League Blog, sponsored by Sportsbet

Sportsbet wants YOU.

We’ve had six semi-finals games, and while they’ve been peppered with brilliance and intensity, they haven’t been fully and overwhelmingly lathered in them. The picks so far would probably be the Titans-Broncos and St George-Eels games, because they at least maintained interest up to the last ten minutes or so. But they weren’t undecided going into the last five minutes, and more’s the point, they didn’t have that gripping semi-final intensity the whole way through.

We can only hope the situation will be rectified now it’s grand final qualifier time. That’s right, we’ve whittled away the Fancy Fifteen featuring the Roosters (formerly the Sweet Sixteen) to an Elite Eight, the Super Six and now the Final Four. For these to be truly great games, the Dogs need to win, and the winner of the Storm-Broncos game should have half their team injured and the other half suspended for chicken wings. Failing that, I’d settle for games that truly go Down To The Wire (DTTW).

So, getting onside with the oversponsorship and constant plugging of Sportsbet, League Blog thought that we had better calculate the odds these two will be great games. Please gamble responsibly.

Dogs v Eels

There’s a 50% chance the Eels will power past the Dogs on the back of Jesus Hayne, and a 10% chance the Dogs will shock the Eels and win by 13+. That leaves a 40% possibility of maxmimum closeness at the end of 80 minutes, or DTTW odds of 2 in 5.

Storm v Broncos

The Storm are a 35% chance of blowing the Broncos off the park, and the Broncos themselves would trample the Storm in 15% of grand final qualifiers between these two teams. That leaves a 50% chance of a tight one, or DTTW odds of 1 in 2.

Overall, we can see through elementary probability that the DTTW odds for both games combined are 1 in 5, which is a lamentable position for the NRL to be in at this end of the season.

David Gallop gets it wrong again.