Well, I was in Sydney so I didn’t see a single minute of any of the short round of games. What I see on the scoresheet fundamentally reminds me that I know so little about this sport. I thought that, even weakened, the Roosters and the Broncos would be handy enough to take care of the Raiders and the Warriors but evidently not. The Warriors were barely troubled by the Broncos and the Raiders kept on top, just, of the Roosters. Cronulla managed to do right by me and edge out Canterbury but only did it late with a field goal to avoid golden point. Souths never seemed to be in it against Parramatta.

Round 12 Results

 Parramatta 22 (6-6) d  South Sydney 16 (4-8)

 New Zealand 28 (4-8) d  Brisbane 10 (8-4)

 Cronulla 9 (9-3) d  Canterbury 8 (5-7)

 Canberra 24 (6-6) d  Sydney 16 (8-4)

[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 remain on top of the Collated Ladder, even if the Sharks have knocked them off top spot on the real ladder. There’s a chasing pack of five clubs, including Cronulla, St George Illawarra, Brisbane, Sydney and Manly Warringah, sitting on fifteen wins. The Origin rounds will separate the teams somewhat, perhaps with the Roosters and Broncos suffering more than the others due to their line-ups, but the disadvantaged teams should bounce back in the final quarter of the season.

There’s an equally solid pack of teams aiming for eleven wins, ranging from Penrith to Parramatta, New Zealand and the Gold Coast. GCT have been the only inspiring team out of that lot but it will take a lot of work for them to dislodge either Manly, Canberra or North Queensland.

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.

The biggest change at the top end of town is the relative hammering to the Broncos chances of winning the minor premiership. I guess I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. The Stocky rates Manly a better chance (10%) than the Broncos (7%) but it won’t last. I’ve brought back the Dragons but the usual suspects are where they are.

Canberra and New Zealand are better than even at making the finals now and, along with North Queensland, Manly and the top 5, are the mostly likely candidates for the finals. Obviously one will need to go to make a top 8 and my guess is the Warriors won’t quite get there.

The only change at the other end of the table was me taking the Warriors off the wooden spoon graph. Rabbits and Tigers went up a little, most of everyone else stayed the same.

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.