Hopefully he gets a better result this time.
Anyone else remember in the early 2000s when the draw had teams playing the same opponent in consecutive rounds?
This years draw is pretty bad for stuff like that I have to say
We've had:
Melbourne twice in 3 weeks and Parra twice in 4 weeks,
And in the next 8 weeks we have the dragons twice, and the rabbitohs twice, among other games…
Surely they can at the very least do a "Everyone plays everyone once" for the first 15 rounds, then do mop up in the final 9...
I have been saying it for years, thew draw is not right, everyone should place each other once for the first 15 rounds, then you play half the other teams twice from round 16 onwards.
The next year you play the other teams you didn't play twice the year before from round 16 onwards, so every one is on an equal footing.
If I'm not mistaken, after the NRL groups the teams together based on last year's ladder results, they take into account club preferences and requests when building the schedule.
So many of the oddities like repeat playing have to do with club requests to not travel interstate more than X times in a row, or have particular match-ups like Parra-Tigers every Easter weekend.
This time around Channel 9 have no say (I don't believe) in the teams playing each round, only which games fall on which days.
So I don't believe it's all the NRL's doing, as they are trying to accommodate 16 x club requests as well.