Round 7, 2014 Penny
Technical Analysis prior to R7, 2014
By Penny Dredfell
Added 29 April 2014
While fundamental analysis (used by most media tipsters) takes into account the ability of the two competing teams, the home ground advantage, injuries, team changes etc, technical analysis looks for trends and patterns which explain the otherwise inexplicable.
Reviewing last week: if you had tipped the Suns as the certs of the week, you had little cause for concern. Despite losing Nicholls prior to the game – and using Thompson as a stand-in ruckman – the Suns never looked to be in danger.
As for the Eagles and Blues game – the Eagles basically threw this game away. Admittedly, the Blues were good enough to take advantage. But I am still reasonably happy with the analysis. A rule of footy tipping is that sometimes the analysis is right but the result is not. The test of the analysis is: if they were to play the game again (if that were possible), would you change your tip? In this case, I would tip the Eagles again.
Now for this week:
Port has just had a huge win and gone to the top of the ladder. Naturally, they are hot favourites to beat the Giants. But could they have a huge letdown this week and lose?
The answer is “NO”. That is not because of the potential letdown factor kicking in. They won’t lose because the Giants are still travelling and are into week 4.
An interesting game to look at is the Cats and Tigers. Most have already pencilled in the Cats as total certs. The Tigers looked terrible last week and have been all but written off as a finals contender.
But it needs to be noted that they had a 10 day break from their R5 win over the Lions to the R6 Hawks match. This is too long! The Easter holiday did them no favours. On that basis, there is a potential for them to bounce back strongly this week.
And the Cats are vulnerable, in terms of injury. They now have the longest injury list (in terms of injury quotient – at 22) in the league.
But of course, the Cats may also hot back hard from their R6 loss. The surprise wasn’t that they lost. Port was given a huge chance to win. The shock was in the margin.
The Cats have now formed a “good week, shocker, 3rd week pattern. R4 was an upset win over the Hawks (+29), then the loss to Port was (-44). The usual thing for a top team at this time of year would be a big return to top form.
Putting all this together, we are going to get an EXTREME variance game. It is noted (prior to team selection) that the Tigers are being underestimated at 5 goal outsiders. As such, they will be given some chance; and there are better certs than the Cats this weekend.