I’ll spare you the lengthy and moderately pompous words I had written about cheating. The last week has been dominated by refs faulting to a sickening degree and to a lesser extent, the lack of appreciation of Super League on the Gold Coast.
The announcement of St Helens coach Justin Holbrook as the Titans new head coach has been given the tick by those who know what they’re talking about and less so from those that don’t. The important thing is that the Gold Coast didn’t sign Kevin Walters (<40% win percentage while at Catalans compared to Holbrook’s >70% at St Helens). Hopefully this is the first step in the Titans becoming a real NRL franchise. The people running it honestly make it look a lot harder than it is.
Here’s some other stuff you might have missed:
(sorry, this one is behind a very modest paywall – you should subscribe anyway)
You may notice that the “Est” has been dropped from the winning percentages under xPPG. This is because I’ve finally completed a small piece of work that has been bugging me all year. I’ll explain in more detail in an upcoming post but I’ve gone through enough data to work out a means of converting the gap between two teams’ xPPG to a winning percentage. Previously, I’ve been estimating it based on a quick survey I did but I have an actual formula to deploy. This doesn’t necessarily improve the accuracy of the winning percentage, however, it does mean the four Jury votes are presented in the same manner.
Here are the tips for this weekend’s action:
National Rugby League
Intrust Super Cup
Round 19 concludes this weekend, with the remaining four games being played.
While the relationship between xPPG and winning percentage is likely to be different at QCup level than in the NRL, I don’t have the sample size to work with to how conversion works. In lieu, I’m using the NRL method. Please just bear that in mind.
Pythago NRL 