OK, let's work under the assumption that the Knights, Rabbitohs and Cowboys win on Saturday. This would leave Parramatta in a situation similar to last year where a victory by x amount of points scrapes them in.
Problem last year was not that Parramatta weren't good enough, it was that x = 28. Too much from the get go. x needs to be lower, more achievable.
Now if we are lucky enough to survive the Saturday Gauntlet, we want x to be a single digit. Currently, x is 57, but Newcastle have a chance to lower it if they beat the Tigers, which we are assuming is true as a premise.
How low do we want x to be when the Eels take the field on Sunday? Don't automatically think 0, meaning we only need to win by a field goal. In this scenario Newcastle's differential would have dropped to -54 and our one point win will leave us with -70. If Newcastle won by 57 then we would need to win by 18, otherwise Newcastle get 8th spot.
There is a balance in there that allows Parra to score as little as possible while still maintaing better differentials than both the Tigers and Knights.
Newcastle victory margin...10...20...30...40...45...46...47...48...49...50...51
Newcastle Differential........101.91...81...71...66...65...64...63...62...61...60
Tigers Differential...............25...35...45...55...60...61...62...63...64...65...66
Eels victory margin needed 47...37...27...17...12...11...10...9...10...11...12
So the ideal situation is for Newcastle to win by 48 against the Tigers, leaving them both on - 63, which means we only need to win by 9 to get the last finals spot.
