For the
seventh week in a row we have a new club in third spot in the rankings behind
the stable top two. From Round 16 to Round 22 third spot has belonged to, in
order: Sydney, Fremantle, Sydney, Fremantle, Western Bulldogs, Richmond, and
now Sydney again.
Amongst all
of this movement, the gap has also closed between the top two – Hawthorn and
West Coast – and the seven teams that are next in line behind them, one of
which, Port Adelaide, has left its charge too late for finals this season.
With St. Kilda’s big loss against Sydney this
weekend, the Western Bulldogs look likely to be 2015’s most improved club.
According to the rankings the Dogs have improved by about six goals a match
compared to the end of 2014. Conversely Essendon and Carlton have deteriorated
by about the same amount, and are still fighting it out to see which club went
backwards the most.
Ladder
leaders the Fremantle Dockers have now fallen to seventh on the rankings. While
the Dockers got off to a good start in 2015, the rankings say that they have
been barely better than average over their past half of a season, accumulating
just three ranking points.
One of the points of doing these rankings is
that ladder positions can be misleading; for example, Hawthorn was ranked highly in
mid-2012
even though it sat outside the eight, and the Hawks ended the season as Grand
Final favourites. On the other hand, Fremantle’s form heading into a finals
series has been misleading before, just two years ago it fell to sixth
in the rankings in the final round before having a great September. Personally I
think that while the Dockers are a tough proposition at home I still wouldn’t
mind my club playing them in the first week of the finals.
5.Move On – David Bowie
I was
reading an Uncut retrospective on David Bowie this week, and in the review for
‘Lodger’ the author claimed that Bowie’s song ‘Move On’ was his ‘All The Young
Dudes’ backwards. Turns out that’s right.
(An aside
from that Bowie retrospective, from reading through the interviews: for all of
his intellectualism I am not sure that Bowie ever thought about a single thing
he said. Words just seemed to pour out. I’m partly amazed he managed to ever
write a rhyming verse.)
4.Gunga Din – The Libertines
The
Libertines, in their video for re-union track ‘Gunga Din’ look about a decade older
than when we last saw them because, well, they are – though Pete Doherty
possibly looks two decades older. The lyrics read like
Doherty and Carl Barat have been reading the tabloid articles about them – ‘Woke
up again to my evil twin’ … ‘Got to find a vein, it’s always the same’ … ‘A
little drink-y now and then to help me just to see the light’ … We get it boys,
you drink and you cause havoc. Still, it’ll be good to get a third album
together out of them.
3.Pretty Pimpin’ – Kurt Vile
Unlike the
Libertines, Kurt Vile hasn’t woken up to his ‘evil twin’ in the mirror, but someone he doesn’t
recognise. Also unlike the Libertines, Vile is able to realise that if you’ve
woken up alone in a room then the guy in the mirror is probably you. Even with
this realisation though, Vile feels like a stranger in his own body: ‘Who’s
this stupid clown,’ he asks, ‘blocking the bathroom sink?’ Personally I wish I
could blame all of my stupid things on another person who happens to be
inhabiting my body – ‘Who on earth put a fork in with the knives?!’ ‘It was
that other Troy … Stupid jerk.’
2.Spit It Out – The Maccabees
The
Maccabees’ ‘Spit It Out’ seems like it takes well over a minute to do anything
at all. I think each of the first few times my Spotify app started on that song
I thought that I had inadvertently pressed pause because there seemed to be
silence. Once it gets going though it’s the Maccabees at about their most
energetic, with a widescreen feel. I mainly like the Maccabees when they
achieve that widescreen feel, such as with ‘Ayla’ and ‘Forever I’ve Known’ off
their last album. I’m not sure if the new album has enough of it. Though it
grew on me a bit more last time I listened through it, so perhaps there is some
other gold in there.
1.More – Wilco
I remember
in David Byrne’s book ‘How Music Works’ Byrne laid out the cost structure of
making an album, and at what point, depending on whether or not you can take out
distribution costs and other costs that record companies impose, it becomes
profitable. I’m pretty sure it was never profitable to make you album free
though. Wilco have done so with their new album, ‘Star Wars’, and the economic
rationale for doing so, according to frontman Jeff Tweedy: ‘it felt like it would be fun’. Actually the album was only free
to download for 30 days, so Wilco still stands some chance of turning a profit
on their latest release. (In this music streaming age it took me a while to
think of downloading the album, whereas I would have jumped all over a free
album even five years ago.)
The main
sources of appeal to me in ‘More’, the second track but first ‘real’ track on
Wilco’s album, are its cracking drums, Tweedy’s ‘Ha-ah-ah’ at the start of each
line in the verses, and the extended ‘more’ pairs in the chorus, each first one
in the pair lifting up, each second one opening out. Very classic rock, more
than the alt-rock that Wilco is more associated with, though songs like
‘Monday’ in the now-distant past have shown there’s classic rock in them as
well. And honestly, it does sound better because it’s free.
By the way, ‘Star Wars’ was apparently
not named because Wilco love the film, though it was sort of named because of
the film, if that makes sense.
During James
Hird’s time as coach of Essendon, the Bombers’ seasons have been marked by their
first halves of the season being significantly better than their second halves.
Below are the changes in ranking points for Essendon during the first half and
second half of every season since Hird took over as coach in 2011. In each
season, the Bombers have been roughly a five goal better club in the first half
of the season. Interestingly, in 2014 when Hird was banned from coaching
Essendon bucked this recent trend.
2011 – first
half: +22.8; second half: -8.5
2012 – first
half: +17.6; second half: -15.2
2013 – first
half: +15.7; second half: -17.1
2015 – first
half: -8.8; second half, to Round 20: -28.2
While in
contrast to 2011 to 2013, the Bombers went backward during the first half of
this season, they have gone backwards even faster in the second half of 2015,
to the point where they are now challenging Brisbane and Carlton for the
rankings’ worst team in the AFL.
Elsewhere, clubs in the top half of the rankings
moved all over the place this week. The Bulldogs, easily the hottest team of
the past three weeks, jumped from seventh to third. Adelaide rose from tenth to
seventh, and Richmond moved from sixth to fifth. In the other direction, Fremantle
dropped from third to fourth, and Sydney fell from fourth to eighth. All of
this movement implies an interesting finals series may be coming up … at least
for matches not involving Hawthorn.
The Western
Bulldogs and Port Adelaide have moved in notably opposite directions this
season, as exemplified by the Bulldogs 64-point win against the Power on the
weekend. At the end of 2014 these rankings considered the Power to be a seven
goal per game better side than the Bulldogs, with Port being ranked third, and
the Bulldogs fourteenth. As of Round 19 this season though, the rankings say
that the Bulldogs have improved by five goals per game. They now sit in seventh
on the rankings, though are basically equal fifth. Port, on the other hand,
have dropped off by three and a half goals per game, and now sit outside the
top eight clubs.
The Bulldogs
have a bunch of players that have significantly improved in 2015. This
bunch includes Luke Dahlhaus, Liam Picken, Marcus Bontempelli, Mitchell Wallis,
Easton Wood, Koby Stevens, and Tory Dickson – compare these players’ average SuperCoach
scores in 2015
to their scores in 2014.
The improvement from these players has more than offset the Bulldogs’ loss of
Tom Liberatore to injury, and former captain Ryan Griffen to the Giants. These
players are young, so some improvement might have been expected, but
perhaps the change of coach (and/or departure of some older players) has
helped a bit as well.
As for Port, the cause of their decline seems to
be that several players have dropped off a tad – again, compare their average
SuperCoach scores in 2015
and 2014.
Some of these players, including Robbie Gray, Ollie Wines, Hamish Hartlett, and
Matthew Lobbe, made huge strides from 2013 to 2014. Perhaps Port’s current situation
is a reminder to the Bulldogs that it is not a given that young players, even
after huge leaps forward, will keep on improving.
Sometimes a
side’s good form comes at the wrong time … from Round 13 to Round 15
Collingwood put together three good performances, but the Magpies were playing
Hawthorn, and Fremantle and Port Adelaide outside of Victoria, and ended up
losing all three matches by narrow amounts. Since then Collingwood has put in
less impressive performances against West Coast, the Western Bulldogs, and this
week lowly ranked Melbourne, and as a result have now lost six games on the
trot.
The rankings
suggested that the Magpies were going to come back to the pack on the ladder once
they got around to playing the tougher clubs, but this week’s loss to Melbourne
is a more concerning development. From being considered one of the eight best
sides in these rankings last week, Collingwood is now only considered the tenth
best club, which seems pretty much in line with their finals chances from here
on in.
The Western
Bulldogs meanwhile are now ranked as one of the top eight clubs for the first
time in a few years – not just the beneficiaries of an easy draw, the Bulldogs
are now considered here as a ‘legitimate’ top eight side.
During the final quarter of Friday’s night match
against Hawthorn, I commented to my wife that Richmond may just well be the
third best side in the AFL. Then Tyrone Vickery muffed a goal chance from a few
metres out, and my wife may have snorted wine out of her nose. That aside, the
Tigers’ win against the competition’s best club made me feel a lot better about
their chances for the rest of the season.
