Background In the tumult of the instigation of the National Rugby League, one of Sydney’s oldest and most successful clubs was on the chopping block after years of below average performance on and off the field. Needing to rationalise the competition to fourteen teams in 2000, the NRL took the decisive step of excluding South… Read More Club Report – South Sydney Rabbitohs
Before Origin ruined everything, I was looking at expansion opportunities using Cap (parts 1, 2, 3, & 4), a metric that measures the ratio of the population of the city over the number of people who turn up to a game. Using a bit of data from AFL and NRL, opportunities in Perth and Brisbane offered… Read More Opinion – Sydney, relocations are better than mergers
We are nearly, finally at the end of the Origin series. I’m sick of every single game being interrupted by ten sold minutes of Origin analysis and promotion. Guys, its not that exciting that it should distract from another deadly boring edition of two Sydney teams somehow simultaneously losing to each other. Well, when I… Read More NRL Tips – Round 18, 2017
Parramatta and Canterbury kicked off round 16 on Thursday night at ANZ. The Eels opened with a solid first half and collapsed into a terrible second half, letting the Bulldogs back in to a game they should have stitched up with twenty to go. The right team got up in the end on golden point… Read More NRL Projections Update – Round 17, 2017
Background Penrith first joined the NSWRL in 1967, the same year that Cronulla was admitted to the competition. Success came much sooner for the Panthers, reaching their first grand final in 1990 and taking out the big prize in 1991. The Panthers had some leaner years, including a very mediocre 2002 season, before a surge… Read More Club Report – Penrith Panthers
Last time, we went off-piste and moved from rigorous analysis to speculative analysis. Let’s go further off-piste and apply Cap in ways that it was never meant to be (that’s why we’ve switched from “Analysis” to “Opinion”, even I have my limits). Brisbane Because of the capacity constraints discussed a few weeks ago, it’s a… Read More Opinion – More Cap test cases for NRL expansion
The number of rounds remaining is now into single digits as we close in on the final third of the season and the run to the finals. Here’s how round 17 is shaping up. Draw Canterbury (6-9) @ Parramatta (8-7) At no point in their last game did Canterbury look like they actually wanted to win… Read More NRL Tips – Round 17, 2017
The round kicked off on Friday with a scrappy game in Auckland between the Warriors and Bulldogs. Errors were the order of the day as the New Zealand side managed to eke out a win in a game neither side seemed to control or, for that matter, want to win. This was followed by a… Read More NRL Projections Update – Round 16, 2017
Round 15 was great with each game was more exciting than the last, except for the first one and the last one and there was only four games. Round 16 is ahead with some tricky fixtures: 1st vs 2nd, 3rd vs 5th, 11th vs 12th and the always celebrated 14th vs 16th. There’s also an… Read More NRL (& Origin) Tips – Round 16, 2017
Background We tend to think of the North Queensland Cowboys as an indisputable top team but in doing this, we forget just how crap they were when they first started out in 1995. The Cowboys joined the ARL as an expansion team at the same time as the Warriors, South Queensland Crushers and Western Reds.… Read More Club Report – North Queensland Cowboys
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