AFL Power Rankings: Round 1 2019

Richmond may be brought back to the pack by Alex Rance’s season-ending injury, but they may have been heading there anyway.

Richmond was the best team for most of 2018. More of their best performances though were in the first half of the year, following hot on the heels of their breakthrough 2017 premiership. Towards the end of the season they cooled down a bit, culminating in their preliminary final loss to Collingwood. The rankings aren’t overly impressed by their first-up win against Carlton either. The Tigers won comfortably by 33 points, but after adjusting for the Blues’ estimated strength, the result makes a negative contribution to their ranking points (see chart below).

The Tigers aren’t quite defying the basic statistics anymore

Unlike many other good teams, Richmond’s strengths are not well shown by the basic statistics. This leads to less fantasy football points and less Brownlow votes than a side of their standing usually has, and general puzzlement that an effective, but not a high-disposal midfielder-forward like Shane Edwards can make the All-Australian team.

In 2018 Richmond ranked #14 for disposals per game, but way ahead of every team except Melbourne for inside 50s. They ranked second-last for clearances per game, but were in a league of their own for intercepts.

Richmond’s basic game plan is relatively well-known. They don’t worry too much about the clearances. Then post-clearance, if they don’t get the ball: they put the pressure on, get the ball back, and get it forward quickly and effectively. There’s not much moving sideways or backwards. It’s as if the game plan was devised by the Tiger fans that had been shouting in frustration from the outer for the past thirty years.

Winning the intercepts, or forcing opposition turnovers, is generally more important in AFL than winning the clearances. First, there are just a lot more turnovers than stoppages in an AFL game. But further, as I showed in a post in the off-season a team’s scoring shot differential compared with their opponents can be mostly thought of as the sum of: their clearance differential, the inverse of their behind differential, and two times their intercept differential – along with possessions that are stopped. A stoppage can arise from the end of either team’s ‘possession chain’, so about half the time winning the clearance means effectively picking up where you left off. An intercept however definitely puts an end to your opponent’s possession chain and starts off your own.

Richmond’s strategy was hugely effective in the 2017 finals series and the first part of 2018. The peak extremity was probably against Fremantle in Round 7 when Nat Fyfe and Lachie Neale smashed them in the clearances, and the Tigers smashed the Dockers everywhere else on the ground (see table below). They had a huge intercept differential and 22 more scoring shots. The thumping of Essendon in the Dreamtime match in Round 11 was another good example, but that may have been the last gasp of Richmond’s peak period.

Over the back half of 2018 they were still fantastic at intercepts. It has dropped away over their past five matches though (see table below), bringing their poor clearance differential more into play, most notably in the Preliminary Final (PF). Whether this continues remains to be seen, but lately this drop-off has been restricting the Tigers’ opportunities relative to their opponents.

On the subject of restricting opportunities, Richmond has won the disposal count only once in its past ten games. As mentioned above the Tigers were never a high-disposal team even at their peak, but the deficits have become larger and more frequent in their recent matches (see chart below). They are still regularly getting more metres per disposal than their opponents – even in the Preliminary Final last year – and doing well in terms of their inside 50 differential. It does become harder to gain more overall territory though if you’re getting the ball less often in the first place.

Richmond has lost their greatest interceptor

Sadly five-time All-Australian defender Alex Rance suffered a season-ending injury in the first match for the season this past week. Rance has many more detractors than he should, but along with West Coast’s Jeremy McGovern he has been one of the great intercept defenders of the past few years. He averaged almost 10 intercepts a match last year, once again leading the league.

Rance didn’t have a great end to 2018 by his high standards. His performances in one-on-one contests actually did start to become more like what his critics have claimed. Up to Round 12 in 2018 he took 19 contested marks, but only four after that. His intercepting though remained among the best in the league, and may be sorely missed.

As you’d expect from a team that was so good at intercepting and defending last year there are others who can keep the backline strong. Nick Vlastuin ranked ninth for intercepts per game last year. Rance’s replacement, once fully fit, may well be Ryan Garthwaite. Champion Data’s AFL Prospectus says that he was a much improved interceptor in the VFL last year, though he was still well below Rance’s numbers and he has only played two games so far at AFL level.

The Tigers are probably still a good team, and may well be still among the best teams (particularly with so many of the presumed top sides faltering in the opening round). After being clearly ahead of every other team for the majority of last year however, they have started to have their bad weeks as well.

Note that the rankings give Richmond about a 50-50 chance against Collingwood next week (see below). That seems about right – but you wouldn’t have got those odds just two matches ago!

(And in the AFLW Grand Final between Adelaide and Carlton next Sunday, the rankings obviously pick Adelaide.)