Looks like I’ll be in Bathurst for my Birthday next year.
Mostly happy with the draw, only thing I don’t like is the teams we play in Weeks 1 & 2 we don’t play again. Personally I think the games against teams you only play once should all be mid-season.
Here is a breakdown of the time slots. Sadly not many Saturday 7:30 matches, but for those a fan of Friday Night Football will be happy with 10 matches (7 Home & 3 Away) being played on Friday Nights.
The majority of hame games are on Thursday and Friday (9 from 11). Only 3 games on the weekends (one is at Bathurst).
I don’t go to games nor do I subscribe to pay TV so, next season I will be able to watch the Panthers 11 times during the regular season and 3 times in the finals.
So, the NRL, in its infinite wisdom, awards only 11 free-to-air games to the defending premiers. Pre-season hasn’t even started, and already my Penrith persecution complex is activated.
Looking further ahead, I wonder what the 2020 bye system will be like. We should never forget the last time that a bye system was instigated. At that time the conventional wisdom was that the team that had just enjoyed a bye would be at an advantage because of the week off. That shouldn’t be a problem, should it, if the allocation was balanced. But it wasn’t. Every team played a bye-freshened team ONCE - except Penrith. We played the bye-freshened team THIRTEEN times. I think that the appropriate advice to a Penrith fan was to lay on your back and think of England.
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Preseason matches added to original post.
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