Mr. Zucchini Head wrote:
Bookies have Hull making the 8 and Cas missing out.
You do realise odds are not based on where bookies think a team will finish. It is a combination of factors but the "Outright" is who is more likely to win the league. Therefore, Hull start above favourites because the bookies believe they are more likely to win the league than Cas.
However, Cas have longer odds because they are not likely to win the league outright and the odds are longer to a) make it more attractive to people to bet on them and b) because it's in all honesty easy money for the bookies if they don't win.
For teams like Saints, Wigan, Wire - they are much more likely to be in contention for top spot so they get shorter odds to make them more unattractive to people gambling as the return will be less and because if they made odds higher, they'd lose loads.
If it was "who will finish in the eight" then I reckon Cas would start on a par with Hull, Hull KR and Salford, with Wigan, Wire, Saints, Leeds and Huddersfield certainties, Catalans in between and Widnes/Wakefield bringing up the back end.