The NRL is back again in 2020 and after two and a half months it’s great to have live, local sports on our screens.
While most of us were just happy to see it back, there was plenty to keep us entertained throughout the weekend with some shocking upsets and even a draw.
Under normal circumstances by Round 3 of the NRL season you would start to find patterns to follow and back through the next few weeks but you may as well treat the weekend just gone by as another Round 1.
Some of the things we saw this weekend will be indicators of things to come, others will be red herrings as some sides just had a bad day.
We’ll try and decipher which is which in our NRL 5 Lessons Learned for Round 3 here.
1 – Possession is King
It’s a pretty common tenant in all sports but having the ball in your possession goes a long way to winning the match.
With the NRL’s new six again rule looking to reward teams that can force errors by the defending team, keep an eye on the sides that can hold onto the ball and force plenty of repeated sets.
It should be no surprise then that the two sides who dominated possession last week recorded the two biggest winning margins.
Parramatta had 64% of the ball in their 28 point win over the Cowboys and North Queensland held onto a whopping 66% of possession in their 36-6 demolition of the Titans.
Of the seven winners this weekend, five held the possession advantage with only the Roosters (49%) and Raiders (45%) being in a possession deficit.
Saturday night brings about a very interesting clash between two of the sides that had excellent resumption results in Parramatta and Manly.
2 – Blowout City
Outside of the Panthers-Knights draw, there wasn’t a whole lot of tight finishes this week as teams returned in various states of readiness.
In the seven games that produced a winner, all were decided by double digits with the smallest winning margin coming from the Tigers who beat the Sharks by 12 points.
The aforementioned Cowboys had the biggest winning margin of the weekend crushing the Titans by 30 points.
Overall, the average winning margin in those matches this weekend was 20.86 points and while Round Four should bring us some closer contests, picking your spot to back a team in the Winning Margin market could be the way to go as teams still get their match-fitness back.
3 – Dragons Shutout Of The Return
We had our second shutout of the season on Saturday afternoon as the Warriors blanked the Dragons 18-0.
Remarkably it was the Warriors themselves who were shut out in Round One by the Knights.
Last year we had five shutout victories, including three in the regular season all by the Raiders on their way to the Grand Final.
Just like the Knights in Round 1, we would caution against Warriors fans making plans for the Grand Final just yet, but having that discipline to go through the entire 80 minutes without conceding a point is certainly interesting.
Last year the three teams the Raiders kept scoreless had varying fortunes in the next game.
The Titans lost to the Sharks in Round 2 by 20-6, the Eels recorded a 51-6 thumping of the Tigers in Round 6 and then the Tigers rebounded with a gritty 27-26 win over the Cowboys in Round 14.
As for the Dragons, they have their traditional Queen’s Birthday clash with the Dragons on Monday.
4 – A Draw Can Be As Nice As A Win
It would be remiss to let this NRL recap go without taking the opportunity to praise the gritty nature of the Knights, somehow coming away with a 14-14 draw despite losing several players to injury.
Already severely undermanned thanks to suspension and injuries, the Knights were well and truly behind the eight ball before kickoff and it only got worse when Mitchell Pearce and Connor Watson were both lost in the early stages against Penrith.
We learned just how much resilience this team has, defending desperately to hold the Panthers at bay, but there are still some questions about how they will back up next week.
It won’t be any easier with a rampant Raiders team, flying high after upsetting the Storm next on the draw but if they can get something out of it, it might just remove some of those doubts.
5 – Bounce Back Time
Just like in Round 1 you can chalk up some of these defeats to teams having bad days at the worst possible time.
If a defeat here isn’t enough to shake your confidence in certain teams, then backing them after a loss might be the best possible time.
Take for instance, a team like the Storm, who has not lost in back to back weeks since 2018, and now face Souths this weekend.
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