Stat Attack: The dirty carries your team loves

Dirty carries. They're rugby league's thankless chore, but any coach will tell you that without them, your team's going nowhere.

Getting out of trouble is the first point of business most every time a team starts a set, but more often than not the forwards are making their way back onside having just got through 40-60 seconds of defensive work.

It's here where wingers, those blokes that allegedly spend their time hanging around footballers, pull their weight.

For the biggest, and often the best in this department, that's typically 100-odd kilos – which they'll pitch into a thankless run aimed at getting a side out of the defensive 40 metre zone and into an attacking position.

A couple of the NRL's more maligned flyers proved themselves adept, with Manly's Jorge Taufua and the Roosters Blake Ferguson contributing on average a dozen of these charges per game.

Warriors pair Ken Maumalo and David Fusitu'a also excelled, with Fusitua's average of 11.5 metres per run among the most potent in the NRL, according to pan66.com Stats.

At 94 kilos, Wests Tigers flyer David Nofoaluma is the outlier on this list, and punching well above his weight given Ferguson, Taufua and Maumalo all have at least seven kilos on him.