Does Form Affect Your NRL Finals Chances?

As the home and away season comes to an end this week, the finals-bound teams are preparing for September footy.

Form is being assessed and ladder positions scrutinised as punters try to decipher who will play who ahead of one last crack at the premiership winners market.

But how important are either of those to the eventual winner?

According to the Stats Insider Projected Ladder, four teams stand out as premiership contenders, and three of them are struggling over the final weeks of the season.

Of the four most likely teams to lift the trophy, only the Sharks (23% chance of winning the grand final) are in decent form having won their last three with a 61% chance of winning again this week.

The Storm (32% WGF) may have won back-to-back games, but they've been unconvincing while their injury toll and suspension concerns make it difficult to predict how the team might look in Week 1.

With two losses on the trot, the Roosters (25% WGF) are stumbling towards the finals but do beat the Eels in 70% of the 10,000 simulations of their match this week.

Likewise, the Rabbitohs (12% WGF) have taken a tumble on the back of three straight defeats but look good to get back to their winning ways in 73% of their simulated matches against the Tigers.

The Sharks are quite clearly the form side of the top four and by finishing the season so strong, their odds of making the Grand Final have risen from 20% before Round 24 to 42% after, while their chances of winning it all have jumped from 10% to 23%.

However, most bookmakers have the Sharks at over $6 to lift the Provan-Summons Trophy with none of the Storm, Roosters or Rabbitohs out beyond $5.

There's a valid reason for that, though.

Other than the 2017 Melbourne Storm - arguably one of the best teams of all time - most teams that have ended up in the Grand Final over the last five years have finished the regular season in lacklustre form.

The Storm and their seven-game winning streak before the finals are an outlier as much as their grand final opponents, the Cowboys, were the Cinderella story of 2017.

A look at the four years prior paints a better picture.

The premiership-winning Sharks won just one of their last six games before the finals kicked off in 2016.

In 2015, the Cowboys not only lost in Week 1 but also three of the five leading up to it.

Souths ended their premiership drought in 2014, but not before they lost two of their last three while the Bulldogs side they beat in the final lost six of their last eight.

A year earlier, the Roosters dropped two of their last four. The beaten grand finalist, Sea Eagles, did the same while also losing in Week 1.

We have to go all the way back to 2012 to see a grand final-winning side enter the finals in decent form. Again, it was the Storm winning their last five games ahead of the three required to win the premiership.

With form having less of an impact on how a team performs through September than people might think, that should mean all eight teams are a fair crack at claiming the premiership no matter how they play in Round 25, right?

Not quite.

Not a single premiership winner has come out of the bottom four in the NRL era.

Regardless of form, history suggests the Broncos, Warriors, Panthers and Dragons aren't much of a chance, and the Model agrees.

Wayne Bennett and the Broncos have beaten the Rabbitohs and Roosters in back-to-back weeks but are only being given a 5% chance. The Warriors have won three of their last four, but are only rated a 2% chance of winning their maiden premiership. Meanwhile, the Panthers and Dragons barely register after both seemed to peak in May. 

Despite the Broncos and Warriors being in better form than the majority of the top four, their chances of it translating into a premiership remain slim. But with the competition as close as it is in 2018, this could well be the year a bottom four team climbs to the top.

In a season that has constantly produced inconsistent and unexpected results, all we really know is that one of these eight teams will finish on top.

Form means very little at this time of the year, and history is made to be broken.

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