More and more, the focus on tackles is not who makes the most, but who misses the least.

2021 has seen more of a skew to that pattern of statistical thinking as clubs grapple with a faster style of play created by the new rules and record scorelines as a result week after week.

Those teams who can tackle better than the rest give themselves an enormous advantage week after week, and it shows, with six of the top eight teams on the tackle efficiency leaderboard finishing in the overall top eight.

Tackle efficiency is worked out by missed tackles as a percentage of a team's total attempted tackles.

Here, we go over the top five teams when it comes to tackling, before revealing the full list, with the final list loosely reflecting ladder position, revealing again just how important this is.

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4. New Zealand Warriors

8674 tackles made, 725 tackles missed, 92.29%

The Warriors are the only non-finals team to appear in the list.

While the Auckland-based side don't have the consistency or razzle-dazzle to go with the competition's top teams, they do the little things right, week after week.

Nowhere was that more evident than a period at the back end of the season when they won a number of games on the hop despite being hopelessly outpowered and outmanned, down injuries and suspensions, and with a centre in Euan Aitken playing second-row.

The Warriors have every right to have dropped the ball defensively, but like the way they complete sets and have high possession tallies, they do the little things right, which is a credit to coach Nathan Brown, despite the immense criticism he receives.

Tohu Harris is the leader in the middle third, but the aforementioned Aitken has solidified an edge all season, while their systems allow all players to do the job, no matter how often their combinations seem to change due to injury and suspension.

Proving how much work the team have had to do, they have made more tackle attempts than any team apart from the St George Illawarra Dragons, as will be revealed on the full list at the end of this article.