Young Guns 3: Rise of the Sea-Eagles
TipBetPro is a player based statistical model used to predict the outcome of NRL, AFL and shortly cricket matches (first match is England v Sri Lanka in May).
For those who follow us you will know our model is heavily weighted to the 17 players who take to the field ever week – with experience (games played) and player rankings (similar to supercoach scores but adjusted mainly to reward more defensive attributes) being the main contributors to a margin prediction.
Based on players picked in round 7 the graph of TipBetPro player rankings is as follows:
Each dot represents a player and as you can see there is a definite upward trend up to 100 games. The yellow dots are the best players in that category (eg 0-50 the yellow dot, way ahead of his cohort is Apisai Koroisau, the 50- 100 dot is RTS – what a shame he won’t be playing again this season, and so on).
If we count the players in each group by team we have:
Now it will come of little surprise that the teams with the most experience are the better teams. Cronulla, Brisbane and North Queensland have the three most experienced teams. Conversely, Newcastle, Penrith and Sydney have the three least experienced teams.
Young Guns 3
So what about the least experienced teams – surely there is hope for the future? Who has the young guns?
Well looking at average TipBetPro ranking points by games and team we have:
So in the 0-50 game category, rather annoyingly for the competition, the likes of North Queensland also have some of the best youngsters, but certainly not all. Manly lead the way.
Firstly, a word of warning – a statistical model needs data. For players who are young and upcoming there isn’t much to go on. For the 300 games players we know how they’ll play before they do. But for the likes of Kerrod Holland, can we be certain? He does look pretty good!
The 91 players with under 50 games (pretty much exactly 1/3rd of all players) are distributed as follows:
As mentioned above, the highest ranked player in this category is Apisai Koroisau, who is one of the main reasons Manly have a good average, with the Trbojevic brothers also helping Manly’s cause.
Karrod Holland and Javid Bowen are slight anomalies in the less than 5 games categories. But as warned they haven’t played much.
Rise of the Sea-Eagles?
At season start, there was a lot of talk about a re-built Manly as a premiership fancy with most bookies have the Sea-Eagles on the 4th line of betting. TipBetPro was not one that bought into the Sea-Eagles hype with our model very much seeing them as a mid-table side.
However, as demonstrated above, where the TipBetPro model is bullish is more in future seasons for the Sea Eagles as we rate their youngsters the best in the game.
So what do you think? Do you agree with TipBetPro that the Sea-Eagles future looks rosy? Or do they even have the right blend of youth and experience to make a challenge this season? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
As always please let us know what you think. What do you use to rate the youngsters of the competition? Help us help you!
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To see our betting recommendations, including our Bet of The Week, and to read more about our approach, and to compare our performance with your own, please visit www.tipbetpro.com or follow us (abuse us) on Twitter @tipbetpronrl.
