NRL 2022 Least Wins Wooden Spoon Betting – Odds, Tips & Predictions

Bet on the NRL Wooden Spoon 2022 With Playup>>

While most of the attention of the NRL public will be focused on the teams vying for the NRL Premiership in 2022, invariably there will be a collection of sides for whom each and every win is an added bonus. Every year there is one side which ends the season as the ignominious winner of the award that nobody wants – the Wooden Spoon. There are a number of teams which appear likely to struggle in 2022, and it’s these sides that make up the favourites for the Wooden Spoon.

Get the best Wooden Spoon odds now on the Dragons, Tigers, Cowboys, Warriors, Broncos and Bulldogs for season 2022 before the Wooden Spoon betting markets shorten as the finals approach.

The Dragons finished in 11th last year and enjoyed five wins more than the last placed Bulldogs, but their inglorious end to the season sees them the favourites to take out the 2022 Wooden Spoon. After 17 rounds they were sitting inside the top eight, where they’d been since Round 3, with a record of 8-8. Those eight wins would be all they would manage throughout the season. Eight consecutive losses to round out the season saw them tumbling down the ladder, and has given bookmakers no confidence in their ability to do much other than lose a whole lot of games in 2022.

It’s now been ten years since the Wests Tigers appeared in the finals, and they’ve been gradually dropping down the ladder over the course of the past three years. A 13th place finish last season was their worst since 2017, and a final round 38-0 drubbing at the hands of a Bulldogs side which had won just two games all season to that point suggested problems which extend beyond talent for the side. They have a couple of exciting young players on their list, but the Tigers’ performance throughout the course of last year won’t have inspired a whole lot of hope in fans for 2022.

A 6-2 period throughout the middle period of last season suggested the Cowboys have the ability to compete when they’re at their best, but unfortunately that window of relative success was followed by ten consecutive losses, and began only after four successive defeats to begin the season. As a result they finished ahead of only the lowly Bulldogs, and it’s hard to anticipate a whole lot of improvement out of the 2015 Premiers in 2022.

Unfortunately it’s become something of an annual ritual to talk about the Warriors’ lack of hope for the upcoming season. New Zealand’s only side has, in fairness, had a tough couple of years as a result of travel restrictions between Australia and our Pacific neighbour, but one finals appearance in the last ten years – and a brief one at that – suggests that the horse had bolted long before COVID entered our lives. The Warriors have a happy knack of finishing a few rungs off the bottom of the ladder without challenging for a top eight spot, so while they should be good enough to avoid the Wooden Spoon, don’t expect them to be too far away.

The Broncos’ fall from grace in 2020 was a dramatic one, and unfortunately things didn’t get a whole lot better for them in 2022. New coach Kevin Walters did, however, manage to extract the occasional improved performance from the side last year, suggesting there may be some light at the end of the tunnel. Nonetheless, the Broncos are likely to find themselves in the bottom echelon of the ladder in 2022.

The Bulldogs were, at least on results, an unmitigated disaster last season, winning just three games to finish on the bottom of the ladder by a huge four games. But there’s more to a season than win/loss records, and some of the Bulldogs competitive performance against significantly better teams than them demonstrated that they are more than capable of improving during the upcoming season. Don’t expect them to be world beaters, but they should be able to drag themselves of the bottom of the ladder in 2022.

• Only 2 sides have won the NRL Premiership within 2 years of winning the Wooden Spoon, – the Panthers in 2003 and the Sharks in 2016. No team has ever won the NRL Premiership the year after a Wooden Spoon win.

Most Wooden Spoons Won

• 17 – Western Suburbs Magpies (now defunct), lastly in 1999.
• 14 – Parramatta Eels – most Wooden Spoon finishes among current clubs.

Least Wooden Spoons Won

• The Wests Tigers, Manly Sea Eagles and St George Illawarra Dragons have never won the Wooden Spoon, while the Canberra Raiders finished last only once in their maiden year in the NRL competition in 1982.

Most ‘successful’ Wooden Spoon turnaround team

• The 2009 Sydney Roosters finished last and bounced back to reach the 2010 NRL Grand Final but were denied the ultimate turnaround after being defeated by the St George Illawarra Dragons in the ‘big dance’.

The Dragons’ end to the 2021 season was just so poor that it’s tough to go past them to take out the Wooden Spoon in 2022. They will certainly have plenty of competition; the Wests Tigers aren’t going to be much good, the Cowboys will likely be very near the bottom, while the Warriors always seem to be in with a chance at coming last. The Dragons, however, are deserved favourite to take out this ‘award’, and are our tip in 2022.

Bet on the St. George/Illawarra Dragons for the 2022 NRL Least Wins Wooden Spoon