AFL Power Rankings: Round 4 2015

Halfway through Saturday night I thought I would be writing this week about how Port Adelaide and Fremantle appeared to have closed the gap between themselves and the top two AFL teams according to these rankings, Hawthorn and Sydney. But then the Hawks and Swans had great second halves, and therefore the significant gaps between the teams remain. Port and Freo both look like they have a good chance to reach the top four though, and from there they would be as few wins away from the flag as any team.

I tweeted on Sunday morning that I was prepared to call the eight teams that would make this year’s AFL finals – in alphabetical order: Adel, Ess, Frem, Haw, NM, PA, Syd, and WC. These are, of course, the top eight teams in the rankings, and by a fair gap. Despite losses on the weekend for the Crows and Bombers I still stand by that call for now. Actually the team that I think may be the biggest chance to upset it is GWS, who has been clearly the big improvers for 2015.  While the Giants have played mostly lower-ranked teams to date, they have beat those teams by considerable margins, and they finished reasonably close to the highly-ranked Swans when they played them.