Monday, May 7, 2007

Flat-Track Bullies in the AFL

In the aftermath of the tedious Richmond v Geelong match, I noticed a number of references to the Cats as ‘flat-track bullies’. Certainly the evidence so far would lend support to that claim; in the three games they’ve won, Geelong has beaten the current bottom three teams by an average of 96 points. Even if you take account of the two games they’ve lost against bottom-eight teams, then they still score on average over 50 points more against teams in the lower half of the ladder.

Time will tell if the Cats keep us this form and claim the ‘flat-track bully’ crown for 2007. Ironically enough, if they do, the team they would be taking over from is… Richmond. The Tigers racked up nine out of their eleven wins over bottom-eight teams last year, scoring on average 21.9 points more than their opposition. In contrast, against top-eight teams, they scored on average 44.2 points less than their opposition – a differential of a whopping 66.1 points.

Does this mean Geelong is doomed to finish ninth this year? We’ll see. In the meantime, here’s the ‘flat-track bully’ ladder for 2006:

Team

Average point differential against bottom eight teams less average point differential against top eight teams: 2006

Richmond

66.1

Collingwood

46.0

Hawthorn

45.6

Bulldogs

44.4

St. Kilda

39.1

Kangaroos

36.4

Adelaide

35.9

Sydney

27.5

Brisbane

23.4

Geelong

23.1

West Coast

21.1

Melbourne

20.5

Port

19.7

Carlton

13.9

Essendon

11.6

Fremantle

5.5

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah. So you're back to football.

One would have thought that in light of the Tiger's bollocking you would have had a more mournful post... :)

Troy Wheatley said...

Ah, it's only one match. The last time we got beaten by a record margin we won the next week. Of course, we weren't playing in Adelaide...