Pro14 structure

connachta wrote: Well at least Kings and Edinburgh at home look more winnable than away,
And I prefer this to Scarlets (Champions, hard to beat even home) and Treviso (chance to win away)

You're entitled to your opinion but you're wrong etc., at least about having Edinburgh at home.

Kings home and early is ideal, but the way the rest of the other-conference fixtures fell is the worst possible of the four options where we only have one team at home. There's not very much in it in terms of points (one point per year) but in terms of wins Scarlets at home is worth nearly an extra win: 5 more wins in the 28 games over 7 seasons, when compared to Edinburgh at home.

Edinburgh home, rest away -> averaged 9.3 points (W12D1L15) from these 4 games over Pro 12 history (last 7 seasons).
Dragons home, rest away -> 9.4 pts (W13D1L14)
Treviso home, rest away -> 9.9 pts (W13D1L14)
Scarlets home, rest away -> 10.3 pts (W17L11).

I think damned stats are wronger than I am for 1 basic reason
Scarlets now is very very different than Scarlets five years ago. They are on the top of their momentum,
and what's more relevent IMO is this spring game at the Sportsground : 8 - 30 for them!

Edinburgh is never an easy task away even if we did it for the last 2 seasons. Happy to have them home
So I keep going on with my "entitled opinion"

connachta wrote: and what's more relevent IMO is this spring game at the Sportsground : 8 - 30 for them!

Data is not the plural of anecdote. We beat Scarlets at home the 2 years previously (and twice more before that), you're basing your view on one result.

Joking asides, I take your point, the difference is only one point over the four possible sets of four games, so it's not statistically significant, certainly not any more than your gut instinct. What is interesting is that every team "lost" four fixtures, and that these fixtures aren't of equal importance or worth.

For instance, we're losing 13 points from the 4 fixtures we'll forego (averaged over 7 seasons). We averaged 45 points a season, so we're losing 29% of our points.
Dragons do a bit better, they average 34 and are losing 8, or 24% of their points. It would be interesting to order the teams in terms or (1) absolute points lost (2) % points lost and (3) ease of replacement fixtures, but that might take some time. Comes back to all pigs being equal but some being more equal than others, I'll bet.

Not only instinct but observation it's hardly significant to compare Connacht 2013-14 and Connacht Champions 2015-16, so the same should apply to Scarlets/Embra.
Then you should add the hypothesis of ponderation coefficients, over-valueing the final saeson(s) as the squads/momentums were closer to what they are now...
New headache for you as you like them

And yeah Orwell is always right in the end

www.sarugbymag.co.za/blog/details/new-testing-times-for-kings

After seeing how much we struggled last year due to a subpar preseason, I think the Kings could be the worst team in the league this year.

Luckily we play they early on. Hopefully we can capitalise on their struggles

Which is odd given that the King's are Union owned/run

EnricoPalazzo wrote:

Mark Mostyn wrote: www.sarugbymag.co.za/blog/details/new-testing-times-for-kings

After seeing how much we struggled last year due to a subpar preseason, I think the Kings could be the worst team in the league this year.

I think the south Africans are resourcing the cheetahs, putting all of their eggs in one basket so to speak. It is going to make the conferences particularly unbalanced!

With the current issues over European eggs I can understand why you might wan't them all in the same basket.

And here we go.

www.planetrugby.com/news/blue-bulls-loan...with-kings-extended/

Bazzo wrote:

pinky wrote: Final is in Dublin again. Not sure how they swung that. I assumed it would be in Cardiff ...
www.pro14rugby.org/2017/08/23/tickets-on...o14-final-in-dublin/

I seem to remember something about either the WRU or the regions saying they weren't interested in holding the event as some sort of protest...

According to BBC Sport, the pitch in Cardiff is due to be lifted before the Final date for music events over the following months. Think this is what they meant by "Stadium availability". Sorry cannot post link.

It does mean an easier journey for us when we get to the Final - against Leinster again.

Yes, Ed Sheeran is playing there for the month of June or something like that - god bless us!

There was talk of the Cardiff City Stadium which is lovely to be fair. Its a pity that it is not somewhere like Rome. I think too many events in Dublin. Great if they used either the new Casement or Pairc ui Caoimh as alternates in Ireland.