Sport: NRL (4* NRL Play of the Day) Market: Manly Sea Eagles v Sydney Roosters Pick: Manly Win Odds: $2.25 Agency: Sportsbet (Promo – if your team loses by 10 points or less, it’s money back) Wager: 4 Units Analysis: Big games are won by great players and today’s game sees some of the best athletes going around. For the Roosters, the stand out player is Sonny Bill Williams, who is probably the world’s best forward. For the Sea Eagles, it’s Daly Cherry Evans, who is up there with the best players in the world. We see DCE as having the advantage here as he will touch the ball more than SBW. Andrew John’s influence on DCE can not be understated as he has taken the next step to the Elite level under John’s instruction. Mitchell Pearce will certainly have his hands full here and will need to have another BOG performance for the Roosters to have a chance here. We will be surprised if Trent Robinson does not play SBW at lock. He has been put somewhat into cotton wool for most of the season as he has a few injury concerns and there was no point in making their gun a tackling machine. But this is the big dance and there in no more games on after this one. Sonny Bill must be available on both sides and he must play 80 minutes. You don’t have to be a genius to think that a Manly player will target him for “crunch” tackle and if successful, it could swing the game. The likely kamikazes will be Matai, Watmough or Glenn Stewart. Manly do not have to make a big adjustment to their game to win the Grand Final. Dumb errors have let them down and while they will always have a high number of errors because of the tough way that they play the game, they can minimise silly passes that lead to dropped balls, dumb ruck penalties, poor play the balls etc. What exacerbates this is that Manly have a habit of making these dumb errors at crucial times in the game when the team is trying to build pressure. Two of the most experienced players, Anthony Watmough and Steve Matai are the ring leaders. This is a big test for coach Toovey and if he can sort this issue out then Manly should defeat the Roosters based on the other key stats that influence a result. Manly have not played the Roosters this season when they have had their key 4 spine players all in. Brett Stewart has missed two games and Kieran Foran one. These are key ins for the Sea Eagles and Brett Stewart in particular swings the advantage Manly’s way in our eyes. The other main factor is GF experience – this can’t be underestimated. Manly has tonnes of it and the Roosters do not. We saw in the AFL GF that the Hawks were cooler under pressure which ultimately won them the game. Fremantle were probably the better team on the day and had more opportunities but couldn’t kick straight under the immense pressure. As we said, GF experience can not be underestimated and we like Manly to remain calmer in this situation. This should be a great game and both teams have claims to win. The Roosters have been the best team all season, but Manly have timed their run perfectly and have had the extra day to recover for this game. Remembering that the last time these teams met it was an epic back and forth game played at frantic pace with the Roosters winning 4-0 in one of the best games we have witnessed in recent times. It is unlikely this game will be a blow out either way as Manly are too tough and the Roosters are too good defensively. With that in mind, we have to take advantage of Sportsbet’s fantastic promo on H2H bets whereby if your team loses by 10 points or less, it is money back. This gives us a great look at the value on Manly with the +10 points for the push, a great position to be in. If you don’t have a Sportsbet account, email/inbox us and we will send you a link to get an extra bonus exclusive to Sportips followers. The final key stat we found is that the minor premiers have only won 3 of the last 12 GFs and it is usually a team that times its run perfectly hitting form at the business end of the season that takes the bickies – sounds a lot like the Sea Eagle’s run to us…. Take the Sea Eagles to win this one for a strong 4 units. Sport: NRL Market: Manly Sea Eagles v Sydney Roosters Pick: Manly +5 ½ points Odds: $1.72 Agency: Centrebet Wager: 3 Units Analysis: As per our analysis above, this looks to be a tight game and we like the 5 ½ point start (though we would have obviously liked it even more at 6 ½ points ) In a big game like this and with Manly’s experience, you can’t help but be happy with the start in this situation. Take the Sea Eagles +5 ½ points in this one for 3 units. Sport: NRL Market: Manly Sea Eagles v Sydney Roosters Pick: Total UNDER 33 ½ points Odds: $1.85 Agency: Centrebet Wager: 2 Units Analysis: There’s no secret to this one. Despite being one of the lowest all year, it still feels a little high for this game. Exceptional defensive efforts are built on intensity and energy, such as the one we saw in the previous final between these two teams where both teams gave so much on the defensive end, that they both ran out of puff when they had the ball up the other end. Interestingly, the average number of tries in all grand finals since 1998 is 6.33 (25 points + conversions) and that takes into account some high scoring teams over those years. Both these teams are extremely good on defence. The Roosters are well organized and provide excellent coverage and team defence while the Sea Eagles are tough all over the park and grind teams down. The total scores from the 3 games this season between these teams have been 20 points, 30 points and 4 points – so none of the previous games have hit this total on offer. Grand finals don’t generally open up for teams to run in easy tries, teams have to earn every point. We had this total rated at around the 28-30 point mark so are happy with the extra few points on offer. Take the UNDER 33 ½ points in this one for 2 units. Sport: NRL Market: Manly Sea Eagles v Sydney Roosters (Clive Churchill Medal) Pick: SBW, DCE, Maloney, Foran, Glenn Stewart & Brett Stewart) Odds: $6.40 / $7.20 / $10.50 / $12.50 / $17 / $20 Agency: Betfair Wager: 0.50 Units on DCE and SBW, 0.25 units on the other 4 players Analysis: We’ll have a small play on a few players in this market but wont go overboard – we don’t want to give away the day’s profit hoping to hit on high odds exotic bets. Since 1986, the Churchill medal has been awarded to a half back 8 times, lock 5 times, fullback 4 times, second rower 3 times, prop 3 times and five eighth and hooker twice each. With that in mind, we’re going to have a play on 2 Roosters (Maloney and SBW) and 4 Sea Eagles (DCE, Foran, Glenn Stewart and Brett Stewart) As per our analysis above, the two real game changers are DCE and SBW so we’ll hit them the hardest as the ref will be well aware of their influence on the game. We think it will be an intriguing battle between Foran and Maloney and if one gets on top of the other, it could really shape the match. Glenn Stewart is a past winner (2011), is good value at $17 and will have an influence on the game for sure. Brett Stewart is the wild card and a real key to the Sea Eagle’s offence, so f he links up and gets on the end of a couple of tries, the flashy fullback looks to be great value at $20. As we said, we wont be giving away too much of our profit but are spreading our bets wide with our worst result (apart form someone else winning the medal!) SBW for a 1.2 unit profit and our best result is Brett Stewart for a 3 unit profit. Good luck and enjoy what could be one of the great finals we’ve seen!!! #EasyMoney
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 07:49:54 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015