AFL Power Rankings: Round 18 2018

The Sydney Swans – consistently a good team in recent years, and one of the best teams coming into the 2018 season – are in a spot of bother.

The Sydney Swans have been a good team for most of the past fifteen years. So if they have a bad few weeks, there is a fair amount of faith they will come back. Even when they lost their first six matches last season they were still considered a decent side. They proved to be even better than that – ending up as one of the best teams in 2017 – but coming from so far back made it a hard path to the premiership.

This year the Swans have been generally good again. However some worrying signs are starting to emerge for one of the AFL’s most reliably high-performing sides.

The Swans had an absolute shocker this week … but maybe we shouldn’t have been quite as surprised as we were

On the weekend, the Swans lost by four goals to the very lowly-ranked Gold Coast Suns. After adjusting for Sydney’s home ground ‘advantage’ (we’ll get to this) and the strength of the opposition, this is estimated to be the equivalent of an 11 goal loss against an average side.

That is the Swans’ worst ‘adjusted net margin’ since losing to Melbourne by 73 points in Round 17 2010. In terms of the rankings it puts them now just above average, and in eighth place.

The Swans have been missing a few ‘big names’ recently. However, even HPN’s player-based tipping system rated them an 80 per cent chance of beating Gold Coast on the weekend.

Sydney has lost the most ranking points of any team in the past five matches, although until this week’s disaster they had still been going OK in terms of their margins. However in two of those losses – against Richmond, and Geelong – the Swans’ relative accuracy in front of goal may have made things look closer than they were.

Sydney kicked 11.1 against Richmond, meaning they had 12 scoring shots to the Tigers’ 23, and they got the ball inside 50 only 70 per cent as much as the Tigers did. Against Geelong the Cats kicked a highly inaccurate 8.23, meaning they had 31 scoring shots to the Swans’ 14. The Swans got the ball inside 50 less than 80 per cent as much as Geelong did.

Hence if the rankings were based on scoring shots rather than margins we would have already seen Sydney start to dip. On Matter of Stats’ rating system based on scoring shots the Swans were already considered just an average team going into this round.

Away sweet away    

An unusual aspect of the Swans’ 2018 season is that they have been really good away from their home ground, and pretty bad on it. In terms of wins and losses they have three wins and five losses at home (not including their ‘neutral’ match against GWS), and seven wins and one loss when playing away.

In terms of net margins adjusted for home ground advantage and opposition strength, Sydney has an average adjusted net margin of -17 at home (see chart below), which includes losses to Gold Coast and Adelaide. Playing away their average adjusted net margin is +29, including wins against West Coast, Geelong, and Hawthorn. It’s all a bit weird … (I’m sure someone can try to explain what is going on, but I’m not going to attempt it here.)

Given the Swans’ horrible home and great away record I’ve seen some Sydney supporters suggest that they are better off finishing seventh or eighth, and then trying to win four away finals to win the premiership. And indeed Sydney has been a very good team ‘on the road’ this year. However, as last year demonstrated for the Swans, even for a very good team having to win four straight finals is not the ideal path.