And we made it. It’s last the tips post for 2018. I plan to do a finals preview, once the top eight is actually decided, and maybe one more recap and then that’s it for a while.

Let’s not delay then and get into it.

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We’re in the penultimate round of the regular season and can definitely feel the approaching finals footy. There’s still some unfinished business to be resolved, specifically ensuring that the Tigers finish ninth as they are destined to do until the heat death of the universe, or maybe when Jeremy Marshall-King’s backended contract at the Bulldogs forces a transfer to Wests and history can try to repeat with the lesser relative. Or maybe they will have to wait until Benji’s and Robbie’s kids grow up?

In the meantime, my tipping has gone to crap so maybe you should ignore me and go with the Greeks.

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I kind of liked last week’s format, so I might try to hybridise it with the typical 2018 format. Originally, I wanted to cut down on the time these took to put together but unfortunately I also like to type a lot of garbage. Instead of the Other Games paragraph that I was throwing together and didn’t add much insight, I’m going to flesh those out a bit more but at the expense of making the top three games by MVR a little shorter.

It’s amazing that I’ve been doing this for nearly two seasons and still haven’t settled on a format I really like. Might need to follow the crowd and do a reader survey post-season to help inform it.

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I’ll be honest, I’m extremely short on time this week, so consider this an express post of tips. If you prefer this format, let me know and I’ll stop wasting my, and your, time every week.

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By now, you’ll probably have processed last night’s Immortals announcements. Pre-war superstars Frank Burge, Dally Messenger and Dave Brown were joined by Norm Provan and Mal Meninga in receiving Australian rugby league’s highest honours. This of course means that the Souths Magpies have an Immortal. Finally. Everyone in the QCup, except for Wynnum Manly and Redcliffe, can suck ovarian genitals. Hmm, cloacae actually, I guess. Norths, please, Churchill doesn’t count for you guys. That’s like the Gold Coast Seagulls claiming Wally Lewis. You’re embarrassing us all.

Anyway, I’m not sure where the #crisis angle will come from but I’m sure the usual suspects will have a multitude of think pieces about how there were too many and too few Immortals inducted, which simultaneously offers long overdue recognition for greats of the game but also overlooks other obvious and more deserving selections. I’m sure we’ll get over it by kick off tonight.

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I had a bit of a shocker last week, which hasn’t helped my run in the work tipping comp. I knew I was taking a few outside chances, which was clear when I picked a bunch of away teams, but four from eight is not really an acceptable outcome when you’re at the top. It especially hurts when Eratosthenes got two right out of the four I got wrong.

But enough of that, let’s gone rugby league tips.

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Now that Origin is over and we’re in the run to the finals, it’s time to take a quick look at how the tipsters are performing. Our NRL tippers are doing comparatively well and have more or less stuck together. Eratosthenes leads for the second year in a row on 61.7% (84/136) with the Jury surprisingly bringing up the rear with 58.8%, which is only four correct tips behind the leader.

In the ISC, things have been less rosy with me lagging on 56.3% (67/119), despite pulling in a perfect round at one point, and the joint leaders are Euclid and the Jury on 63.8% (76). The spread for QCup is wider than the NRL, which is interesting and suggests some different dynamics are at work in the competitions.

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If you’re interested in tonight’s final Origin game, I think Queensland will win. There’s no particular reason and I’m well aware that Slater’s track record in milestone games is not flash but I don’t think the Blues will turn up with the intensity required to actually get the sweep. They were perilously close to losing game II and the Maroons have dumped one of the players responsible (how Will Chambers still gets a run on is beyond me). I gather from the media frothing over the idea, and subsequent undermining of the Maroons’ achievements from the state media, that Brad Fittler is quite keen on the idea so maybe he will do his job well, something that the Blues will be unfamiliar with, and get them over the hump.

Either way, we would’ve been better served with an Australia-Tonga test over a dead rubber.

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