Round 9 was pretty typical, garnering roughly five from eight correct tips. I suggested that there might be some trouble getting it right, and I was right about that, but the trouble came from surprising areas, e.g. the Warriors sneaking home against the Roosters in the dying minutes of the game. “Success” I’d like to… Read More NRL Tips – Round 10, 2017
Last time, I introduced the concept of Cap. Cap is the ratio of the number of people in the area of a game compared to the number of people who actually turn up over the season. In this case, the lower the Cap (i.e. the more people who attend compared to the size of the local… Read More Analysis – An historical comparison of rugby league and AFL attendances using Cap
Background Feared in the 2000s and now at the league’s nadir in the 2010s, the Newcastle story is definitely one of ups and downs. Founded in 1987 as an expansion to the NSWRL, Newcastle were early successes, taking their first premiership in 1997 during the ARL/Super League split. Andrew Johns led the team to a second… Read More Club Report – Newcastle Knights
As I suggested in the Tips post, there were a few upsets this round but they weren’t the ones I was expecting. I said it was “hard to imagine” the Eels and Warriors getting up but they did, even if the Warriors were pretty lucky to get a last minute, and winning, penalty at the… Read More NRL Projections Update – Round 9, 2017
Round 8 seemed to be a return to normal with a few upsets bringing us back to earth after a very successful Round 7. Round 9 will be more of the same with some even match-ups, including a top of the table clash between the Dragons and Storm on Sunday arvo and a questionable game… Read More NRL Tips – Round 9, 2017
The start of the AFL season ushered in a series of gushing articles about how wonderful the nearly 45,000 average attendance for the first round was and how the NRL’s struggle to get even 15,000 to their games was an indictment on the code and a sign that its demise was imminent. This is the… Read More Analysis – The pissing contest that is comparing average attendances
The thing about probabilities is that people don’t deal with them intuitively very well. This very site rated the Sharks at a 79% chance of winning over the Titans. Sure enough, the Titans came up with the goods in well fought game over the reining premiers. While 79% made Cronulla heavy favourites, that means that… Read More NRL Projections Update – Round 8, 2017
Round 8 does not offer too many difficult to judge matchups. For example, the two bottom teams are facing off against two in the top eight. Probably the most interesting game features the current ladder leaders, St George Illawarra, facing off against fourth placed Sydney City – their first real test of the season. Penrith might be able… Read More NRL Tips – Round 8, 2017
The Collated Ladder takes in two inputs: The projected number of wins for each club from the Stocky The projected number of wins for each club from Pythagorean expectations Put simply, the Collated Ladder is an average of these two numbers, with a 2:1 weighting towards the output of the Stocky, rounded to the nearest… Read More Primer – How does the Collated Ladder work?
Given that round 7 didn’t finish until Monday night, I couldn’t get the updated projections out until they’d actually finished playing. Being Tuesday, we’ll skip the updated ratings post and will do the same again next week when the projections update will come out Tuesday night after the ANZAC Day games. This week though, we… Read More NRL Projections Update – Round 7, 2017
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