2022 Season Results:
Head-to-Head Tipping: 106/158 (67%) (Last Week: 7/8)
2021 Season Results:
Head-to-Head Tipping: (74%)
2020 Season Results:
Head-to-Head Tipping: (74%)
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 by 6- We don’t what it is about Panthers/Storm games, but they all seem to get ruined by the absence of star players. Over the past two years, the only time we’ve seen anything approaching a full-strength hit-out between the competition’s two best sides was last year’s enthralling Preliminary Final (won by Penrith, 10-6). Beyond that, we’ve seen the Storm whack Penrith 37-10 without Nathan Cleary, Brian To’o, James Fisher-Harris and Isaah Yeo; a Cleary and Api Koroisau-less Penrith win 12-10 against a Storm side missing Ryan Papenhuyzen and Harry Grant; and earlier this year, a full-strength Penrith smoked Melbourne without Papenhuyzen and Jahrome Hughes. It’s that demolition that’s of most interest to us, since Papenhuyzen and Hughes are once again out, and Penrith’s form without Cleary and Jarome Luai (also absent) has been significantly better than Melbourne’s without PapenHughesen. While Penrith are somehow 3-0 without their Origin halves (admittedly, playing Canterbury and Wests in two of those surely helped), the Storm are 0-2 without their fullback-halfback pairing, losing to Penrith and North Queensland by a cumulative score of 68-12. Granted, these games were against the two best defenses of 2022, but even after adjusting for quality of opponent, the Storm still posted an utterly dismal LBVOA of -63.31% across those two starts. This matters, because Penrith showed in holding Canberra to just 6 points last week – the 13th time this season in which they’ve held an opponent to 2 tries or fewer – that no matter who lines up, their defense remains top notch. In contrast, Melbourne’s has fallen off the planet over the past two months, having now leaked 3 tries or more in their past 8 games straight (a string that’s included some of the league’s worst offenses, like Canberra, Gold Coast and New Zealand). At home, and boosted by the return of Viliame Kikau, we fancy that Penrith’s NSW Cup halves should be able to find 3 tries – and that’s typically more than enough for their defense to do the rest.
- Warriors by 2 – We wrote a few weeks back about how the Bulldogs‘ attacking numbers are wildly fluctuating from week-to-week between straight up terrible and actually pretty decent (in contrast, their defensive numbers have been consistently trash since Mick Potter took over). Last weekend was the worst so far, as they turned in just a single line break and 17 tackle busts while getting hammered by the Cowboys. The good news for Canterbury fans is that last week’s clunker doesn’t make us think another one is any more or less likely (the last time they were this bad they backed it up by dropping 28 points on Souths); the bad news is that they seem to be trending down, while the Warriors have been trending up, and will be bolstered by another rowdy home crowd. Over the past three weeks, the Bulldogs’ LBVOA sequence reads as follows: 22.99% > -19.32% > -70.24%. Meanwhile, the Warriors have been tracking: -10.28% > -2.59% > 65.81%. Besides the upward trend, the other thing that jumps out there for New Zealand is that even at their worst, the Warriors were measurably better than the Dogs have been in either of their past two games. The other point worth mentioning is that as shockingly bad as the Warriors’ defense has been lately (and believe us, it’s awful), in their two games at Mt Smart they were actually extremely good. How good? They had a LBCVOA of -36.44%, a RMCVOA of 0.22%, and a TBCVOA of -34.30%, on their way to conceding just 4 tries across two matches against Wests and Melbourne. The sample size is obviously small, but for context, all those numbers would put them in the top half of the competition, and their LBCVOA and TBCVOA would be the best in the league for the season. Against an up-and-down Canterbury side missing impact forward Tevita Pangai Jr, another game at that level would certainly be good enough to stir up a boilover.
- Rabbitohs by 1 – Picking a winner out of the Rabbitohs and Eels is a little trickier than we’d have thought, because of how strikingly similar they are stylistically. Both sides appear to pay very little attention to defense, seemingly playing with an attitude of “however many you score, we’ll score more”. At Parramatta, they’re yet to win a game while scoring fewer than 22 points (they’re 0-6 from these matches); at the Rabbitohs it’s even worse, where they’ve failed to win any matches scoring less than 24 (0-8). Suffice to say, if your defense is so poor as to require you to score 22+ in order to win football games, you’re a bigger threat to your coach’s job security than you are to the premiership. Picking a winner then becomes a choice between the two offenses, and by this measure, it’s a no-contest. Parramatta are like the Aldi version of Souths – sure they’ve managed to post 5+ line breaks in a game 10 times this season, but Souths have now done it 11 times in a row (and a ridiculous 17 times this season, if you were wondering). Parramatta have managed to run up 30+ points 5 times this season; the Bunnies have done it 9. Oh – and don’t forget, Mitchell Moses remains sidelined. Honestly, the only reason we have the margin so close is because we feel a bit spooked after Parra’s avalanche of points in the final quarter against Manly. Deep down in our heart of hearts though, we still think the Eels are rubbish (we’re just being a bit less loud about it).
- Roosters by 1 – Speaking of even match-ups, Saturday arvo should bring the game of the round, with both the Roosters and Cowboys in absolutely piping hot form. After struggling away with narrow loss after narrow loss, the Roosters finally hit the win button four weeks ago, and haven’t looked back since. Over those 4 games they’re undefeated, winning by an average score of 38-16. They’re not just winning, they’re stomping all over teams, backed up by a defense that’s held two above average offenses to just 3 line breaks a piece in the past fortnight. Picking Sydney would be a total slam dunk were it not for the Cowboys’ sudden injection of line breaks into their footy. Here’s a team who’d depended heavily on kick tries to score any sort of points in most games, who out of nowhere have ripped through for 19 line breaks in their past 2 games combined (for comparison, it took them 6 weeks to hit this mark to open the season). If this isn’t a mirage and the Cowboys have suddenly figured out how to create running tries, the competition should be on notice – they’ve already got the 2nd-best defense in the competition, and have shown an uncanny knack for having the volatile attacking kick produce more than their share of 4-pointers. We’re taking the Roosters though, in part because they’ve got a longer form line of offensive production, and in part because we know they can do it against the Cowboys, having already whooped them 28-4 in Townsville. But we don’t think this is a gimme – we just want to see the Cows repeat their production one more time before we fully buy in.
- Sharks by 16
- Broncos by 12
- Raiders by 16
- Sea Eagles by 6 – Just to be clear, we do expect the Titans to lose here, but we have the margin close because… well.. it usually is. The Titans’ numbers have rarely been awful all season long (though their defensive numbers appear to be falling off over the past few weeks, now that they’ve given up on the season), but they just have a knack for losing, regardless of opponent. Whether it’s by 10 points to Canterbury, or by 4 points to Brisbane, or by 8 points to Cronulla, the Titans typically hang around well enough, before ultimately folding meekly into submission. We expect more of the same here against an under-manned Manly pack missing Sean Keppie, Taniela Paseka and Karl Lawton. This Manly side can certainly be beaten, but they almost certainly won’t be.