AFL Power Rankings: Round 14 2017

In keeping with a major theme of this season that teams that look like they are moving ahead will soon put in a bad performance, Adelaide marked its clear break at the top of the rankings by losing at home this week to lowly-ranked Hawthorn. The Crows still keep top spot in these rankings for now, but Port Adelaide and GWS now look about just as good.

Also showing the even nature of this season is that it doesn’t take much for the teams in the middle to move around a few spots in the rankings. Essendon moves up from tenth to eighth after the narrowest of losses in Sydney, Richmond moves up from twelfth to tenth, Collingwood drops from ninth to twelfth, and Geelong drops from third to fifth after squeaking home against Fremantle.

After three narrow wins this season Fremantle’s luck in close games ran out against the Cats. (As a Richmond supporter I wish Freo’s missed shot at goal near the siren had come against us.) Those narrow wins have been keeping the Dockers much further up on the ladder than they are rated here.

Melbourne’s rating moves a little higher still after its exciting win in Perth against the West Coast Eagles. The Demons are rated as basically as strong as fourth-ranked Sydney and fifth-ranked Geelong. Can they become an actual top-four ranked team – and actual top four ladder team – with a win against the Sydney Swans next week?

AFL Power Rankings: Round 13 2017

End of the ‘bye’ rounds – the mid-season wasteland in the AFL schedule when the football feels very cold, blank, and June-ish. Except the vacant match slots haven’t seemed to have felt as pronounced as previous years. Perhaps it is because of the relatively even nature of the season, with only two wins (OK, effectively three wins given percentage) separating fourth (Port) from fifteenth (Carlton) on the ladder. Teams down the bottom of the ladder have about a one-in-five chance of making the finals – enough to keep the optimistic hopes of fans alight, rather than have them virtually extinguished.

One club which has usually had its hopes already extinguished in recent years is Melbourne, who is now enjoying its highest-ever rankings spot (sixth). Stretches of years at the bottom are meant to yield high draft picks and the best young players to help get a team back up the ladder again. But Melbourne’s stint at the bottom from 2007 to 2010 yielded few long-term players – let alone long-term stars – with Morton (‘07), Grimes (‘07), Scully (‘09), Trengove (‘09), Gysberts (‘09), and Cook (‘10), all gone or virtually gone from the club for one reason or another. At this point the Demons look to be getting good production out of their next generation of high picks (in particular Clayton Oliver), complemented by solid pick-ups from other clubs. More proof that, in the modern AFL system, a team won’t stay down the bottom for years on end.     

Meanwhile, the Demons’ victims on the weekend – the Western Bulldogs – seem to be reverting back to the level they were at before that magical run in the 2016 finals series. As predicted on this blog as early as Round 1 this year (I only highlight the predictions that come true), comments have come about the Bulldogs being ‘off the boil’, even though they are playing at around the same level as they did for most of last year. It’s true that they have dropped off a bit more in the past couple of weeks, but the Bulldogs not being among the top clubs to date in 2017 was not the hardest thing to predict this season.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 12 2017

It seemed likely that, with Essendon getting its full team back this year following the bans from the World Anti-Doping Agency, that ranking systems would underrate the Bombers coming into 2017. What was less predictable though was that Essendon would suddenly start performing like an elite side over the past five weeks. The Dons have gained a whopping 25 ranking points following huge wins against Port Adelaide and West Coast, a win against highly-rated Geelong, and a small loss to GWS on the road (a loss to Richmond was their other result). As a result the Bombers jumped this week from thirteenth to tenth in the rankings, and are less than a point away from positive rankings territory.

Staying in that region of the rankings this week Melbourne and Collingwood fought it out for eighth spot in the rankings, and for a spot in the eight on the actual AFL ladder. Melbourne narrowly won both, in one of the better matches for the season. Can the Demons continue their rise next week against the Bulldogs?

Meanwhile the unpredictability continues amongst the league’s top-ranked sides. Port Adelaide’s big loss to Essendon, and GWS’ loss to lowly-rated Carlton, has given Adelaide a clear break at the top of the rankings – at least until the Crows’ next big upset loss …

AFL Power Rankings: Round 11 2017

There’s not much happening in the rankings this week, with one-third of the league having the week off. (Under my system teams can still change ranking points even when not playing, as the strength of their recent opponents is revised.)

The gap between the Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide at the top of the rankings has narrowed, with the two clubs now rated about the same, while Geelong has crept closer to the top sides with its comfortable win over the Crows.

West Coast has fallen further into the ‘mid-range’ group of the rankings after losing to the lowly-ranked Gold Coast Suns. Conversely, Essendon has moved closer to that group with a decent performance on the road against the GWS Giants.

And Richmond has almost made the long road back into positive rankings territory. Only their three thrashings against the Swans, Giants, and Hawks in the second half of last year are keeping the Tigers out of seventh spot.