[FONT="]The dreaded five-day turnarounds, the scourge of the modern game, will only reduce the chances of those affected by them winning any given fixture by 5 per cent.
There has been an outcry about short breaks between games amid fears fatigue and injury will conspire against those clubs affected. However, there has been precious little data to determine whether these claims can be substantiated. Until now.
Fairfax Media commissioned statistics provider Champion Data to crunch the numbers for all games since 2014 to determine whether backing up from the short break affected your chances of singing the team song the following week. The study, which covered a period of 96 NRL matches, shows that teams coming off a five-day break were a 45 per cent chance of winning their next game. The Wests Tigers fared the worst, winning just two of their 11 games in such circumstances, while the Broncos won all six of theirs.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]The stats mirror a similar study conducted by Vincent Kelly, conjoint associate lecturer at the University of Queensland's school of human movement and nutrition sciences. Kelly was South Sydney's head strength and conditioning coach from 2006 to 2009 at a time when the foundation club was lumped with a plethora of five-day turnarounds. Wanting to know if this put the Rabbitohs at a disadvantage, Kelly began his own investigations. The most recent, which looked at 768 NRL matches, mirrored Champion Data's findings - that you went from a 50 per cent chance of winning to about 45 per cent.[/FONT][FONT="]
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[/FONT][FONT="]Kelly's latest study, which will be presented at an Exercise and Sports Science Australia conference in Melbourne next week - looked at nine factors that influence any side's chances of winning. When all were factored in, game turnaround time came in at eighth spot as an influencing factor, behind, in order, playing away [including travel]; your opponent's position on the ladder; total game experience of your team; where your opponents finished last year; current opposition ladder position; number of team changes from the previous week; and whether you were playing at home or away. Only the number of first-year players in your team, in ninth spot, had less impact on your chances than game turnaround time.[/FONT][FONT="]
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[/FONT][FONT="]"My anecdotal take on that is the players tend to look after themselves a bit more after a five-day turnaround," Kelly said.
"If you're in the dressing room and the coach says,'We're playing in five days' time', you tend to look after yourselves and not go out. If it's a nine-day turnaround they become a bit more lax about it because they have a couple of [extra] days off.
"There's published work now that shows the physiological markers are not really different."
While acknowledging short turnarounds had a small impact on the chances of success, Kelly believes their impact is grossly overstated.
"It's a furphy around short turnarounds that is coach driven, media driven and not a real factor in a win or loss," he said.
"Days between matches isn't a major factor in determining a win or a loss.
"If Manly, who have been loud about it this year, looked at the games they had to play away against the Cowboys, Storm and Warriors, what they would probably find is their winning percentage is lower than 45 per cent. There are other factors bigger than five-day turnarounds but you don't hear them saying, 'Gee, that flight to Auckland put us at a disadvantage.' "
Kelly pointed to a paper, written by Nick Murray, Tim Gabbett and Karim Chamari, that showed there was no discernible difference in injury rates regardless of how many days between NRL matches.
The NRL has targeted a 25 per cent reduction in five-day turnarounds for 2017 and hopes that figure will again reduce much further the following year when the governing body gains full control of the draw.
To offset those teams currently affected, the Rugby League Players' Association has successfully lobbied for the NRL to provide affected teams with extra funding for massages, camps away and airline upgrades.
Few understand the tension between the needs of the players and broadcasters better than David Gyngell. Gyngell was the boss of Nine when the network negotiated the biggest free-to-air television deal in the game's history. With Nine broadcasting games on Thursday nights - resulting in games being scheduled on five consecutive days of the week - the result is some teams will have shorter turnaround times than others. Gyngell is now on the other side of the fence, as a member of the RLPA's newly created advisory board.
"Five-day turnarounds leave a lot to be desired," Gyngell said.
[FONT="]"They're not here to stay, the way the schedule and the rights work ... it's a blip now rather than something we should be marching through the streets on."[/FONT][/FONT]
