moving on... wrote:
A knockout rugby specialist can be described as:
Wigan, Leeds & Saints.
Interesting point this.
We won three Challenge Cups, winning our first three major finals. At this point surely we were knockout rugby specialists. Leeds went through years when they could not win the Challenge Cup despite probably being the best team overall, so they were not knockout rugby specialists but they beat us in the 2011 playoffs and 2012 Grand Final?
Wigan have been in the last four Grand Finals, won two, lost two. That's a 50-50 record
St Helens have lost five of the last six Grand Finals they have been in, they seem to struggle to win in the big occasion.
I wonder whether what is really happening is that Wigan, Leeds and Saints (and to a lesser extent us) have been the better sides over the past ten years, and so are making a lot of finals and semis, but once there there's an element of randomness in who beats who. So the best teams win more trophies than others, but they also lose a lot of big knock out games, rather than there being teams that are systemic knock out rugby specialists.
Maybe getting to finals is the hard part and once in a final its just like tossing a coin and heads you win.
Tony Smith tossed heads in his first three finals, and we all acclaimed him as a genius, but now he's come up with four tails, is he a useless toss er or are we just observing randomness.
