Using the above method
here’s my ratings of the easiness/difficulty of each AFL club’s fixture in 2017,
ranked from easiest to hardest:
Let’s go through each of the three components in turn.
- The middle six clubs are quite variable on this
component. St. Kilda has return matches against two top clubs including last
year’s minor premier Sydney, but North Melbourne’s only strong return opponent is
the Western Bulldogs.
Net
home ground advantage: Generally this component doesn’t make a huge
amount of difference, as home matches and away matches even out. Carlton gets
the rawest deal, as it has to travel interstate six times while only having
four matches against non-Victorian clubs at home, two of which are against the
Sydney clubs. Richmond also does relatively badly as it has six interstate
trips and a trip to Geelong. Adelaide does relatively well because for two of
its interstate trips its opponents have no or little advantage – North
Melbourne in Tasmania, and Melbourne in Darwin.
Effect
of not playing own club: Obviously stronger clubs do better on
this component. But the main point here is how this component affects the
assessment of how difficult a club’s fixture is. Without it weak clubs such as
Brisbane, Gold Coast, and Essendon are assessed as having the most favourable
fixtures, as is the intention under the AFL’s ‘weighted rule’. But with it
Adelaide is assessed as having the most favourable fixture. The Crows, unlike
those other clubs, have to play one less top club: the Crows themselves.
In summary then, the Adelaide Crows – with a relatively
favourable fixture for a strong club, and a couple of interstate trips where
their opponents have little home ground advantage – is considered here to have
the easiest fixture in 2017. North Melbourne and Port Adelaide have relatively
favourable fixtures for mid-range clubs, and their fixtures are rated as the
next easiest.
As you would have seen near
the start of this post Adelaide and North Melbourne were considered to have
difficult fixtures in 2016. Is the AFL making it up to these clubs this year?
Also we seem to have come full circle from my first-ever
annual assessment, which was for the 2012 fixture,
where Adelaide and North Melbourne were rated as having the easiest fixtures
for that year.
At the other end for 2017 Hawthorn
is rated as having the hardest fixture, having to front up twice against three
of the top four highest-ranked sides. In terms of clubs they play twice the
fixtures of Geelong and GWS are considered just as hard, but the Cats and
Giants are rated as better sides than the Hawks.
Now let’s look at how these
results compare to those of other methods of rating the fixture.
Rohan Connolly’s method for
rating each club’s fixture has four components:
- which clubs they play twice, based on ladder
position (after finals)
- number of road trips, including short and
longer hauls;
- number of matches where the club plays another
club from interstate; and
- the number of consecutive six-day breaks.
The second and third
components together essentially form a version of net home ground advantage.
The fourth component – six-day breaks – isn’t considered in my method, but it
doesn’t make that much difference to Connolly’s rankings.
The main difference from my
method is that Connolly’s method doesn’t include the effect of not playing your
own club. Hence his rankings of clubs look similar to what the AFL is trying to
achieve through its ‘weighted rule’ – except that, as noted above, Adelaide,
North Melbourne, and Port Adelaide have relatively favourable draws given their
groupings, and St. Kilda and Fremantle have relatively unfavourable draws. Essendon
is rated as having the easiest fixture under his method.
Another difference from my
method is that Connolly uses the ladder position to determine the strength of
clubs. Ladder positions are arguably a little misleading when a club catches
fire in the finals (hello
again Western Bulldogs) or it had a favourable fixture the previous season,
but the more important point is that it may not always be a good indicator of
the gaps between clubs. For example by my rankings seventh-placed West Coast was
closer in quality to most of the preliminary finalists than it was to
eighth-placed North Melbourne, and I don’t think I would be alone in that
assessment. Ladder positions are a lot easier to explain in a major newspaper
though.
Connolly also assigns a higher
penalty for road trips than he assigns an advantage for playing an interstate club
at home. This raises the difficulty of the fixture for non-Victorian clubs
under his measure (which perhaps doesn’t feel unreasonable if you are flying from
and to Perth every other week), whereas under my method these types of matches broadly even out.
The Hurling People Now method only
uses a ‘strength of schedule’ measure, with no reference to home ground
advantage (or breaks). Therefore Carlton and Richmond, which have bad net home
ground advantages in my method, do better in theirs. This site rates North Melbourne
as having the easiest fixture in 2017, who I rated as having an easy fixture as
well.
HPN’s post makes the important
point that the strength of a fixture changes throughout the year, as clubs turn
out to be stronger or weaker than initially thought. I feel like I’ve made this
point before too, but cannot for the life of me remember where. Let’s just say
I’ve already thought of it and not look further for proof.
The Matter of Stats method is
similar to mine, but it is more precise about the home ground advantages. For
example, Fremantle is rated as having more of a disadvantage than West Coast
when it plays at the M.C.G., whereas in my system there is no difference
between them and the other non-Victorian clubs – Sydney clubs aside – when they
travel to Melbourne. Despite these differences this site also rates Adelaide as
having the easiest fixture in 2017.
But Does The Fixture Matter?
Back in my first annual
assessment of the AFL fixture in 2012 I said that one shouldn’t blame the
fixture if your club is doing badly. Matter of Stats and Hurling People Now both
estimate that the difference between the easiest fixture and hardest fixture is
only about one win. And Rohan Connolly’s headline even noted that, based on
past assessments, a tough fixture generally didn’t mean ‘doom and gloom’.
So it can make the
difference between say, finishing fourth or fifth (or finishing fourth or
seventh if things are close). But you are not becoming a top club through a
favourable fixture. Perhaps then clubs should indeed be more concerned about
how many ‘prime time’ matches they have when the fixture is released.
