Quote Originally Posted by Mexican titan View Post
A well written post mate. Hard to disagree with any of it.
As I said last year (and probably the year before) this style of attritional football just wears down the forwards and by seasons end they are running on empty. Not to mention the factor on us.
Exactly!! Check this out:

2007: Won 6 of first twelve games, then just 4 of last twelve (finished 12th)
2008: Won 8 of first twelve games, then just 2 of last twelve (finished 13th)
2009: Won 7 of first twelve games, then 9 of last fourteen (exited finals after going 0-2 v Brisbane and Parramatta)
2010: Won 7 of first twelve games, then 9 of last fourteen (including one finals win v NZ)
2011: Won 3 of first twelve games, then just 3 of last twelve (finished with the spoon and Carty signed to 5-year extension!!)
2012: Won 5 of first twelve games, then 5 of last twelve (finished 11th)
2013: Won 7 of first twelve games, then just 4 of last twelve (finished 9th)

AVERAGE WINS FIRST 12 GAMES: 6.14
AVERAGE WINS LAST 12 GAMES: 5

We average one less win per season in the last 12 games than we do in the first 12 games AND on top of that we are 1-3 in finals (even less than 33%!!!). Even last year where everybody had this impression that we finished the year strongly (because of meaningless performances in Sydney v Easts and in Melbourne) we still won only 4 of our last 12 games.

30 points is the golden number that will get an NRL team into the finals - that means we need just 8 wins from our final 17 games (plus the four points we get for byes) to hit that mark. Those season break downs tell us that we will only make the finals if we can recreate the sort of form that saw us get 9 wins from out last 12 in 2009 and 2010. So history says we are a 2 in 7 chance of making the finals - that is not far off 33%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*

(*It is actually only 29%)