They said we’d never make it, but the 2020 NRL Finals are here, and with the most important four weeks ahead of us, everyone will be trying to determine this year’s premier nice and early, and to help we offer up our Alternative 2020 NRL Finals Predictions Method.
We have assembled as many stats from throughout the 2020 NRL season as we think are relevant, or can be bothered gathering, and have displayed them all below with the 2020 NRL Finals draw to see how goes through when, and who is the ultimate winner using various stats.
Of course one stat doesn’t paint the whole picture, so at the end they have been tallied together and overall winner determined.
It probably won’t surprise you.
If nothing else, our Alternative 2020 NRL Finals Predictions Method is some barely interesting filler, away from the usual negative NRL press.
WIN % V TOP EIGHT OPPONENTS
Since we’re down to just the final eight, why not start with how each team did against the other top eight sides this season.
No wins for Cronulla v any top eight sides.
SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER FORM
Let’s see how each team does at the pressure end of the season of September and October from 1998, to see who historically handles the pressure best.
Hopefully this isn’t the end result as I’m not sure the neutral can handle another Rooster-Storm final.
POINTS DIFFERENCE
Forget about end of season, we should check in with the 2020 season for points difference. Although this can be twisted depending on how many 50+ point losses you had against your nearest rival, and how many times you played the Broncos this year.
FANTASY POINTS
Fantasy is big business, and the stats are a reasonably useful guide to performance.
Since we’re lazy, we decided to throw each team’s total Fantasy points for the 2020 NRL season.
POST CONTACT METRES
Time to get into some player based stats.
With finals football so tight, we thought we’d see which team gets the most out of each run.
All Western Sydney final then.
TACKLE BREAKS
Post contact metres are great, but what about going that next step further and breaking through the tackles. Surely those will be big business in the NRL Finals.
This is the one scenario where the Sharks come out around the top and make the GF on tackle breaks.
LINE BREAKS
Tackle breaks are great too, but line breaks are even better as they lead to more points.
Only the Panthers and Roosters over 100 line breaks, and they battle out the GF in this section.
TACKLE EFFICIENCY
Defense is key in the NRL Finals series, so making sure your tackles count is important.
So here’s who comes out on top with the best tackling % for the 2020 season.
POINTS CONCEDED
While we’re on the defensive side, how about the simple method of who conceded fewest points.
PENALTIES
Penalties leads so many times to points, so those teams who concede fewer are less likely to give away cheap points. Which means they are more likely to win.
Although, let’s hope the refs put their whistle away to a degree.
And work out how to / not to signal six again.
SIN BINS
Going one step further, Sin Bins are mega penalties that can cost a team big while a man down.
So here is the winner of the NRL based on the best behaved on the field. Best being fewest sin bins.
Overall Alternative 2020 NRL Finals Predictions Method Winner
All of the above fields may not tell the whole story.
So what if we combined all of them, ranked each team, then added up all the ranking points to get a fuller picture.
The fewest point, the better average rank across all the categories.
The end result, a Panthers-Roosters grand final replay of 2003 with the same result,
