AFL Power Rankings: Round 3 2017

We’ve got some colour into these AFL Power Rankings … Usually I don’t care too much about making my tables and charts look colourful after having worked out the main result I want to show. If I’ve got that and then someone suggests adding some colour changes I’m generally thinking something like: ‘WHY? Can you NOT SEE that the RESULT IS CLEAR?’ (Also, I’m colour blind …)

But somebody has been experimenting with the conditional formatting in Excel this week. You’ll see that the ranking point column now has a colour scale, which I think is pretty nifty. What I like is that it gives a better picture of the distance in quality between teams (as determined by the rankings) than the ranking position does. For example, based on its ranking points seventh placed Port Adelaide is much closer in quality to fifth placed West Coast, and even to third placed Sydney, than it is to eighth placed Collingwood. I reckon the AFL Ladder should be coloured this way, particularly after the season’s half way mark. I definitely suggest using a colour scale on the ladder when doing your footy tips.

You’ll also see that the next column has been coloured red and blue to more clearly indicate which teams gained or lost ranking points this week. Though for Gold Coast and Hawthorn a simple shade of red or blue does not really do justice to how much our assessment of them shifted this week. Gold Coast, who gained a whopping ten ranking points, should be a more volcanic red, and Hawthorn should be as blue as the Arctic seas. Unsurprisingly as I’ve only been doing these rankings since 2011 the Hawks have never been ranked anywhere near as low as they are now. And if anything I feel like that their ranking isn’t falling fast enough …