Last weekend saw a much more predictable round with teams, perhaps for the first time this season, actually sticking to the form book. In fact, there were no what I would call upsets. The favourites generally accounted for their opposition, particularly the Broncos shutting out the Tigers in Brisbane, the Dragons taking care of the Warriors in Hamilton and the Storm putting the Rabbitohs down in Perth. Cronulla, Canberra and Sydney City decided to make it a bit more difficult from themselves, either going behind early or letting their opponents back in late in the game, but managed to scrape across the line.

Round 11 Results

 Cronulla 18 (8-3) d  North Queensland 14 (6-5)

 St George Illawarra 30 (7-4) d  New Zealand 14 (4-7)

 Brisbane 36 (8-3) d  Wests Tigers 0 (3-8)

 Manly 30 (6-5) d  Gold Coast 10 (4-7)

 Canberra 22 (5-6) d  Parramatta 16 (5-6)

 Penrith 30 (4-7) d  Newcastle 20 (2-9)

 Sydney 24 (8-3) d  Canterbury 18 (5-6)

 Melbourne 14 (9-2) d  South Sydney 6 (4-7)

[Home team in italics]

Collated Ladder

Now to look ahead to see what the Collated Ladder has predicted for the final standings of the season.

The Storm resume their place atop the ladder, although only with the slenderest of margins. The form teams at the moment – the Storm, Roosters, Sharks and Broncos, all with ratings above 1600 – sit close behind in a tight pack. Coming in to the Origin period, the games will be weighted less heavily and we should see some surprising results which will undoubtedly throw the whole table into chaos.

The Sea Eagles win over the Titans has, for some reason, put them on par with the Dragons. If you look closely, you’ll see that’s largely a rounding error and Manly’s next defeat should separate the two, even if the Stocky rates them equally. Further down, the Raiders and Titans have swapped places. The Gold Coast now sit right on the bubble of a finals appearance yet again. They probably can’t rely on Parramatta breaching the salary cap again to get in.

Probabilities Matrix

The Stocky can give us the probability of specific season outcomes so you can see how your team is tracking to win the minor premiership, make the finals or avoid the wooden spoon.

It’s kind of interesting this week. Without any upsets, the probabilities have stayed somewhat stable. In the race for the minor premiership, Melbourne remain at 3/1, Sydney at 4/1, Brisbane at 6/1 and Cronulla at 8/1 odds. Still plenty of time for any of those teams but outside the top seven, it’s very close to write-off time.

Newcastle have returned to zero zero probability of winning the minor premiership and are now better than 2/1 to take the wooden spoon. The Tigers are an outside dark horse, proving that they are equally as bad as the Knights but without the heart/underdog story, sticking to 5/1. Everyone else is well behind but I’m keeping my eye on the Rabbitohs and the Warriors in case there’s a sudden resurgence from Newcastle.

Projected Wins

This table and graph shows the number of predicted wins this season for each club using the Stocky and Pythagorean expectation. The numbers should align to an extent but a significant mismatch can indicate a possible imminent change in performance.