Fixture Strength Analysis

We have now had three fixture weeks and I thought it would be interesting to see which teams have had more favourable fixtures than others - just for fun!

I must admit, this came about because we (Featherstone Phoenix) have played the 1st, 3rd and 5th placed teams (who did the fixtures......???) and for the second year running, we are pointless after the first few games of the season.

I've looked at this two ways:

1. What is the average current position of the opposition for each team?

2. What is the average current points scored of the opposition for each team?

There are some caveats with this:

• We've had one walk-over which will skew the points scored slightly

• It's done on league position so even though Lofthouse and Carleton are joint top, Carleton are position 1 and Lofthouse are position 2 for the purposes of this.

• You get a bit of bias in the results as the team in position 1, by definition can't have played the team in position 1.

• We are only 3 games in!

So, what did this show?

As expected, the team with the hardest start to the season, on both measures, is Featherstone Phoenix who have played teams averaging third and scoring a mighty 85 points on average. They are very closely followed by Kippax British Legion whose opponents have only scored 1 point less on average.

At the other end, league leaders Carleton Grangers have had the most favourable start, playing teams averaging in position 10.7 and scoring 59 points.

The most average in terms of opponents? Maybe Golden Lion Dudes whose opponents rank 8th on both measures.

Anyway, I find this stuff interesting - hope you do too.

Ian