AFL Power Rankings: Round 23 2018

So at the end of the 2018 AFL home-and-away season Richmond is the top-ranked side, although only narrowly over Geelong and Melbourne.

The Cats and Demons closed the gap considerably over the final two weeks – Geelong from annihilating ‘bad’ teams, and Melbourne from finally beating good teams. The Tigers also slipped a bit, although whether that indicates teams are actually playing better against them or that Richmond was just relaxing a touch before the finals (or both) remains to be seen.

Outside of that, the only highly-ranked team that did not qualify for the finals is Essendon. The Bombers’ high ranking reflects their strong finish to the season, but ultimately their poor start cost them a finals spot.

Predicting the finals series

For the past three years I’ve used the end of home-and-away season rankings to predict how the finals series will play out. Basically this is done just by comparing who has the higher ranking points, adjusted for any estimated home ground advantage.

In that time the Rankings have predicted five of the six Grand Finalists, and two of the three premiers. The miss – like every other AFL ranking system in existence – was the Western Bulldogs in 2016. These predictions however are purely for fun and interest’s sake, and not to coax you into betting your life savings.

Unsurprisingly, the Rankings pick Richmond to win the premiership for a second straight year. Unlike last year though I’d say the Tigers would still be considered the team with the best chance if one considered the likelihood of each team winning each potential match-up, not just the match-ups shown above. I’m picking West Coast, with two home finals from finishing second on the ladder, to be the other Grand Finalist.

Again though, I’ll emphasise three main potential problems with this straight head-to-head prediction method. The first is that just one result going against the prediction can change the outlook considerably. The second point, related to the first, is that our assessment of each team will change as we progress through the finals series.

And the third is that it doesn’t show how close the teams are in likelihood to winning. According to the Rankings there is basically nothing between Melbourne and Geelong. Melbourne should be seen as almost as likely as Geelong to progress as the Cats do above.

I’ll be back again after the finals series finishes with the final rankings for 2018. How soon after, like last year, may depend upon how far my Tigers go.