I have the prescription for the Warriors' travel bug

I think it's a symptom of a greater problem; too much player power and too poor management, something that Jim Doyle seems to be working on fixing.

The problem with using premierships as a barometer is that the sample size is way too small and the time period is a too small 18 years is hardly enough cycles to assume everyone team would have built the types of teams to regularly compete for, and hence win, premierships But putting that to one side. The analysis doesn’t really work of the premierships 9 have been won from outside of Sydney (Newcastle is not part of Sydney by any stretch of the imagination) of 18? Seems pretty even to me The win loss record of teams from outside of syndey vs Sydney teams is 7-4. Actually seems like travelling helped:) But as I said the sample is so small that I wouldn’t rely on those anyway – but they sure as hell don’t support the distance travel is materially affecting teams hypothesis. Potentially because of the other inherent advantages of being a one team region that travelling teams enjoy offsets the travel.

NRL.com has the current seasons home and away records and a quick whip through wiki will give every teams season records. Then it was just that spreadsheets have formed too much of my life. Many years back I looked at 6 years of game by game margins and it showed that distance wasn't really an issue it was more binary. If you have to travel then its worth about 6 points a game if you don't then home field is worth around 4. Not sure if it is still the same but year on year there wasn't more than something like a 0.5 point difference across the seasons.

Jacko - firstly you need to take the cork out a little bit... OK - as I said there is a difference with international vs domestic travel but also The Cows sometimes have to take two flight to get to Sydney rather than just direct as there are limited direct flights from Tville. I agree that both clubs suffer from travel but I guess I was making the point that the Warriors are not the only ones with this issue. My other point is that with the Cowboys the travel / away games thing used to be a mental issue for them BUT they have since overcome that and went on and won the competition. The Warrior similarly need to find away around this issue otherwise they are doomed to failure. With the Perth games issue I am assuming that this is not forced on the Warriors by the NRL and they agree to take these games to Perth with the other team and receive some of the gate takings - Happy to be corrected if this is incorrect. My point of the Western Force was that the author was claiming (maybe just to some poetic licence on his part) that they had the worst travel schedule in world sport - I was pointing out that the Force would probably take that title. As you point out they struggle but it is not just the travel that is their problem...

Haha my misses wont talk to me about the league. Perhaps I will move one of my chips over to the other shoulder. The Rugby just did many articles around this topic and some make interesting reading. The Brumbies say that they leave Canberra at 5.30am and get into their motels at 5.30pm the same day when playing in NZ

There has been 18 premiers since the NRL began. only 3 teams from outside of Sydney have won. Of those 3 teams 2 ( Brisbane and Melbourne) are 1 and quarter hrs flight from Sydney on domestic flights. There is only 2 main reasons this could be. 1. Teams outside sydney are not as good as teams from sydney or 2. Travel does affect players Of course other factors are at play but it does tell a story

Yes I see writers say their title was changed a bit on here which is unfortunate. I agree that you cant wrap the players in cotton wool but your article is about how travel shouldnt be any reason for a lack of success and I believe that it has been proven beyond doubt that travel does have an affect. The Super Rugby sides from all countries involved have done studies into this very problem and have found that 1 offs have basically no effect at all but constant travel affects the physical and mental state of players with it taking longer for recovery from the games and also longer for recovery from injury meaning sides flying to Auckland once a season show no effects but if you got those sides to fly in to Auckland every fortnight for 6 mths then the effects would be far more prevelent. It also means that the team which is travelling for 2-3 days every second week loses all that time for coaching meaning roughly a months less coaching over a season. Surely all these things add up? As for the "real fan" comment that was a dig at you ignoring the clubs most successful year ever (equal to) and as I was in NZ at the time for the World cup I, like many, got caught up in all the hype around the wins

Who pays for all that accomodation in Sydney Geoff. Around 35 people per night in hotel plus food plus training ground hire etc etc Just food and accom would be over ten grand a night and thats at $300 a head which is probably a fair bit low for Sydney

You do know that last year was the Cowboys first title dont you? Surely if the Cowboys are so great at dealing with travel and have had JT for years now then they should have won far more titles but if I recall they have got to finals and lost out from there. Also the Cowboys travelled home after each game last year so could it be they have a better team or as Ive said, Int travel is far more taxing than domestic travel. How would I know? well I just recently finished a job I had for 6 years where I flew all over Aus from Brisbane. I travelled to Melbourne, Townsville, Perth, Darwin, Sydney and Alice Springs every 6 weeks and then being from NZ years ago I regularly visit family in NZ. You also seem ignorant to the issues related to different time zones as the Warriors have started games in Perth after midnight NZ time which MUST have some sort of affect on the players and the Cowboys do not have timezone difference when still in Aus except maybe an hour very early in season or very late in season so NO the Cowboys dont have similar travel issues to the Warriors

NRL average away record this year = 40% (well 41.7%) NRL average record = 50% away winning chance vs average winning chance = ~80% (well 83%) Warriors average winning %: 42.6% Expect away winning percentage: 42.6%*83.4% = 35.5% Number of games you said they played away= 56 Wins= 18 Percentage = 32.1% Difference = 3.4% Difference in wins expected = 1.9 So on a league average adjustment you’d expect an additional 1.9 games to have been won over those 4 seasons, ie less than half a game a year. Look it’s not perfect, win loss margin would be much better but I’m not trawling through 4 years of data when the surface analysis suggests its a non story.

I’m saying if there is an effect versus travelling for other teams it doesn’t seem to be material. Not sure why they’d suddenly be 55% team? If they played only at home sure, jsut about every team would be better if that happened (home teams obviously winning around60% of the time). The numbers just don’t back up the narrative.

Peter are you saying that travel has no affect then? Maybe they would be a 55% winning team if they had far less travel. As for the writers idea that the team should stay in Sydney a lot more is just silly really. I understand bonding and all that stuff but 10 weeks a year, every year would take its toll on lots of area's of the players lives,with family life being the first loser and who is going to pay for the extras associated with staying in Sydney for that time. Also maybe the writer isnt really a Warriors fan as he seems to have forgotten the clubs best finals run ever in 2011 and refers to this time (pre 2012) as traumatic. Sorry but the heading shows promise that the article doesnt deliver