2019 Season Results:
Head-to-Head Tipping: 32/48 (67%) (Last week: 5/8)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
- Storm
- Bulldogs
- Rabbitohs
- Tigers
- Broncos
- Raiders
- Eels
Notes
- Like clockwork, the Warriors once again let us down the moment we decided to trust them. Having just conceded 17 points to an insipid Cowboys offense who had only hit that mark once in the opening 5 rounds, there’s very little reason to back them here against a Storm side who put 20 on the elite Roosters defense in the space of half an hour. Throw in the losses of Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, David Fusitu’a and Solomone Kata, on top of the memory of the Storm’s 50-10 victory in the corresponding game last year, and we wouldn’t go near New Zealand with a 50-foot barge-pole.
- Spoonfest 2019 may have come early this year, with the Bulldogs and Cowboys meeting on Friday evening. Neither side appears to have the attacking cattle to seriously trouble decent teams, with the sides ranking 14th and 13th respectively for LBVOA, and 15th and 16th for TBVOA. Unsurprisingly then, both sides appear to have adopted the same conservative, high-percentage gameplan, in the hope of protecting possession and controlling field position. It’s boring, but it at least puts these sides in a position to compete. It makes trying to pick a winner here tough, though. We’ve gone the Bulldogs for two reasons. First, in the absence of Jason Taumalolo, the Cowboys have lacked any sort of go-forward whatsoever, ranking a distant last in RMVOA (-12.11%). The only way they earn field position is when they’re gifted short fields from opposition mistakes – something that the Bulldogs have done very little of so far this year. Second, in what’s likely to be a low-scoring game, we’d rather have the better defense – and in that area, it’s once again advantage Canterbury. It’s worth keeping an eye on the team that runs out though – Jason Taumalolo has been named in the reserve list, and should he play, he makes a significant enough difference that we’d likely flip over to North Queensland.
- The poor old Panthers can’t catch a break. Having finally put it all together and dominated the Sharks for 50 minutes last weekend, Dean Whare did a hammy and left the field, taking the Panthers’ chances of winning with him. Ivan Cleary opted against playing a utility back on the bench, and without one, was forced to play backrower Isiaah Yeo in the centres for the remainder of the match. Trying to defend against the speed of Shaun Johnson and co, Yeo looked like he was wading through a pool of treacle, as the Sharks sent raid after raid down the Panthers’ left edge. The good news for Penrith is that Yeo is back to the second row where he belongs. The bad news is that they’ve had to once again re-shuffle their spine in order to replace Whare. Fullback Dallin Watene-Zelezniak moves into the centres, with youngster Caleb Aekins coming in as custodian. We love Aekins as a talent – you may recall him running for over 200m on debut against Cronulla last year – but we can’t feel good about yet another re-shuffle, with the quietly efficient Rabbitohs coming to town. We certainly don’t think a win is beyond the improving Panthers, but it’s not the most likely result, either.
- Dare we say it – the Titans actually looked good last week against the Knights. We weren’t that surprised – their offensive numbers have been tracking progressively upward over the last four weeks since they managed to get Tyrone Roberts and Ash Taylor on the field together. That said, we’re still not ready to tip them. Their two wins coincided with being the only two games in which they’ve outgained their opponent this year, and they’ve now lost key middle Ryan James to an ACL injury. Yes, you could say that they beat the Knights without him, but for the most part, Newcastle beat themselves. The Knights’ 12 errors were more than this week’s opponent, the Tigers, have made since Round 1, and their 7 penalties conceded were more than Wests have made in any match this season. Without those piggy-backs upfield, the Titans are still likely to struggle for field position, given they rank 14th in RMVOA. Yes, the Tigers’ D was abysmal last weekend, but in fairness, that was the exception to their year so far – prior to Week 6, they’d conceded 2 or less tries in 4 of their first 5 matches. It’s certainly a tough game to pick, but we just aren’t ready to buy into the Gold Coast yet, especially in the face of an expected Tigers bounce-back.
- While all the talk this week has been about the Broncos‘ 1-5 start to the year, we fancy they’re actually traveling better than the Sharks. This isn’t a slam dunk by any stretch, but lost in the Sharks’ come-from-behind win over the Panthers is the fact that they were getting soundly beaten by a Penrith team who’d struggled for any sort of effectiveness through the opening month, and only got home by abusing a fortunately timed injury (or unfortunately timed, depending on which team’s jersey you were wearing). The Panthers’ 20 point effort was their second-highest score this season, and they did it with just 42% of the football. That doesn’t bode well for a Sharks defense about to face a Broncos offense who’ve exceeded 20 points in half their matches so far, and rank 5th in handling errors (the Sharks are 2nd last). If Brisbane are ever going to get going, this is the game.
