Why is it that no team has won the comp from 5-8 is recent memory?
That's right, because beating 4 top 8 sides in a row is f**king hard. Of course there are such things as hard and easy draws, it's stupid to think otherwise.
The problem is, it only becomes apparent that a draw is easy or hard after the fact, once we know how the sides are travelling for that particular season, so there is nothing much that can be done about it, and it is pointless to complain about it.
Teams find it difficult to win four finals matches in a row because who ever they're facing in the grand final has had a break between the first week and the Prelim. Why do you think teams like Bulldogs in 2014 and Cowboys in 2017 capitulated at the end and started to get smashed?
If we had easy draws, teams who we have finished equal with or even below like we did with Manly in 2017 would have beaten us because they got the same finish if not better even with their tougher draw. But we've won the first week every time and got eliminated in the second week. This season by one point. The ladder's always been tight but just like every year we finished in the finals right about where the ladder said we would.
The draw means nothing besides which home games we get which will cause the crowd attendance to vary, which days we will play on, how far we'll have to travel and how Origin will affect us which we had to deal with on the Friday afterwards twice which combined with burnout bald spot Anthony Griffin's incompetence fu cked over Maloney and our best forward.
Draw toughness doesn't exist, otherwise it would have had us exposed in the finals at least once in any of the occasions we've been there.