This headline (the actual article is fine) from Tim Gore typified the attitude when the draw was released in November last year: Not only were the NRL never going to redo the draw, it speaks to the tendency that the they can do no right in the fans’ eyes (“Release the draw earlier! No, not that… Read More Season preview: who has the softest draw?
Can we predict a premiership winner from their Elo ratings? Obviously, yes. That’s what the Stocky is for and this site would pointless if this was not true. But what if we wanted to look into the future before a single game has been played? I think that the Elo ratings of premiership winning teams… Read More Predicting this year’s NRL premiership winner with class
The biggest off-season story in the NRL was the transfers of Cooper Cronk from Melbourne to Sydney and then Mitchell Pearce from Sydney to Newcastle. From the Roosters’ perspective, for two players likely on similar pay packets, how did the Roosters decide one was better than the other? Then I wondered if it were possible… Read More Primer – StatScore and Win Shares: rating NRL players
If you’re wired for numbers, like I am, it can be hard to deal with people’s feelings and understanding why they think the things that they do. That’s why I’ve decided to quantify the feelings a team generates into five distinct indices: Power, Hope, Panic, Fortune and Disappointment. Each index has two components. There’s a… Read More Primer – How do the Indices work?
The Greeks is the collective name given to a series of Elo rating models for tracking performance of rugby league teams and forecasting the outcomes of games. I usually refer to them as if the philosopher himself was making the prediction, even though the Greeks have mostly been dead for a couple thousand years and… Read More Primer – Who are the Greeks? 2018 Edition
I can finally put a woefully inadequate season of tipping behind me. For a guy that had an Elo rating system that could practically see the future last year (up around 67%), Euclid did let us all down really badly this year. But how good has the football been? This weekend sees the fairy tale-esque… Read More NRL Tips – Grand Final, 2017
We’re down to the final four. There’s the impossibly good expansion team from Melbourne, the pretty good expansion team from Brisbane, the grit-sucking, giant-slaying fairy tale machine from regional Queensland and there’s the 109 year old club of gronks that no one in their city wants to support. The NRL could not have set it… Read More NRL Tips – Preliminary Finals, 2017
I was right at least that my bracket was destroyed within fifteen minutes of the first game as the Roosters went to an early lead against the Broncos that they only briefly gave up. I finished the round one tip from four, meaning that the only thing I got right was that I got my… Read More NRL Tips – Semi Finals, 2017
If you haven’t checked out the deep dive in this year’s finals yet, I urge you to do so. I’ve sliced the finals every which way imaginable but for the record, here’s my bracket that will almost certainly be destroyed within fifteen minutes of the first game: Here’s why I tipped the way I did.… Read More NRL Tips – Qualifying Finals, 2017
We did it, guys! We made it to the end of the season. If you’re like me, it’s been a slog. It’s certainly the most committed I’ve been to watching large, sweaty men smashing into each other for many years. Making it so far has not been aided by my truly terrible tipping performance but… Read More NRL Tips – Round 26, 2017
Pythago NRL 