Bye week special II

Statistical analysis? No, anecdotal evidence.

Last season, Nick Campton over at the ABC published a short explanation as to why rugby league in Australia awards two points for a bye.

Bye points are a relic from the earliest days of rugby league in this country but they have long outlived their usefulness.

But for almost a century since, bye points have endured. With the league slowly becoming more professional and eventually blossoming into a billion-dollar sport that feels light years away from the suburban competition it once was.

If only other certain aspects of the suburban competition would die.

In Melbourne Storm’s 27 seasons in the NRL, bye weeks have been a regular occurrence.

For this week’s bye week special, I thought I might try my hand at some historical analysis to see if the following contentions are based in any fact:

1. Do Melbourne often lose the match before a bye?

2. Do Melbourne usually win the match after a bye?

3. Do Melbourne usually beat teams coming off a bye?

Now some caveats on this analysis:

• Full competition weekends off are not included — for example the old representative rounds when the NRL would be off for some kind of test match or origin match; or this season’s split round to start the season.

• There will be midseason rounds (usually) before a bye round where Melbourne may have fielded a squad without representative players — this may skew the data a little in favour of the first contention.

• Byes have been a factor for Melbourne in most NRL seasons with the exception of 1998, 2000 and 2001.¹

• Where Melbourne earned a trip to the preliminary final by winning a qualifying final to skip week two of the finals series, I’ve counted that as a bye weekend — this may skew the data a little against the first contention.

• From my calculations, this week is the 53rd NRL match week Melbourne will have a bye from playing.

• Melbourne’s overall record in 693² NRL matches is 460 wins, 6 draws and 227 losses for a win percentage of 66.81%.³

The match before a bye

Starting in S02E11, Melbourne’s sequence of matches before a bye goes as follows:

• 1999 through 2010: WLLWWW-LLWLWWWWWLLWWWL

• 2011 through 2020: LWWWLWWLWLWLWWWWWLWWWWW

• 2021 through 2024: WWWWLLL

That’s 35 wins, 17 losses and the one anomaly of Melbourne starting the season with a bye, missing S07E01 back in 2004. So right off the bat, it seems Melbourne win just about the same percent of the time the week before a bye.

If I remove the semi finals bye weekends (given it’s always a win that provides this bye), Melbourne’s win percentage does drop to 58.54%.

So I think the contention that Melbourne often lose before a bye weekend (during the season) has some basis in reality in the sense that it’s marginally less likely that the Storm lose than in weeks that don’t have a bye the following weekend. Further competition-wide data analysis might be useful to compare other teams performance in this area.

The match after a bye

Coming off a bye and including those semi final weekends off, Melbourne’s win percentage is currently 63.46%, which is already lower than the Storm’s overall win percentage. The data here includes the three times Melbourne lost a preliminary final after a week off (2011, 2015, 2021) and a bunch of matches where Origin players either missed matches or were playing off very short rest.

There is a few interesting streaks in the record books with Melbourne only losing once coming back from a bye between 2005 and 2009; and again between 2016 and 2022. There are 13 occasions where Melbourne and their opponent after a bye also had the previous weekend off. Melbourne have a phenomenal 10 wins and 3 losses record in these match-ups, and will have another opportunity to add to this when the Storm play the Roosters in round 20 at AAMI Park.

I must admit I was a little surprised by Melbourne’s record in rounds after a bye as I thought it would show a tangible increase in win percentage. However, the two losses last season coming back from a bye (round 10 vs Souths, round 14 vs Cowboys) have tipped the Storm into a lower winning percentage than their overall win percentage.

Playing teams coming off a bye

Including those 13 occasions where Melbourne were also coming off a bye to play a team that also had a bye, the Storm have faced 31 teams coming back off an extended rest break. Melbourne’s overall record in these matches is 21 wins and 10 loses, a win percentage of 67.74%. That percentage is not statistically different from Melbourne’s overall win percentage.

When there’s been an odd number of teams in the competition — 1999, 2002 through 2006, and 2023 to present — Melbourne used to get a lot of practice at this quirk of the NRL draw, having to face teams coming off a bye four times in 2003 and five times in 2004. This quirk is something the Bulldogs have had to deal with the past few weeks having played the Raiders, Dragons and Knights all following a bye. When the NRL puts together the draw, you would hope that this is a factor to be avoided, but I doubt it.

What does it all mean?

TL;DR: not much to be honest.

I think the first contention does have some, very limited merit to it. That Melbourne lost twice this season the week before a bye probably wasn’t attributable to the impending bye or looking past the opposition in front of them. Injuries, suspensions, home ground advantage, travel, limited preparation time, and strength of opponent are all greater factors towards winning and losing rugby league matches. But there might just be that little thought in the back of a footballer’s mind that a bye is coming up and whether that plays just even one percent increase or decrease in performance was something fun to look at the numbers.

As for playing a well-rested opponent, that too is seemingly not a factor using these games as a data set. Again, it might be useful to look at the effect of short rest when trying to predict whether teams have an advantage going into a match, against the bye potentially interrupting the routine of players by giving them extra days to review their previous performance and prepare for the next match.⁴

An exercise in futility, perfect.

1. Let’s abide by the ruling of the High Court and rightfully exclude Souths from the competition again please.

2. Updated to after the match against the Manly Sea Eagles, NRL round 12, 2024. Reminder that I include the five World Club Challenge matches at Storm first grade matches.

3. Draws are counted at 0.5 of a win.

4. Might have to look at this for a future bye week special.