Quote: NSW "Having a week off is 100% an advantage. No risk of bans, head knocks, injuries, fatigue. A chance to rest the body after a gruelling season.
If Leigh beat us everyone will bring up the lazy week off narrative but if they do beat us it’ll be because they played better than us on the night.
Leigh’s good players are amazing, Lam, Ipape, Amone, Asista, Mulhern, O’Donnell. I just think they have 1 or 2 passengers that we can get at and get our points.
Fancy us to progress but it’ll take all 80 minutes I feel.'"
I think a problem with how people think about the week off is that they judge it exclusively on the result of the next game. For me the biggest advantage we have there is less about whether we're more likely to beat Leigh, and more about whether we're more likely to win at Old Trafford. That's a difficult thing to prove obviously, but I'd feel a lot better about our chances in the GF after a week off and one possibly tough game, than I would about facing a third tough knockout game in a row, like Wire will be facing if they get past Hull KR.