NRL Tips – 2020 Grand Final

2020 Season Results:

Head-to-Head Tipping: 125/168 (74%) (Last week: 2/2)

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.)

• Panthers

Notes

As rugby league purists, we love this Grand Final. It’s far too common under the NRL Finals system for random, ill-deserving plebeians to fluke their way into the big one, and spoil what should be a showcase for the best teams in football to square off (teams like the 2014 Bulldogs, 2016 Sharks and 2017 Cowboys spring immediately to mind; and in the case of Cronulla, they even won the bloody thing). That won’t be the case here. 2020 has been a season with an elite tier of three team – the Panthers, Storm and Roosters – and everybody else a long way back. As it happens, the Roosters had their opportunity against Penrith and squandered it; now Penrith and Melbourne are the last two giants standing. We’re not going to argue that one team or the other can’t win. Both sides project to score between 2-3 tries, and in all likelihood the game will still be in doubt right up until the final whistle blows. Instead, we’ll argue that the consensus view that’s seen Melbourne installed as favourites is wrong, and that if anyone has a slight edge in this contest, it’s Penrith. The Storm were not as good as you thought they were The fact that we even have to muster an argument in favour of a team currently riding a 17-game winning streak (that includes beating this week’s opponent) should immediately strike you as odd in the first place. The swing in behind Melbourne has been driven by a few factors, the most significant being that the Storm were so ‘impressively dominant’ in their dismantling of the Raiders. However, we beg to disagree. For a start, the Raiders were terrible. Even the most one-eyed Melbourne fan would have to admit that the Raiders’ opening 20 minutes was one of the most spectacular bed-wettings of recent memory. The Raiders made a staggering 7 errors in the first half alone (as an aside, the Panthers have made 7 or fewer errors in 6 complete games this season), presenting the Storm with both possession and field position. Yes, Melbourne capitalised, but only the Ryan Papenhuyzen try required any real creativity (and even it was gifted by a bad read from Jordan Rapana; if he releases and leaves Justin Olam for George Williams, there’s no overlap). The other three were some of the softest tries you’ll see in a Finals game – a barge-over by Jesse Bromwich; an embarrassing sequence of jersey-grabbing on Suliasi Vunivalu; and an unfortunate cock-up by Nic Cotric created the rest of the Storm’s points. Yes, they were up 24-0 after as many minutes, but that score was dependent on poor Canberra defense errors – the sort that Penrith haven’t made all year. Next, let’s pretend that Canberra weren’t shit (though they most definitely were). After adjusting for the different opponents and possession shares (remembering that the Raiders are considered a ‘difficult’ match-up), it was actually Penrith who produced the better attacking numbers, not Melbourne. As it happens, Penrith out-produced Melbourne in LBVOA (20.92% v -0.92%), RMVOA (15.32% v -9.92%) and TBVOA (30.60% v 26.94%). In layman’s terms, Penrith performed better at ‘the things that contribute to scoring points’ than Melbourne did, despite ultimately scoring fewer tries. And in case you’re thinking “yeah, but that’s just your stupid algorithm; I know what I saw”, we’ll say two things. One, if you hate our algorithms, what are you doing here? And two, your eyes deceive you – Penrith outperformed Melbourne in absolute terms, too. The Panthers made more LBs (5 v 4) and RMs (1550 v 1283), with the Storm only winning in TBs (32 v 28) – though with Penrith having had to make 25% more tackles, we consider that number in the Panthers’ favour, too. Penrith were better than you thought they were So, having established that the Storm’s performance was more ‘opportunistic’ than dominant, let’s turn our eyes to the other common position – that the Panthers were unconvincing, and “if they play like that against Melbourne, they’ll get flogged”. First, we agree that Penrith bombed a stack of opportunities (the “forward pass” called on Josh Mansour; Jarome Luai kicking instead of passing; Nathan Cleary missing a wide open Brian To’o, just to name a few). However, the critical takeaway shouldn’t be the fact that they bombed them, it’s the fact that they created them. While popular opinion is that if Penrith perform the same against Melbourne they’ll get pumped (wrong), we’d argue it’s in fact the opposite – the Storm could play Penrith for four weeks in a row and not be gifted the sorts of tries they were handed by Canberra. Without fail, Penrith force teams to earn their tries – the Panthers have conceded more than 2 tries in a game just 7 times all season (and no, the Storm weren’t one of them). We agree Melbourne’s offense is capable of it, but not the way they scored their points last weekend. If the Storm play the same, never mind scoring 30; they’ll be lucky to get to 6. Second, let’s discuss Penrith’s handling. Here, Penrith were clearly worse than Melbourne, making 13 errors to the Storm’s 3. The argument surrounding Penrith’s sloppy possession comes in two parts – first, that since Penrith were bad and Melbourne were good, this is likely to be repeated; and second, that if it’s repeated, Melbourne will blow the doors off the Panthers. To the first point, we have two notable objections. For starters, while the Storm were playing on a dry track at Suncorp Stadium, the Panthers were playing on soggy ANZ Stadium turf – comparing the two numbers head-to-head in this case is like apples and oranges. The Panthers made more errors because of course they did – the ball was as slippery as a Vasolined-up James Graham. But further, if we’re going to consider ball control a key factor in this game, surely it favours the Panthers? Over the much larger sample size of the entire season, Penrith average a full 2 errors per game fewer than Melbourne. Yes, Melbourne were impressively disciplined with the footy last weekend, but it was also their lowest error count of the year by a full 4 errors, while Penrith’s was their highest. What’s more likely – that both sides repeat these outlier performances, or that they regress to their mean? And regardless, we still disagree on the second point (that giving the same number of extra sets to Melbourne would see them get flogged). Let’s unpack the ludicrousness of that statement for a moment. In taking that view, you’re implying that given an equal opportunity, the Storm would score roughly twice as many points as the Rabbitohs. The same Rabbitohs who came into the Preliminary Final averaging 48 points per game over the previous 3 weeks (a period in which they faced the 3rd, 5th and 8th best defenses in the league)? If there is any team capable of punishing opposition errors, it surely has to be Souths – and the impenetrable Panthers D held them to just 16 points, despite the Rabbitohs’ 53% possession share. Put differently, even while producing their worst handling of the year, providing the most opportunities to the most in-form attacking team in the league, Penrith still conceded 16 or less points (something they’ve achieved in 20 of 23 games this year). And you think they’re likely to get flogged? How we see it playing out As we said at the outset, this should be a tight game nonetheless. It’s likely Melbourne earn an extra line break across the course of the game, though this is likely to be counterbalanced by the Panthers enjoying territorial advantage (a line break on your own 30 is less likely to result in a try than a line break on your opponent’s 30). We expect a reasonably significant possession advantage in favour of the Panthers (something like 52-48), courtesy of their typically tight ball control and knack for forcing repeat sets (they average 2.55 forced drop-outs per game, vs Melbourne’s 1.36). With such a weight of possession and field position, we’d expect them to be in better spots to score tries – and for that matter, kick field goals. In a tight game, we want the team with the best kicker, who’s likely to spend the most time with the ball down the other end. That kicker is Nathan Cleary, and that team is the Penrith Panthers.

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