AFL Power Rankings: Round 6 2013

RISING UP

With the mid-range teams being closely bunched together, Collingwood, Adelaide and Carlton all jump up a couple of spots. Collingwood comfortably beat St. Kilda, Carlton thrashed Melbourne by even more than the Demons usually get beaten, and Adelaide had a close game against the #1-ranked Hawks.

FALLING DOWN

With the mid-range teams being closely bunched together, Richmond drop from 7^th to 10^th after a sizable loss to Geelong. That movement in the rankings should be fairly uncontroversial.

What will be considerably less uncontroversial to those who stumble across these rankings is Essendon falling from 6^th to 9^th, given that:

-          Essendon just won their sixth straight game to start the season, and are now one of only two undefeated teams.

-          Essendon has beaten three of the teams above it in the rankings this season: Collingwood (easily), Adelaide (easily, and away to boot), and Fremantle (away).

-          Adelaide lost, Essendon won, and Adelaide still moved above Essendon in the rankings.

Essendon has built up a substantial number of ranking points this season due to its excellent start, but it is still only considered by the rankings system to be mid-range because it was pretty bad in the second half of 2012. And the reason it moved below Adelaide and Carlton this week is because it was relatively more lacklustre against GWS (yes, a 39-point win at home against GWS is considered lacklustre) than Carlton was against Melbourne or Adelaide was against Hawthorn.

If the game against GWS is the bursting of Essendon’s bubble then the Dons’ current ranking might look like genius in a few weeks time. If it is not then I imagine it’ll look pretty stupid. Regardless, if Essendon beat Geelong next week, you can bet it’ll be rated a lot more highly on this blog.      

ALSO OF NOTE

Geelong and Sydney have broken from the pack, and the rankings now consider them as clearly the best teams in the land after the Hawks.

1 (Last week: 1) Hawthorn 38.3 (37.2)

2 (3) Geelong 24.4 (19.7)
3 (2) Sydney 24.2 (22.2)
4 (4) Fremantle 18.5 (17.8)
5 (5) West Coast 15.4 (13.6)
6 (8) Collingwood 13.9 (10.7)
7 (9) Adelaide 11.0 (9.6)
8 (10) Carlton 11.0 (9.1)
9 (6) Essendon 10.0 (13.3)
10 (7) Richmond 7.8 (10.7)
11 (12) North Melbourne 5.6 (5.0)
12 (11) St. Kilda 5.4 (8.1)
13 (13) Port Adelaide -8.0 (-9.5)
14 (14) Brisbane -21.8 (-21.7)
15 (15) Gold Coast -29.0 (-29.8)
16 (16) Western Bulldogs -31.2 (-31.0)
17 (17) Melbourne -50.3 (-49.4)
18 (18) Greater Western Sydney -59.5 (-63.9)