The NRL season is just over a day away, and among the many exciting things that it brings, rugby league’s return also brings back the spine of family and/or work life during winter – Footy Tipping. But sometimes it can be a chore, or you can’t quite tell your Billy Magoulias’ from your Tino Fa’asuamaleaui’s, so then allow us to introduce our NRL Round 1 Tipping Method.
Instead of allowing the competition admin to give you away teams for when you don’t care, why not take on board our weekly Alternative NRL Tipping method. Each week there will be a new theme, and occasionally it will have nothing to do with rugby league. Just the way you like it.
This week’s Alternative NRL Round 1 Tipping Method is all about each team’s performance in the first round of the year.
Our theory is that a team that is historically better at winning the first game of the season is more likely to continue doing so this season. In the case of two teams having the same record, the tie breaker is the last five seasons.
Alternative NRL Round 1 Tipping Method – First Round Form
Here are the Alternative NRL Round 1 Tipping selection you need. A little bit harsh on the Gold Coast who actually have a better NRL Round 1 % wins than Canberra.
ACTUAL NRL ROUND 1 STATS FROM 1998
Best of Barely Interesting NRL Round 1 Stats
Our full preview below has loads of barely interesting facts, and we’ll bring the best of them here for you for your NRL Round 1 Tipping pleasure.
- This weekend will see the 22nd consecutive time Parramatta v Bulldogs has featured on Channel Nein.
- Ricky Stuart never beat the Titans as Parramatta coach in two attempts.
- Cowboys v Broncos and vice versa hasn’t been played in a daytime slot since the first round clash at Suncorp in 2006.
- Stephen Kearney has won four of his five first round games as coach. He tends to peak early.
- The Rabbitohs have an impressive 7-1 record over the Sharks at the home of rugby league – ANZ Stadium.
- Reigning premiers have won the first game of the next season seven times from the last ten seasons. Of the three times the reigning premier hasn’t won, two of them were the Roosters. The other was Cronulla in 2017.
- Melbourne have an outstanding record of winning the first game of the season. 21 times since 1998. Manly coincidentally are the very worst team with just five wins to kick off the season.
- The away side has won five of the last six Dragons v Tigers clashes between these sides, and it is five in a row on a Sunday.
NRL Round 1 Full Preview
If you want to read our proper preview of NRL Round 1 with all the stats that you’ll ever need, please follow this highlighted link.
