It looks likely now that the
top eight ranked teams here – the same top eight since
Round 19 – will also be the eight teams that make the finals this
year. This may seem not that unusual, but there are usually one or two ‘better’
sides that miss out through a couple of results not going their way (e.g. North
Melbourne in 2013). Combine that with a season where so many
teams are bunched around the middle and it is sort of remarkable that it looks
like we’ll have the ‘right’ eight sides in the finals.
This week, it’s the last of my
‘end-of-season’ team summaries, covering Port Adelaide to the Western Bulldogs.
Again you can see the ranking points of these teams for each round of 2017 in
the graph below.
Port
Adelaide: Port started
the season really well, beating the heck out of Fremantle,
Carlton, Brisbane, Gold Coast, and Hawthorn. Beating the heck out of bad sides –
that is, really destroying them – is something these rankings value, and as a
result Port spent a good chunk of the season within the rankings’ top four. However,
proponents of the view that thrashing bad sides doesn’t mean a lot were
vindicated in this case as the Power fell away, and now look like that they won’t
make the top four on the actual AFL ladder. In terms of the rankings Port’s big
losses to Essendon in Round 12 and Adelaide in Round 20 did the most damage to
their standing.
Richmond:
Apart
from Essendon the
Tigers have been the biggest improvers in 2017. They
were bad last season, particularly towards the end, but this season they
returned to a level more in line with their performances from 2013 to 2015. Until
this week I thought that they were probably not a top four side in terms of
ability – and a
relatively easy fixture had helped to get them there – but I’ve
had to revise my opinion a bit after they
finally did what good teams do this weekend, and annihilated another side.
Either way, things certainly look a lot less bleak at Tigerland than they did
at the start of the season.
St.
Kilda: Like Collingwood the Saints have generally been about
average across 2017. They had two games after which their ranking points jumped
up – Hawthorn in Round 6, and Richmond in Round 16 – though in the latter case
it came right back down again when the Saints were in turn well beaten by
Essendon the next week. The team would probably be a bit disappointed it did
not progress further this year, but they have still come a long way from
2014.
Sydney
Swans: Last year’s top-ranked side Sydney started off badly,
losing their first six matches, which was reflected here in the Swans losing
about four goals of ranking points in just
the first seven rounds. However, because they were so good last
season they never fell below sixth in the rankings. Over the final two-thirds
of the season they regained their 2016 form, and are likely to finish the
season along with Adelaide as clearly the two highest rated sides. The Swans
have been particularly good since Round 15 – a stretch that has included
comfortable away wins against Geelong and Melbourne, big wins over Fremantle
and Gold Coast, and wins against other top sides GWS and Adelaide.
West
Coast Eagles: The Eagles went from being pretty good to just
average in 2017, which resulted in them receiving perhaps a disproportionate
amount of criticism during the season. Apart from the big loss
against Essendon in Round 9 (and perhaps the loss against Hawthorn early in the
year when the Hawks were performing badly) they were mostly OK, but the drop back
from premiership hopeful to fringe finals side is the one that brings the most
heat. In hindsight that loss to the Dons was really the first, big sign that
the Eagles were not going to be among
the ‘second tier’ of teams anymore.
Western
Bulldogs: I like the Dogs, but I admit they possibly became a target
for my analytic
smugness during 2017. (This writer may
be even more smug.) The Bulldogs won an improbable – though not at all
undeserved – flag last year, and had fans, media, and bookmakers
proclaiming them as one of the competition’s new superpowers. More than that
they became the lightning rod for theories and narratives about ‘what it takes’
to win a premiership – heart and guts, a week’s rest before the finals, being a
team rather than individuals – as if the other seven clubs in the finals were
somehow significantly more tired, selfish, and unmotivated.
I enjoyed the Dogs’ flag, and
was happy for their fans (most of them anyway). So it’s nothing against the
Dogs themselves that I took some assurance in watching all of those narratives get
exposed for the largely unsubstantiated ‘hot takes’ that they were as the
supposed new powerhouse sat among the middle rungs of the ladder. Look: if you
play finals series enough times eventually unlikely outcomes will happen. And
after some tough preliminary final losses over the years the Dogs were due their
day. But there was little that was destined about the Bulldogs’ triumph in 2016.
Anyway … sometimes we should appreciate something precisely because it was
improbable.
(Of course, if the Dogs somehow
do it all again this year, I will seem like quite the fool in a month’s time ...)
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