The Obstruction Rule

2020 Season Results:

Head-to-Head Tipping: 11/16 (69%)

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.)

• Broncos
• Cowboys
• Roosters
• Dragons
• Sharks
• Storm
• Panthers
• Sea Eagles

Notes

• It seems inexplicable to us here at The Obstruction Rule that the opening game of the resumed competition should see the Broncos starting as underdogs at home to Parramatta. Granted, we’ve all had a bit going on lately, but that shouldn’t be enough for us to have forgotten how darn impressive the Broncos were in the opening two weeks. Allow us to remind you: Brisbane’s offense was ridiculous, generating the league’s highest LBVOA and TBVOA over the opening fortnight, as well as the 6th highest RMVOA (for comparison, Parramatta were 14th, 6th and 13th). Along the way, we saw the transformation of Thomas Flegler from bench forward into out-and-out stud, as they matched it with two of the game’s best packs (the Cowboys and Rabbitohs) without a host of regular forwards. Sure, they’ve now lost David Fifita as well, but his absence is surely offset by the returns of Matt Lodge, Joe Ofahengaue and Alex Glenn this week.
• As a result, one can only conclude that the bookies see the Eels as being considerably better than the teams Brisbane have beaten. Now, granted Parramatta are well placed to finish highly on the ladder this year, but that’s primarily due to a soft draw – something that won’t help them at all with this trip to Brisbane. Secondly, we might point out that in Week 1, they barely snuck home against competition lightweights, Canterbury – making their lofty ladder position solely the result of a thumping 46-0 win over the hilariously hopeless Titans. The fact they’ve been dining out on that victory for the past two months is embarrassing. If we had a dollar for every team who put 30+ on the Titans last year, we’d have enough to purchase a copy of the soundtrack to the Whitney Houston movie, The Bodyguard (which, incidentally, has finished as the overall #1 for the year more recently than the Eels have). Parramatta may yet win this game – the Broncos are still some way below full-strength. But to favour them over Brisbane at this point is to completely ignore how surprisingly dominant the Broncos have been so far.
• As previously mentioned, the Titans are so shockingly bad defensively that we’d struggle to ever tip them, and this week is no exception. That being said, their reshuffled spine of Tyrone Roberts, Ash Taylor, Jamal Fogarty and Nathan Peats looks like an upgrade (and is arguably better than what the Cows are trotting out this week), and the Cowboys have lost Michael Morgan and Gavin Cooper. We still aren’t tipping them, but at $3.36 there’s probably some value there.
• After a disappointing outing against Penrith, the Roosters were significantly better in Round 2 against Manly, in a match they really should have won (they produced a whopping 6 line breaks to 3, yet managed just a single try). The Roosters’ forwards have been laying an excellent platform, leading the team to distant 1st in RMVOA, with Siosiua Taukeiaho and Jared Waerea-Hargreaves tied for 11th among NRL forwards for runs of over 8m. The issue has simply been converting their opportunities – and if they continue to stick to their processes, those results should come. Field position should heavily favour Sydney, with the Rabbitohs yet to pass 1250m in a game this year (a mark the Roosters passed in both outings, including putting over 1700m on Manly). The Roosters’ new Flanagan/Keary halves combo should continue to improve, and let’s face it – they need a win here. They’re already 2 wins off the pace – going 0-3 would be disastrous.
• You can’t possibly tip the Warriors this week. In addition to being the worst attacking team of the opening fortnight (they scored just 1 try and made 1 line break in those two weeks combined, while finishing last, 2nd last and last in LBVOA, RMVOA and TBVOA), they’re now without one of their few attacking weapons, David Fusitua, and key middle, Leeson Ah Mau. Oh, and they’ve also been holed up in a hotel for the past three weeks. The Dragons aren’t great, but they’ve surely got enough to see off a team averaging 3 points per game.
• On paper, the Sharks look way too good for the Tigers. Their backline looks better; their halves look better; their forwards look better. However, it’s debatable whether or not they’ve actually played better so far. They’ve lost two close games to the Rabbitohs and Storm (no shame in that), and looked concerningly flat in doing it. They hardly broke a tackle against Souths, totaling just 14 tackle busts for the game, and made 23 against Melbourne. The Tigers, meanwhile, have made at least 30 in each of their games so far. Similarly, the Sharks discipline was non-existent, with the side averaging a combined 21.5 errors and penalties per game in their first two outings (vs the Tigers’ 14.5). If they remain just as clunky, there is a very real possibility here for Wests to pull Cronulla’s pants down. We’re mainly backing the Sharks this week on the back of a strong head-to-head record – they’ve won their past 6 straight against the Tigers, so we fancy they should feel positive enough to turn in a better performance here. We’re not full of confidence, though.
• Don’t be surprised if Saturday night’s clash between the Storm and Raiders ends up being low scoring. These sides were far and away the two best defensive sides of the opening fortnight, allowing just 5 line breaks conceded between them, over the two weeks combined (an average of 1.25 per game). With that level of D, points will surely be hard to come by. Melbourne’s offense has thus far not been that good (but has been good enough), while the Raiders’ has been difficult to gauge, due to the patheticness of their opposition (the Titans and Warriors). We’re leaning toward the home team in a tight one, but it’s close.
• No doubt the Knights will be pleased to see Nathan Cleary missing from Penrith’s line-up here, after the Panthers’ half personally put 34 points on them in a 54-10 drubbing at Penrith last year. Unfortunately, Newcastle have problems of their own here. Newcastle have lost fullback Kalyn Ponga for this week, in addition to the long-term loss of hooker Jayden Brailey. As a result, the Knights’ remodeled spine is even less recognisable than that of the Panthers‘, who’ll be turning to teenage sensation Matt Burton in the halves (no pressure, but The Obstruction Rule considers him the most talented half in the entire Penrith club – Cleary included). The most impressive part of Penrith’s surprising early season form was their ability to shut down Luke Keary and the entire Roosters’ offense in Week 1, limiting the Roosters to just a single line break. A similar game plan, built around stopping Mitch Pearce should be equally as effective here, given the lack of proven alternative playmaking options. If they do that, the Panthers’ dominant edge attackers should then be able to provide enough points for a win.
• It’s very difficult to imagine a halves combination of Lachlan Lewis and Jack Cogger troubling a Des Hasler defense even a little bit. Avoid the Bulldogs like you’ve been avoiding your loved ones for the past two months.

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2020 Season Results:

Head-to-Head Tipping: 6/8 (75%)

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.)

• Cowboys
• Panthers
• Rabbitohs
• Raiders
• Roosters
• Storm
• Tigers
• Eels

Notes

• It appears to be a case of “different season, same story” for the Cowboys. North Queensland confirmed our suspicions last week, with Valentine Holmes making little difference to an offense that’s been downright insipid for the past three seasons. To make matters worse, their forwards – unquestionably the Cowboys’ greatest strength – got absolutely smoked my the rampaging Broncos’ middles, whose starters all ran for over 100m. The return of Josh McGuire will help in that regard, as will the drop in opposition quality this week (against Parramatta, the Bulldogs had just one forward hit the 100m threshold, and all but two were held to under 80m). But don’t think this game will be easy – both sides struggle to generate much of anything, so the winner may be decided by a few lucky tries from kicks. We’re favouring North Queensland due to an expected dominance of field position, but expect neither side to be particularly enterprising. This has the potential to be a bit of a bludger.
• What a difference a good hooker makes! A year removed from possessing one of the league’s most pedestrian offenses, the Panthers came out and shredded the Roosters’ D to the tune of 5 line breaks and 3 tries, led by a masterful performance by returning hooker Api Koroisau. For context, from Round 18 last year (the beginning of the Roosters’ winning run to the premiership), they conceded 5 line breaks in a match just 3 times (against high-octane offenses Newcastle, Souths and Melbourne), and 3 tries in a game once (against Canberra). We’re not about to call the Panthers’ offense “fixed”, but having suddenly added the ability to attack back through the ruck via Koroisau and Isiaah Yeo (who ran for a staggering 81m post-contact) on top of their damaging left edge of Viliame Kikau and Brent Naden, the Panthers are considerably more dangerous. Their right edge still needs work, but if Nathan Cleary is to keep his Origin jersey, we’d expect to see improvements down that side as the season progresses, too.
• The Broncos were phenomenal last weekend, which makes it all the more difficult to say the following – we’re backing the Rabbitohs. This may be the toughest game of the week to pick – both sides were reasonably comfortable winners in Week 1, on the back of strong offensive production (the Broncos created 6 line breaks; the Rabbitohs 5). However, we’re tilting towards South Sydney for three main reasons. First, the Broncos’ offense was built on the platform laid by their forward pack – a forward pack that will be with Tevita Pangai Jr for the foreseeable future (suspension). Pangai alone accounted for over 100m, 1 line break and 1 line break assist. That’s a lot of production, and will be difficult to replace for a forward pack already without Matt Lodge and Alex Glenn. Second, while both sides’ offensive outputs were comparable, it should be noted that in 2019, Cronulla were a much better defensive opponent than the Cowboys. This may not hold true for 2020, but at this point we shouldn’t automatically assume that tearing up North Queensland is impressive (after all, they bled 6 or more line breaks in 5 of their last 9 games of 2019). Finally, there’s the Bennett factor – the Broncos’ former coach defeated his former charges on both occasions last year, and we’d expect him know exactly how to do it again.
• Despite the disappointing scoreline for the Roosters last weekend, they weren’t completely terrible. Their middles in particular totally dominated their Penrith counterparts for much of the match, before running out of steam in the second half. The issue for Sydney was their inability to convert that territorial advantage into points. The Panthers may yet turn out to be an elite defensive unit, but at this point the more likely explanation is that the Keary/Flanagan halves combination is going to suffer a few teething problems. They generated very little against Penrith (0 line break assists and 1 try assist between them), and it won’t get any easier against the impenetrable Sea Eagles defense. The upside for the Roosters is that Manly’s offense looked even worse than Sydney’s did. Penrith’s gain was Manly’s indescribable loss, as the first game of the ‘Danny Levi era’ brought zero tries, zero line breaks and just 12 tackle breaks (all competition lows). Granted, this was against Melbourne, but for what was once one of the league’s better offenses (and one that wasn’t held try-less or break-less at all in 2019), this performance must have been sobering. Their forwards got crushed, with star forward Jake Trbojevic’s 6.4m per carry the second-worst in the league among forwards with 10+ runs. Overall, this shapes as another low-scoring affair, where a lucky try from a kick could be the difference. In such games, we prefer the side with the better pack, and in this case, that’s likely the Roosters.
• Having struck gold on the Tigers last weekend, we’re going back to the well in Round 2. To be honest, they weren’t terribly impressive against St George-Illawarra, and they were unable to utilise Joey Leilua effectively at all (Adam Doueihi, on the other hand, was exceptional). However, they got the job done, and appear to have found a good one in bench forward Thomas Mikaele.

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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.)

• Eels
• Raiders
• Cowboys
• Knights
• Rabbitohs
• Roosters
• Storm
• Tigers

Notes

• Season 2020 kicks off with the Eels hosting the Bulldogs at Bankwest. Much like everyone else with as much as a passing interest in rugby league, we’re giving Canterbury very little hope tonight (nor the Titans against Canberra tomorrow). Parramatta look to be one of the more well-rounded squads in the competition on paper, and have an unchanged spine from their preferred 2019 model (meaning they should have their combinations ready immediately). Meanwhile, the Bulldogs have once again changed up their halves, handing a 4th career start to Brandon Wakeham – further change to an already uninspiring spine. Add in the injury-enforced absences of forwards Sauaso Sue and Raymond Faitala-Mariner, as well as the forced stand-downs of Corey Harawira-Naera and Jayden Okunbor, and it’s very doubtful they’ll have the firepower to keep up.
• The Cowboys get to debut their new stadium on Friday night in a home tilt against Brisbane, and though we’re backing them in here, we don’t love it. North Queensland certainly look to have more strike on paper with the additions of Valentine Holmes and Esan Marsters, but we’re skeptical as to whether or not they’ve sufficiently addressed their major problem – a shortage of genuine playmakers in the spine. Holmes is a spectacular ball-runner, however he bears very little resemblance to a play-making fullback. He’s joined in the spine by the extremely slow service of forward-pass-throwing Jake Granville at hooker, leaving just Michael Morgan (who’s yet to have any success in the halves without Johnathan Thurston alongside him) and the prodigiously talented Scott Drinkwater (who is himself shifting from fullback) to carry the load. We’re not knocking Holmes, but rather observing that this has been a systemic problem for the Cowboys for years (they were pretty well irrelevant as a club until 2011 despite having Johnathan Thurston, and only won a competition after replacing the ball-running Matt Bowen with the ball-playing Lachlan Coote). We think they win here despite the likely persistence of this issue, not because we think they’ve fixed it. The Broncos look light on for depth, and in a likely wet weather match-up, we expect them to be over-powered in the middle. However, we think Brisbane have the better season, and expect this to be another enthralling, low-scoring encounter.
• We’re backing the Knights with the home ground advantage, but think the Warriors are curiously well priced ($2.76 at time of writing). Stephen Kearney deserves credit for acknowledging the talent of Chanel Harris-Tavita (who The Obstruction Rule considers the best half at the club), and having the stones to bench Kodi Nikorima, who stole Harris-Tavita’s job on his arrival in Auckland in Round 9 last year. The Warriors have a nicely balanced squad on paper, and our only real knock on them is that they’re the Warriors. At that price, they’re certainly worth a look.
• You can count The Obstruction Rule among those of the view that Latrell Mitchell is not a fullback. The Rabbitohs backline is so stacked though, that we’re just excited to see their 1-7 on the field together. A depleted Sharks side should be a winnable match-up, regardless.
• Like the Warriors above, we don’t mind the price of Penrith at home against the Roosters. The Panthers have boosted their spine with the off-season addition of Api Korisau, and get to take on a Roosters side so stretched for outside backs that they’ve named Angus Crichton at centre. The Roosters tried trotting out an edge utility at centre against the Panthers last year (playing Mitch Aubusson there), and were soundly beaten by the Penrith Kikaus, 19-10. We’re not brave enough to back the Pennies head-to-head, but given that we’re of the view that this Penrith team will be significantly better than that 2019 model, their $2.73 price looks juicy.
• We’d back the Storm against Manly anyway, but we’ll also point out that at time of writing, we’re not convinced that both (or possibly either of) Jake Trbojevic and Addin Fonua-Blake will actually play on Sunday. We suspect Toafofoa Sipley is named in the 18 as cover for at least one of those doubtful middle forwards, and the Sea Eagles can hardly afford to be missing either. Also, The Obstruction Rule is not of the view that the Storm are about to fall off a cliff. Their squad looks as good as ever, and we still rate them a Top 4 (even Top 2) talent.
• Finally, the Dragons/Tigers game looks intriguing. We’ve backed Wests, despite acknowledging that the Dragons are typically fast starters (before their annual post-ANZAC Day meltdown). The Dragons’ pack looks miles better than that of Wests, which gives us pause for concern. However, that pack is almost identical to the one they trotted out against Wests in Round 24 last year (save for the addition of Tariq Sims, who replaces Luciano Leilua) – a game in which they were pumped 42-14, and outgained by almost 400m. And if their forwards don’t dominate, it’s hard to see how the Saints win. The Tigers torched them then, and have now boosted their backline with the off-season additions of Joey Leilua and Adam Doueihi (speaking of Leilua, his battle against new Dragons centre Brayden Wiliame looks like a mismatch). We’re not confident (we’re not exactly known for tipping the Tigers around here), but in theory at least, this looks plenty winnable for Wests.

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2019 Season Results:

Head-to-Head Tipping: 126/198 (64%) (Last week: 2/2)

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.)

• Raiders
• Storm

Notes

• Every man and his dog is on the Raiders bandwagon at the moment, and as founding members, you can consider The Obstruction Rule no different. However, we’re not smitten with the fairytale story – we’re taken with the Green Machine’s defense. Though on the season the Raiders’ aren’t significantly better (Defense VOA of -17.25% vs -11.94%), you have to remember that the Rabbitohs‘ defensive numbers are bolstered by their impressive early season form. As for what they’ve done lately… well, outside of a brace of strong performances against the Warriors and Roosters, they’ve been at least disappointing, if not outright BAD. Shockingly (for the team ranked 4th in defense), the Bunnies have conceded 5 or more line breaks in 5 of their past 8 matches, and average 8 conceded per game over their last 2. Compare that to the Raiders, for whom you’d have to go back 18 matches to find 5 such outings, and who have yet to concede 8 line breaks in a game all season. It’s chalk and cheese.
• Offensively, the two sides aren’t all that different, though we ought to point out that the Raiders perform far more consistently than South Sydney. The Raiders have produced a positive LBVOA in 7 of their past 8 matches, compared to just 5 for Souths. However, the ceiling for South Sydney is significantly higher, with the Rabbitohs’ LBVOA peaking at 75.29% (last weekend against Manly), compared to just 34.65% for Canberra. This should warn us of something – though the Rabbitohs are hot and cold, they’re still good enough to rip sides apart on their day – their day just doesn’t arrive as often as coach Bennett would like. On the balance of probability, we feel more confident with the consistent Raiders than having to pray that South Sydney pick this weekend to turn it on.
• As for the Grand Final That Will Never Be, we can’t help feeling like the odds are a bit curious, to say the least. The Roosters have been phenomenal lately and enter the match as deserving favourites, but let’s not forget that (including the finals) the Storm have lost just 5 matches all year, and by a combined total of just 10 points. How they could ever be paying as long as $2.40 is simply baffling to us.
• As for how it’ll play out, this is about as much of a coin-flip as you can possibly get. Excluding last year’s GF (in which the Storm played their worst game of the past half-decade), you’d have to go back to 2016 to find a game between these two sides decided by more than 3 points; it’s turning into a Broncos-Cowboys style rivalry. And it’s that very rivalry that has us leaning towards Melbourne. You’d have to think that since October 1st last year, Craig Bellamy has done little else besides plot his revenge against Sydney. And though they split the chocolates in their two meetings earlier in the year, it’s notable that two things were different in the second meeting – that the Storm won. First, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves was missing (as he will be here). And what effect did his absence have? The Roosters ran for almost 100 fewer metres, despite earning an extra 2 points of possession. Secondly, the Storm were playing Ryan Papenhuyzen at fullback (though he didn’t cement his starting role until five weeks ago). If you’re wondering how good Papenhuyzen is, he’s made a ridiculous 10 line breaks in his 7 starts at fullback (a strikerate of 1.4 per game – 1st in the league, ahead of James Tedesco’s 1.3). With these two differences – and a year’s worth of frustrated energy – we’re not just giving the Storm a chance; we’re picking them for an upset.

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