Picking the winner of the NRL competition is a numbers game.

We’ve had 17 teams whittled down to just the remaining four who, over the course of more than 200 games this season, will vie for the ultimate prize. So which of the Broncos, Storm, Panthers and Sharks will emerge victorious?

There are any number of Pythagorean permutations, which is why we put the question to Richard Garner, Macquarie University’s Associate Professor of Mathematics. Garner, a category theory expert who completed his PhD at Cambridge, has crunched the data from the last 13 seasons to come up with an answer.

In doing so, he has considered all of the variables, including finishing position, home-ground advantage, favouritism and a week’s rest.

His first observation is that it has already been an “unusual” post-

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