Super Rugby: Step aside Sonny Bill Williams - New Zealand rugby's new offload king is Anton Lienert-Brown

Anton Lienert-Brown, Jack Goodhue, Sonny Bill Williams and Ngani Laumape of the All Blacks. Photo / Getty

Anton Lienert-Brown is New Zealand rugby's new offload king, according to the stats.

Sonny Bill Williams may have impressed with yet another trademark offload for the Blues two weeks ago – setting up Otere Black to score with an elegant flick of the wrist in the Blues' win over the Stormers – but his crown may have been claimed by his All Black teammate Lienert-Brown.

Speaking to Radio Sport Breakfast, 1014 Rugby stats guru Steven Prescott says the Chiefs centre is the most efficient offloader in Super Rugby, while almost doubling Williams' offloads this season.

"The one that stood out for me for Anton Lienert-Brown is he has the most offloads without ever creating an error when offloading across the whole competition," said Prescott.

"He's running on 13 offloads, zero errors. Israel Folau for example has 19 offloads but a handful of errors amongst it. When you're going into this level of rugby you're trying to minimize those mistakes.

Prescott said Williams has only attempted seven offloads, missing three of them, while his Blues teammate Nonu has seemingly cut offloads out of his game completely.

"Ma'a Nonu has just cut offloads out of his game. He gave one offload and he successfully executed it against the Crusaders and he hasn't tried it since."

The other major talking point in Super Rugby this season has been the form of the All Blacks first-fives, especially with the Rugby World Cup in Japan quickly approaching.

Prescott pointed out that Crusaders No10 Richie Mo'unga, widely regarded as the best kicker in the country, has in fact only kicked 19 times this whole season in open play, while devastating runner Beauden Barrett has more than tripled that tally.

"I was really shocked. I started looking through the numbers. When you start looking at kicking in play there are two types of kicks, there's kicks from hand and then the penalty kick. If you take away the penalty kicks, as in kicks to touch, Mo'unga has only kicked 19 times in six matches in play.

"You compare that, Beauden Barrett has kicked 58 times in six matches, even McKenzie has kicked 38 times in six matches. So twice as much and three times as much as Mo'unga's kicking."

Prescott explained that the Crusaders are using Bryn Hall and David Havili just as much if not more than their first-five when it comes to kicking, a tactic that he says is "creating havoc for the opposition".

"They're really moving around where they're kicking the ball from and who is kicking the ball. They'll use Bryn Hall to kick the ball and it really confuses the backfield, they don't know really when to come up and when to hang back and it's really creating havoc for the opposition."