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NRL Tips – Finals Week 2, 2020

October 8, 2020, 4:27 pm By Joel Leave a Comment

2020 Season Results:

Head-to-Head Tipping: 122/164 (74%) (Last week: 4/4)

2019 Season Results:

Head-to-Head Tipping: (64%)

2018 Season Results:

Head-to-Head Tipping: (58%)

Line Betting: (46%)

2017 Season Results:

Head-to-Head Tipping: 66%

Line Betting: 55%

(NOTE: If this is your first visit to the site, be sure to click here for an explanation of what we’re all about.)

  • Roosters
  • Rabbitohs

Notes

  • Unsurprisingly, the Roosters were significantly better last weekend, but still couldn’t quite do enough to get the chocolates. It appeared as though the Roosters blew their wad in a dominant opening quarter hour, before getting steamrolled by Penrith’s bench rotation. Forward leader Jared Waerea-Hargreaves looked particularly shot, playing a total of just 42 minutes (his 4th-lowest volume this season), one week removed from back-to-back 66-minute efforts. Once the Panthers got the ascendancy, they never looked back (though Brent Naden’s brain-snap certainly made for a nervous few minutes). We suspect that Sydney’s opening blitzkrieg was a team-specific strategy (Penrith are known for having an impenetrable defense through the opening 20 minutes, that allows them to quickly build leads), and won’t be repeated against the Raiders. Which is good – if they’re forced to spend half the game without JWH again, Canberra’s middles could really make a game of it. As for the Raiders, they were indescribably awful against Cronulla – and somehow still managed to get home. Canberra made a disturbing 14 errors (their 2nd-most this year) and conceded 4 drop-outs, providing Cronulla with never-ending field position. The fact that Canberra ultimately won speaks more to Cronulla’s ineffectiveness without Shaun Johnson than anything else – if Canberra were to play the same this week, they’d get lit up for 50 points. But of course, they won’t – last week was an uncharacteristically bad day, and we’d expect their performance to positively regress toward the mean. The question though, is whether or not their mean is good enough to win. On this point, we think not. The back half of Canberra’s season has been built on surprisingly strong offensive performances (we say ‘surprisingly’ because they’ve managed it without their best player, Josh Hodgson). After failing to score 5 tries in a game at all over the opening 13 weeks, they’ve now hit that mark in 7 of their past 8 games. They’ve achieved this through a balanced team effort: go-forward has improved from a RMVOA of -1.36% to 2.24% pre-/post-Round 13; that’s led to extra field position and more opportunities for repeat sets (forced drop-outs have risen by an average of 1 per game), which in turn has built pressure, and eventually led to tries. However, the Roosters pack is a different beast; they rank 2nd in the league in both RMVOA and RMCVOA. While Canberra have won the net yardage battle in 6 of their past 8, there’s virtually no chance that happens here. In Canberra’s only loss since Round 13 – which, by the way, came against the Roosters – they got outgained by 132m, and without field position got strangled out of the contest, producing just 2 line breaks on their way to an 18-6 defeat. Without many points, we doubt Canberra’s D alone can keep them in the contest, so our expectation is that something very similar happens here.
  • The Eels completed Part 1 of their 2020 Finals disappearing act with aplomb last weekend, getting smoked 36-24 by the Storm. It speaks volumes about how badly Parramatta’s traveling that many observers considered that a ‘better’ performance. Let’s be serious – if conceding 11 line breaks in a single game of football is ‘better’, how bad must you have been? Even allowing for the strength of their opponent, that level of defensive ineptitude is completely inexcusable for a team with any designs on winning the competition; actual competition heavyweights Penrith and Melbourne have yet to concede more than 6 in a game all year. Meanwhile, Parramatta back up a 9 line break conceded performance against the Tigers with a further 11, and they’re somehow considered to have improved? If they turn up and defend like that again, they’ll get absolutely destroyed by the Rabbitohs, as they did five weeks ago, when they got pumped 38-0. We’re happy to concede that Parra’s offense has looked a bit better the past few weeks, but against Souths, they’ll be completely outgunned if they let this turn into a shoot-out. The only way to beat the Bunnies is to defend well – something the Eels have been struggling to do for a while now.

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