Who Got the Toughest Draw?

Our index weights six factors: total travel distance (25%), short turnarounds of 5 days or fewer (25%), home/away imbalance (15%), maximum consecutive away games (15%), rest-disadvantage matchups (10%), and bye spacing consistency (10%). Higher is harder.

NRL travel isn't distributed evenly, and it never can be. Ten of the seventeen teams are based in the greater Sydney metropolitan area. Melbourne, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Townsville, Wellington, and Newcastle make up the rest. The result is a permanent structural advantage for Sydney clubs.

The Warriors travel five times further than the Bulldogs across the 2026 season. The Cowboys, isolated in Townsville, rack up 30,315 km even after excluding their Vegas trip — every away game is a flight. Compare that to the Bulldogs (6,288 km) and Eels (8,075 km) who can bus to most venues.

The Storm (23,388 km) and Dolphins (22,887 km) sit in the middle — Melbourne and Brisbane are far enough from Sydney to add distance but close enough to avoid the extremes that Townsville and Wellington face.

The Cowboys face five rest-disadvantage games — more than any other team. Their worst is R14 against the Dolphins, where they'll have 6.1 days rest versus the Dolphins' 15.9 days. That's not a game — it's a scheduling penalty.

The Rabbitohs are the only team with zero rest-disadvantage matchups. Whether by design or luck, the NRL draw gave them the fairest schedule in terms of turnaround equity.

Some of the most egregious mismatches in the draw:

Every team plays 12 home and 12 away games — perfectly balanced on the ledger. But the sequencing of those games matters enormously. Back-to-back away trips compound fatigue, disrupt preparation, and erode home comforts.

The Sharks and Dragons both face four consecutive away games at their worst stretch — the longest in the competition. By comparison, the Cowboys, Warriors, Knights, Bulldogs, Rabbitohs and Eels never have more than two straight away games.

Bye spacing also varies. The Bulldogs have their three byes in rounds 2, 15, and 18 — the first bye comes absurdly early (practically a wasted week), while the latter two are clustered just three rounds apart. The Knights face a similar issue with byes in rounds 12, 15, and 27 — a 12-round gap between their second and third byes.

The best bye spacing belongs to the Sharks (rounds 7, 12, 17 — perfectly spaced every 5 rounds) and the Warriors (rounds 10, 14, 18 — evenly distributed through the middle of the season).

Four teams — Cowboys, Bulldogs, Dragons, and Knights — opened their 2026 season at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. The 25,000 km round trip looks punishing on paper. It isn't.

Compare that to non-Vegas teams, who had just 5 to 9 days between R1 and R2. The Rabbitohs had the shortest turnaround at 5 days — less than half of what any Vegas team received.

The extended rest more than compensates for the travel. In fact, when we include the Vegas kilometres in the difficulty index, three of the four Vegas teams jump to the top of the hardest-draw rankings — not because their draw is hard, but because the raw km are artificially inflated. Once adjusted, the Knights drop from #4 to #14 and the Bulldogs from #3 to #15. Only the Cowboys remain near the top, and that's entirely due to Townsville's isolation.

Across the three seasons the NRL has held Vegas fixtures (2024–2026), we found no consistent performance impact. Six of twelve Vegas teams improved their win rate in their Vegas season, five declined, and one stayed the same. The pattern is regression to the mean, not a Vegas handicap.

The draw doesn't decide seasons — but it tilts the margins. At 13 rounds in, we can start comparing how teams are performing relative to their schedule difficulty.

Overperforming their draw: the Warriors (51.0 difficulty, 10-3 record) and Sea Eagles (53.0 difficulty, 8-5) are thriving despite having two of the three hardest schedules. Their success is earned, not gifted by the fixture list.

Underperforming their draw: the Eels (29.7 difficulty, 2-11) have the easiest schedule in the NRL and sit second-last. The Bulldogs (36.0 difficulty, 5-9) have a cushy draw and can't capitalise. The draw isn't their problem — their roster is.

The Cowboys question: at 8-5 with the hardest draw (57.4), the Cowboys are arguably the most impressive team relative to schedule. Five rest-disadvantage games, 30,315 km of travel, and Townsville's permanent isolation — yet they're competing for a top-four spot. If they can maintain this through R14–R27, their back half of the season deserves serious respect.