BadnMean wrote: ↑December 4, 2020, 2:46 pm
It was an issue this year only because some teams weren't travelling at all and others had to travel in an unusual manner which stymied any chance for effective recovery and choosing an ideal pre game preparation- the former being the bigger issue as it builds up. This exaggerated the travel disparity to make it a genuine issue imo. It was one season, League was lucky to be played at all, but pretending it had/has no effect is silly.
Travel affecting teams has reputable sports science research behind it for decades now. And in that exaggerated form, it did matter. It didn''t make things impossible, but it made the Raiders season tougher, swimming against a current for a little stretch there and some teams got a nice little wave to ride instead.
During a normal season- not an issue for the Raiders. Warriors probably should get a say in their scheduling as to how they'd like to handle it.
Yeah, there is no question the COVID protocols and what needed to happen to salvage a season and ensure clubs didnt go broke and stakeholders all got managed to salvage a good part of the revenue from this season meant sacrifices had to be made
Interstate teams, particular those isolated like us, and more so NZ and eventual premiers Melbourne were of course most impacted by this
I have no doubt in many ways it impacted our season negatively overall. But yes, this is an outlier, a bizarre season that we'll never forget. But in a normal season, i concur with you and asknasfkja that travel is massively overrated and generally not a concern for our club.
I was a few years ago i was a VERY heavy gambler and i spent quite a bit of time reseraching this across the codes that i was interested in. My feeling having looked at what data i gathered and subsribed too... Travel is impactful mostly when you cross timezones and play in unsual slots for your body clock... the most impactful componet, as far as gambling goes, was the turnaround between games and where teams are "on the road" for 3 or more weeks... what i saw was a pretty consistent patten of teams underperforming expections when those situations occur
So when i look at our draw, i look for short turn arounds, odd time slots and prolonged stretches of playing away. Looking at our draw it looks pretty chalk in terms of time slots, as noted by me earlier, we're never home nor away for more than 2 weeks in a row, which has a nice consistency to it and the nature of the NRL is we dont really have to consider the timezone factor here.
It's a good steady draw for us.
As said, it's a good draw that will not be prohibitve to our goals for 2021. We will sink or swim on our own performance.