2022 Season Results:
Head-to-Head Tipping: 45/72 (63%) (Last Week: 6/8)
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%
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- Knights by 4 – Magic Round kicks off tonight with Spoon Bowl 2022, treating fans to a match that should at least be competitive, if not necessarily of a high quality. After opening the season with back-to-back wins, the Knights now find themselves mired in a 7-game losing streak, a period that includes giving up 20+ in each of their last 5, after conceding just 10 combined points in the opening fortnight. If you’re looking for the cause of Newcastle’s ills through this period, look no further than their horrendous discipline. Through their past 5 matches, Newcastle are averaging almost 4 extra errors per game compared to their successful opening fortnight – that ends up as 4 extra sets handed to their opponents, 4 extra short fields they’re forced to defend, and 4 fewer opportunities to attack each game. This crummy handling then flows through into their other stats – when you take those sets off Newie and give them to their opponents, the result is their average possession share dropping from 56% to 44%. As their possession drops, so too does their net run metres – from +354m per game down to -377. That’s literally the length of 7 football fields worth of field position that the Knights are giving up. Without that field position, their tries scored have dropped by almost 3 per game, and their tries conceded has climbed by 5. And all because they suddenly started gifting field position and possession to their opponents. The good news here though is that in the Bulldogs, the Knights will be facing one of the few teams in the league with a worse error-rate than they have, and who routinely find themselves on the arse-end of possession, too. If we assume both sides’ handling will cancel each other out (and to be clear, if either team can turn in a relatively well-disciplined game, we’d fancy that team should win), then we have to give the edge to Newcastle for their potential to actually score a few tries. Kalyn Ponga is the best player on the field for either side, and he’ll be boosted by the return of his halfback, Adam Clune, and second-rower Mitch Barnett (the most important return though, may be that of Lachlan Fitzgibbon last week, who finally gives Ponga a dangerous edge-runner to pass to). The Dogs have the good fortune of trotting out an unchanged lineup, but it’s a lineup that has yet to score more than 3 tries in a match this season, and has registered a positive LBVOA just once (the Knights, by the way, have hit these marks 3 times each, despite their aforementioned woes). In short, all else being equal, we think the Knights are that little bit better than Canterbury (but it shows how far they’ve fallen that we’re having this discussion in the first place).
- Sea Eagles by 2 – After 2 months of offering shockingly little with the ball in hand, the Sea Eagles‘ offense suddenly sprang into life last weekend against the Tigers, dropping season-highs for the team in tries (7), line breaks (10), tackle breaks (40) and run metres (1536). Turbo ran for almost 200m, and he, Keiran Foran and Daly Cherry-Evans combined for 4 line break assists and 4 try assists between them. Everything was once again right in the world. And just as well. Their defense has fallen off a cliff over the past four weeks, and giving up 4 tries and 7 line breaks to the 3rd-worst offense in football was a new low-water mark for the team. They’re getting consistently lit up on the right edge, with regular right-side players Jason Saab, Morgan Harper and DCE all currently among the Top 10 in the league for line break causes. As a result, Des Hasler has begun churning through combinations looking for something to stop the bleeding; unfortunately though, he’s yet to find anyone any better (you may be shocked to learn that replacements Tolutau Koula and Christian Tuipolutu actually have worse numbers for line break causes than Saab, on a per-game basis). The latest guy to get an audition is Ben Trbojevic, but with Burbo having given up 2 line breaks in as many matches – while having played from the bench and at second-row – his chances of being a defensive upgrade at centre don’t look promising. Instead, it may well be that Manly are looking at a future of having to put up enough points each week to paper over their defensive short-comings, and against the Broncos, we think that should be possible. Brisbane did well enough last week to land the upset, but this isn’t an elite defense by any stretch. Several of Brisbane’s opponents (Penrith, Canterbury, North Queensland) have posted their season-high in tries scored against Brisbane’s friendly D, and they’ve only conceded less than 4 line breaks in a game once. With both defenses being pretty ordinary, we’re expecting a reasonably high-scoring game (weather pending), and with Manly looking a bit more like themselves last week, we’re happy enough to back them in a shoot-out.
- Rabbitohs by 16 – There’s always a chance of something crazy in Warriors games, and the Rabbitohs‘ league-worst error-rate (14.4 per game) presents plenty of opportunities to opposition teams, but honestly… nobody in their right mind who watched the Warriors play last week would tip them in a game of rugby league against anyone, under any circumstances.
- Dragons by 1 – We wrote three weeks ago that if the Titans couldn’t get up over the Cowboys that we wouldn’t be tipping them again in a hurry, and we’re standing by that. They were terrible that night, and when you add in their subsequent two games, they’ve now been outscored 92-24 over the past three weeks. They were actually playing pretty well up until that week, at which point Justin Holbrook began making bizarre and unjustified team changes to a unit that looked to be on the verge of putting it together. This week’s casualty falling to Holbrook’s Wheel of Misfortune is Greg Marzhew – yes, the same Greg Marzhew who currently ranks 1st in the NRL for tackle breaks and 2nd on his team for tries, line breaks and metres-per-carry. Apparently, he’s the problem. In contrast, Anthony Griffin has continued to trot out essentially the same Dragons unit since Week 4, and – last week’s rotation as victims of Melbourne’s Revenge Tour notwithstanding – has begun seeing the fruits of his loyalty. The tries aren’t really coming yet, but their LBVOA has crept up from -6.36% before switching Moses Mbye to fullback to 7.89% since the switch, with Mbye ranked 21st in the league for assists (despite starting the first two matches on the bench). The longer he sticks with the current combination, the more they’re likely to produce, and having snuck away with a few wins against bottom-feeders, Griffin’s likely to havemore patience than Holbrook. In a game in which the Titans arguably have more talent and something of a home ground advantage, consider this tip a vote for continuity, and a vote against whatever on earth Justin Holbrook is doing.
- Panthers by 2 – And so we come to the Game of the Round, if not the Game of the Year. Contrary to popular opinion, we’ve considered the Storm to be the best team in the competition for a while now, with the key difference between these teams being the totally different dimension offered by Melbourne’s offense. With Ryan Papenhuyzen floating around on either side of the field, the Storm play with an effervescent offense that uses the full width of the field regardless of tackle count or field position. They make line breaks at will, and with Papenhuyzen leading the league for tries, there’s literally nobody better in the comp at scoring from long range. But Papenhuyzen isn’t playing this week, is he? Without him, the Storm offense is likely to look completely different. Nick Meaney is obviously not capable of doing Papenhuyzen things in the first place, but even if he were, it wouldn’t be likely in his first week as fullback. Their combinations will be all out of whack, even moreso with reshuffles on both edges (Dean Ieremia comes onto the left wing, while Marion Seve – who has just 1 try and line break from 5 starts in Q Cup for one of the highest scoring teams in the league – lands at right centre). And if Melbourne aren’t able to open up and take shots at Penrith for down their own end, it really plays into the Panthers‘ favour. Both these sides are among the best in the league for controlling the ruck, which is likely to reduce the impact of star hookers, Harry Grant and Api Koroisau. Both these sides have strong packs and elite defenses, leaving them well-equipped for the grind. But once you take away the Storm’s unique attacking strength, the edge likely falls toward the side with the better kicking game, especially in a grinding style of a match, where determining exactly where your opponent takes possession can be crucial. Here, the Panthers have a monumental upper hand through captain Nathan Cleary, who – in addition to his monstrous long kicks and towering bombs – ranks 3rd in the league for forced drop-outs (while having fewer attacking kicks than either of the players above him) with 8. Nobody on the Storm has more than 2. If Paps were playing, we’d be happily backing Melbourne to find a few more tries than Penrith, even without a decent share of territory. But with an offense that’s likely to be searching for a new identity following a cluster of key changes (and facing a Penrith side burning from a surprise loss to local rivals, Parramatta), it’s pretty much the worst possible time for Melbourne to be running into Penrith and the best defense in the league.
- Sharks by 10 – Yes, the Raiders won the last meeting between these sides all the way back in Round 1, but that was close to the worst game the Sharks have played all season, and they nevertheless actually made more line breaks than Canberra that day anyway, despite earning just a 47% possession share. Since then, they’ve been on very different trajectories, and while the absence of Will Kennedy sees Nicho Hynes shifted to fullback, the Raiders are dealing with major spine issues themselves, with Jack Wighton still out and Adam Elliott starting at hooker (yucky). We don’t expect either side to be at their best, but that should only result in reducing Cronulla’s advantage over Canberra, not eliminating it.
- Roosters by 6 – If you believe the Eels did anything special in hanging around long enough to upset Penrith, good luck to you. For the record, we don’t rate anything about Parramatta, and watching them somehow get out-produced for line breaks (6 v 2) and run metres (1492 v 1349) despite having 54% of the football and making an extra 30 runs, did very little to change our view. If their strategy was “roll out of bed and hope Penrith get flogged 6-2 in the penalty count”, we suppose it was a roaring success, but don’t be shocked if you see the Eels get slapped with a heavy dose of reality this week by the resurgent Roosters. It had been a long time coming, but the Roosters finally put it all together last week against the Titans, hammering them to the tune of 44-16 (yes, that’s the same Titans team who got within 1 score of beating the Eels earlier this season… twice). The great strength of the Eels is supposedly their forwards, but getting outgained by over 100m while making 30 more carries is honestly embarrassing, and the Roosters quietly rank above the Eels this year in both RMVOA (2.16% vs 1.25%) and RMCVOA (2.34% vs 2.64%). And if the Eels aren’t getting propped up with the lion’s share of field position, all of a sudden they’re likely to find their defense – that is, the league’s 2nd-worst defense – being exposed. While they average a mediocre 3 tries conceded per game even when they win the net yardage battle, that spikes to 4.5 tries conceded when they’re getting outgained. Meanwhile, their tries scored collapses from 5.6 per game to just 3. We accept that there’s always a risk of the Roosters fumbling away their field position in any given game (Sydney average the 8th-most errors per game), but it’s worth noting that they’ve now won the net yardage battle in their last 4 games straight, and done it without ever having more than 51% of the footy. Frankly, we think the Roosters may have the most under-rated pack in the competition at the moment, and if they can just go toe-to-toe with Parra’s engine room, there could very much be a boil-over on the cards.
- Cowboys by 12
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