There is an age-old debate in sporting circles that has to do with attack and defence. People will argue that defence wins championships, but you might be from the camp of ‘the best defence is a good offence.’
This NRL finals series won’t settle the debate, but boy does it make for some great debate. A good debate should not only be based on emotion and gut feel but also have some figures thrown in for good measure. That’s is where the attack-defence model I will talk about comes into play.
Looking at the four teams left, we can see the ratings as follows:
| Team | Attack | Defence | Overall |
| Cowboys | 3.4 | 3.87 | 7.27 |
| Raiders | 5.93 | 1.28 | 7.21 |
| Storm | 1.6 | 5.43 | 7.03 |
| Sharks | 1.96 | 1.88 | 3.84 |
Explanations of ratings
| Value | Interpretation |
| Attack = 3 | expected to score 3 more points than average (at home, excluding Home ground advantage) |
| Defence = 5 | expected to concede 5 points less than average |
| Overall = 7 | expected to win by 7 points against an average team |
Scenario
The away team, on average, gets 18 points (based on average points conceded)
So the away team would be 18 + away team attack – home team defence
Home team gets 22 if playing interstate team, else 20 (two teams from same state i.e. roosters versus rabbits)
Based on this rating system, this is arguably the most competitive season to date, the first season where there are three teams with a rating of seven or over. This has only happened to eight teams in the previous nine years.
But all of that is a bit meaningless right? Just numbers with no context but, let’s put it into a bit of historical context. Since 2007, using this exact same model tuning parameters in the exact same way, the top-rated team has won the premiership in eight out of nine years.
Based on this fact we can say that the model is solid and we can make some inferences from it.
Looking at just the question of ‘does the best attack win?’ well, in only three of the past nine years they have. Compare this to defence, which is sitting at five of the past nine (these both include the Storm team of 2007). Based off this we would say defence has a slight edge over attack.
But the best defence is a good offence, and never before has a case study presented itself like this year’s Canberra Raiders. The men from the nation’s capital have the best offensive rating since the 2008 Sea Eagles. I haven’t seen a defence in the last nine years be as weak (ratings-wise) and come up with the chocolates.
The counter argument to ‘the best defence is a good attack’ is the Melbourne Storm. Led by Cameron Smith and the master coach Craig Bellamy, they are the complete flip of the Raiders, a great defence paired with a relatively poor offence. If one of these two teams wins you can almost rest your case in the attack versus defence debate.
But what about the Cowboys? The Thurston-led reigning premiers provide the balanced argument to this debate, that you can’t just can’t trust yourself to score more than the opposition nor can you just strangle your opponent and edge yourself over the line. You have to be able to do both, and this year’s Cowboys look like they are capable of both. North Queensland has a great mix between offence and defence, having a slight edge in the overall ratings but sitting in between the Raiders’ offence and Storm’s defence.
What about the Sharks? We are seeing the best Sharks team in ten years and the boys from the Shire play with heart. Unfortunately for Cronulla fans, they are having their best year, ratings-wise, when the competition is at its strongest in the past nine years.
Based on this rating system, the only thing that might be going for them is the week’s break combined with the home-town advantage, which means they have a handicap of just 1.5 this week even though they are the only non-‘plus seven’ team left.
We can see how our preliminary finalists have performed throughout the year. This also helps shape another debate; is it better to be consistent throughout the year, or on the rise during finals time?
We can see that the Raiders are the form team while Melbourne have just been consistent throughout the year.
Tips for the week
Cronulla to lose by a point
Melbourne to win by 6
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