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NRL draw little than a TV schedule

doonan dave new author
Roar Rookie
10th December, 2013
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Jamie Lyon moving to five-eighth could inspire Manly to victory. (AAP Image/Action Photographics, Renee McKay)
doonan dave new author
Roar Rookie
10th December, 2013
49
1192 Reads

The NRL draw has been out for just under a week now, and most of the analysis and discussion seems to centre on TV scheduling rather than the actual fairness of the draw from a football perspective.

Most vitriol is directed at the Broncos with their run of Friday night football, and at the other end of the spectrum from Cronulla and the number of Monday night games that they have received.

No doubt, free-to-air exposure is great for clubs and sponsorship and the clubs receiving most won’t be disappointed. Having said that, while the draw, in terms of TV scheduling benefits the Broncos the most.

In terms of an equitable competition draw, the football coaching staff will have their work cut out.

An analysis of the draw in terms of opposition, turnaround time, and travel clearly benefits some teams and is far from equitable.

I will start with opposition.

In terms of opposition, I’ve looked at two measures: firstly how many times a team gets to play the 2012 top four, and secondly how many times they play the 2012 bottom four.

For teams finishing top four and bottom four in 2012 I have included the teams that finish fifth, and twelfth when counting their opponents.

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Starting at the top end of the scale, Manly have the toughest draw, and will play 2012s top teams on eight occasions, closely followed by Broncos, Bulldogs, and Roosters who each play the top four seven times.

At the other end of the spectrum the Warriors will only verse top four opposition four times, while the Knights and Panthers receive a favourable draw by playing top four teams five times. In a tight competition with points hard enough to earn, clear advantages to teams can already be seen.

Taking it a step further and looking at the number of times you play bottom teams helps to add to the picture.

Six teams have the good fortune of playing bottom four opposition seven times. Roosters, Sharks, Titans, Warriors, Panthers, and Cowboys are the lucky teams this time.

At the other end, the Broncos and Eels get the short straw, with just five games against the bottom four.

A quick dissection of that shows the big winners to be Penrith and Warriors who have the least games against top teams and the most against bottom teams, while Sharks, Titans, and Cowboys have a favourable mix of top four/bottom four opposition.

The losers this time are Broncos, with the second highest number of games against top teams and the least against the bottom end of the table.

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Another important football factor is your turnaround between games.

The argument against Broncos regular Friday night games is the advantage they have in match turnaround time, and regular routine.

True, but they aren’t alone, and the advantage is not as great as appears.

In matches so far scheduled up to Round 20, the Broncos receive 14 matches with at least a seven day turnaround.

But they aren’t alone here, Panthers also receive 14 matches, while Canberra closely follows on 13, and both Rabbitohs and Tigers closely follow on 12.

So, despite the calls of Bronco bias, they don’t stand alone in preparation time.

Teams with the toughest turnaround are Dragons and Titans, both with just nine long turnarounds, although the Titans do have seven six day turnarounds.

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Also, while Broncos saturate Friday nights, Panthers and Warriors both have ten Saturday night games, while Sharks have nine.

Also, both Warriors and Roosters avoided any Monday night games, while Titans top the list with five. On this measure, the benefactors are Penrith and Broncos, but not by nearly as much as the bleaters would believe.

Finally travel. This is tougher to quantify, so given that all non-Sydney teams will have greater travel commitments than the Sydney teams, and that is just something they deal with, I decided an equitable measure would be the number of away games played in Sydney.

With seven non-Sydney teams it would seem reasonable that each Sydney team could travel to each out of town venue once a year. At a stretch maybe six away games in and out of Sydney would be a good balance, but this is not the way the draw worked out.

Five teams got the 6/6 balance: Broncos, Storm, Dragons, Titans, and Knights.

But at the extremes there are some clear advantages. The Rabbitohs have eight away games in Sydney, meaning their players leave home on just four occasions in twenty six rounds of tough footy.

Similarly Bulldogs, Sharks, Manly, Panthers, Roosters, and Tigers have seven Sydney away games, meaning they only leave home five times in the season.

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The Eels are least favoured with five Sydney away games.

As I stated, regional teams deal well with the travel impost they face, but it would seem more could be done to share the travel load around among Sydney teams.

You can make up your own minds who you think the draw favours. I lean towards Panthers, Roosters, and Rabbitohs, while I think Eels and Warriors get a pretty tough deal.

The point is, there is more to a draw than who gets the good TV slots, and I’m pretty sure teams would be happy to give up the odd TV game for an ‘easier’ draw.

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