned as an Assistant Team Manager for the Australian Rugby U20s team, tournament assistant for the Brisbane 10s, a marketing intern at the Gold Coast Suns and also did ground announcing and commentary for QLD Premier Grade Rugby and QWAFL.
To be the go-to page/brand for sports stats in Australia. How do I get there? Keep growing, keep sharing stats across a range of sports and hope the algorithm does its thing and lands me on the right people’s feed.
I want to be first to market with stats. By that I mean finding and dropping the stat before you hear it from a commentator or media page. That way I find that the brand gets shared and amplified across multiple media channels.
For me personally, my own goal would be to forge my way into the sporting media landscape. I was, and still am, very passionate about sports commentary, I did it for 3 years back in QLD and would love to revisit it if the opportunity arose.
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