XIII Oceans

If you haven’t done so already, you can check out how your team performs against the predictions by reading this, which is a piece that has a breakdown of how often teams have been backed to win, or lose, and how reliable that is.

Leeds v Huddersfield
Great news for Giants fans following the victory over Hull KR, Steve Folkes is on the shortlist for the vacant coaching position.  Bad news is that Nathan Brown and Royce Simmons are too.  We’ll trust in the Giants management to make the right appointment for their club and for this competition.  Right now though it’s take-on-the-Champions time for the caretaker coaches.  Caretakers who have done more than just change light bulbs, they’ve re-wired a few things as well.  Posting a couple of wins on the way, the Giants are in better form than Leeds over the past month.  Strangely there are murmurings amongst Leeds fans about how they’ve slipped from being in the driving seat with lots of leg room, to riding pillion with Saints.  Why is that?  If you surf the Leeds forum I’m sure you’ll find criticism varies but sometimes form just goes away and you don’t know why.  Yes, it can be attributable to personnel changes, injuries and, amazingly, even improvements in the opposition, but there are times when as a fan you just need to be realistic and accept that, in sport, teams can go through a dip.  Too much tweaking and you miss your consistency.  Barring their trip to Saints the Giants have been up for their games since Sharp left and you are left wondering if they can continue that against a team that is struggling to reach their own high standards.  I think that trip to Saints though was a real reflection upon the Giants this year, great in parts but, on the whole, messy.  I wouldn’t shy away from this being a reasonable test for Leeds but it is the Giants and they can get a bit awestruck with all that metropolis glitter, signed photographs and those manicured eyebrows.  Leeds by 12.

Saints v Castleford
Castleford remain the last side to beat Saints, some ten league games ago and it’s unlikely that they’ll be doing a double.  In the RL world it’s inevitable that some pea-brain halfwit will misconstrue overwhelming evidence for arrogance.  Saints by 50.

Warrington v Bradford
This week’s game of the round features a real humdinger, fifth at home to sixth with a four point gap on offer for the Wolves if they win.  Who would have thought a month ago that Warrington would be on the up, having seen off two playoff contenders with a third strolling into town, on an injured horse, short on bullets and with a Waco Kid hand?  Four league wins in ten is not gunslinger form, for the Bulls, compared to four in five for James Lowes posse so it’s only the Bulls pedigree that stops this game from being a foregone conclusion.  How much confidence can we place in a pedigree that has lost six of their last ten league games?  Well, four of those losses have been to the top three teams and the other two away from home, albeit against sides for whom playoff action is reliant upon a dazzling run of form.  At Odsal it’s usually the case that the Bulls pack can overpower even the best on their day and there’s a similar truth at the HJ where Warrington’s offensive firepower creates an always competitive team.  When faced with a big pack last week the Wolves came up with eight tries amongst their threequarters and you expect that Lowes’s side will continue to shift the ball wide and exploit what has always been this year, a disjointed Bulls side.  Wolves by 8.

Catalans Dragons v Harlequins RL
Twice this year I’ve backed Harlequins RL against Catalans and twice the Dragons have stolen the points, using their magic to lift themselves above McDermott’s hardworking side.  Being in Perpignan it’s unlikely that they’ll be getting anyone’s backing this week, reality not discrimination.  I say discrimination because has anyone else noticed the increasingly big chip on some Harlequins RL fans’ shoulders?  I say some because it’s not something that I’d ever encountered on my trips down there, quite the opposite in fact, the hospitality of their fans is second to none in this league, which is why this year has been a surprise.  After putting up with the usual gripes from non-expansionists I suppose it’s realistic to expect that some Harlequins RL will be a bit embittered about the attitude of other RL fans to their club, however I’m not sure that excuses this worrying trend of faux siege mentality.  If Harlequins RL fans want to be as lacking in knowledge as the rest of the RL world they can listen to any SKY broadcast for the latest set of home fans to be caught castrating themselves over a line ball.  Speaking of fans caught berating the referee for not calling passes the way they see them, did anyone hear the Hull fans earlier in the year when they yelled “forward” for a dummied pass?  Brilliant stuff and all home fans shout “forward”, except in Perpignan.  Catalans by 12.

Wakefield v Hull
A dress rehearsal for an upcoming Challenge Cup semi-final usually results in a dry, cautious affair with teams unwilling to go through their playbook for fear of giving too much away.  Did Wakefield have one eye on that game when they shipped sixty at Warrington?  As much as Kear might say they didn’t, I don’t imagine he’ll be overly concerned about that with his side through to the semi-final. Here though, we have a different fixture.  It’s at home, it’s against a side that Wakefield should be capable of beating and is one of those games that they would have been looking at as a key win in the push for playoff action.  With the two teams directly above them facing off, this isn’t a game that Kear can afford to play with, which presents no problems for Agar.  After slight improvements from the Sharp days, Agar is still finding his feet with Hull and with his side out of the playoff running, every game is a chance for him to tinker with the pressure off.  Sadly for Agar he’s not had the same kind of fortunate run with opponents, facing top-six teams in all but one of his league fixtures, which he did win.  I remember attending this kind of match in winter rugby when your side was ticking over with nothing to do but wait for an important cup game and although those kind of circumstances are few and far between nowadays, thanks to professionalism, you can’t help but feel this will be a scrappy game but it’s a scrappy game that the home side can’t really afford to play around with.  Wildcats by 6.

Hull KR v Wigan
If you’d checked the analysis of how teams have performed against the predictions then you’ll already know that Hull KR are one of those teams that has let me down on the predictions front, perfectly exemplified by last week’s failure at The Jungle.  That loss to Castleford was Rovers fifth league defeat in a row and placed them on the furthest edge of the playoff picture.  Contrasting that poor form, Wigan gave their local rivals a hand by registering yet another league win over Leeds, making it five from six in the league after dropping three league games in a row before that.  Both these teams started the season relatively well until they went head-to-head in round 8.  Since that game, when Wigan won, Rovers have won just three out of twelve games.  Is Justininho feeling the pressure?  Is Michael Dobson?  Is Cabman exploding with internal rage at his team’s inability to back him up on anything outside of a local derby?  Wigan won’t care.  They’re heading upwards, chasing the top three with a game in hand and plenty of home games to come and this represents a difficult but far from impossible away game.  Can Noble instil the same kind of intensity in his side this week because they will need that over in Hull.  Had this been last week’s game I would have been edging towards Rovers but having looked at how often they’ve failed my predictions and dropped games that they should have won I’m not so sure.  A similar kind of principle applies to Wigan, who’ve been up and down most of the season but they have come away with results when they haven’t necessarily been hitting good form.  There’s more class in the Wigan side, more quality and a doggedness that has caused some greater teams to succumb.  My head says that Rovers compete well with Wigan but it also says that Rovers have played themselves out of the playoffs and I don’t think this is a fixture where they can just plug in and play, especially if Stuart Fielden continues his five minute long Golden Boot winning form.  Wigan by 6. 

Last week’s predictions:

Wigan by 2 (won by 1)
Saints by 8 (won by 54)
Rovers by 4 (lost by 8 )
Bulls by 6 (lost by 1)
Dragons by 6 (won by 12)
Wolves by 6 (won by 26)

Typical four from six week, lifting the overall won-loss ratio to 75-46 (62%).