Welcome to our second attempt at the over-correction weekend with Round 4 of the NRL season wrapping up last night.
Usually Round 1 will be the overreaction weekend as the one game sample size gets blown out of proportion with Round 2 bringing about overcorrections the other way.
With the hiatus and resumption, we have been able to have a second go at that phenomenon over the past fortnight.
The question now heading into Round 5 of the NRL season for some of these teams, is which performance do you want to read into?
Some teams will have Round 3, some will say Round 4, others will say both and a few will say neither.
We’ll wade through the numbers to try and find what is fact and what is fiction in our 5 Lessons Learned from NRL Round 4.
1 – The Blowouts Continue
While there were two games decided by a single score margin (and what dramatic finishes they both were), the rest of the games saw a double-digit margin in the final score.
That makes it 13 of the 16 games since the resumption of play that have been decided by 10 or more points with the average winning margin going from 18.25 in Round 3 to 19.125 this past weekend.
Admittedly the Roosters blowout of Brisbane did skew that slightly but in both rounds there were three games decided by 20 or more points.
As for how that should impact your bets for Round 5, if you want some extra value, look for the alternate line market, backing a team with a -9.5 head start or with a -12.5 line in the winning margin market.
2 – Score the First Try
While the NRL players are still finding their feet, the importance of taking an early lead cannot be overstated at the moment.
Seven of the eight teams to score the first try won the game and six of the eight teams to score the first points have won the match.
Three teams lead from the first score and never looked back, starting with the Roosters scoring in the fourth minute, the Panthers in the eleventh and the Knights in the first minute.
The Eels and Sharks scored the first try of their matches, were drawn back level for ten and two minutes respectively before regaining the lead and never looked back while the Storm trailed for 16 minutes but after scoring on the half hour mark, never looked back.
Wests were the only side to score the first try in their back and forth loss to the Titans while the Dragons kicked the first penalty early on but gave up the first try in the 20th minute and could not pull the Bulldogs back.
Bottom line then, if your team scores first, they have a great chance of walking away with a win.
3 – Find a Middle Ground
It’s a tale of two extremes for some teams so far, Canberra for instance could not have been more impressive against the Storm in Round 3, but were brought crashing back to earth against Newcastle.
Eight teams have had a win and a loss so far with the Panthers and Knights recording a win and a draw as well.
Chances are the true identity of these teams will land somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.
Which performance do you want to give more weight to depends on the reputation of the team, for a side like Canberra with NRL Grand Final ambitions, you may want to lean towards the good performance than the loss that is more probably than not going to be the outlier.
4 – Points on the Up
The points were up this week with four of the eight going over the total points line in their matches, an increase on the three from Round 3.
Overall there was an average of 39.875 points per game, up on the 34.75 from the previous round and three games had over 50 points, all of which topped the highest scoring game of Round 3 which was the Tigers-Sharks game that had 44 points.
Since the resumption, the Roosters are the highest scoring team in the competition with 87 points in the two matches.
Their win over Souths went under the total points line though, and only five teams have gone over the total points line on both weekends.
The Cowboys, Titans, Broncos, Tigers and Sharks have had two overs in the last two weeks.
5 – Impact Players Make a Difference
It’s not exactly going out on a limb saying that the big name players like Kalyn Ponga can take over a game but you sometimes forget how much of an impact they have until they return.
The Knights and Maroons star was instrumental in his side’s impressive win over the red hot Raiders.
Going against a side that had conceded a mere 18 points in their three matches this season, Ponga sparked the Knights into life and if he can stay on the park, he makes the Knights instantly better.