It is
three weeks into the season, and people are starting to form their views about
which teams are good this year, and which teams are not. (Actually, they were
doing this before the season started, but now we have a few games of evidence
at least.) What do the rankings say?
The ‘good’
In
terms of ranking points accumulated so far this year, the leading teams are
Geelong, GWS, Brisbane, West Coast and Collingwood (see table below).
Geelong is undefeated, and if
their performances so far were weighted for a full 22 game season they would
have a historically
great 50 ranking points. The Cats are unlikely to keep up that pace, but it’s
a great start.
Brisbane is also undefeated,
and the big improvers so far. Most impressively the Lions thrashed reigning
premiers West Coast in the opening round.
West Coast and GWS have one loss each. As mentioned
above the Eagles lost to Brisbane but have beaten fellow good teams GWS and
Collingwood. GWS in turn lost to the Eagles, but easily beat Richmond and
Essendon.
Collingwood has
only beaten Richmond so far, but their two losses came against Geelong and West
Coast. Note that beating Richmond is still considered a very good win in the
rankings, even though the Tigers have started the season relatively badly. If
Richmond continues to perform at this lower level, then those wins against them
by GWS and Collingwood will be considered less impressive.
The ‘not so good’
The
worst performed teams so far in 2019 in terms of ranking points are Melbourne and North Melbourne. Both teams are yet to win a game, and both lost by
a big margin in one of their games this season.
Richmond and Sydney have also not performed that
well, with their only wins to date being against bottom-ranked Carlton.
Somewhat
peculiarly, Carlton is considered to
have played a bit better than the teams that beat them. This is mainly due to
its good performance against Port Adelaide. The Blues have still not performed
well overall and are yet to win a match.
St. Kilda has
two wins, but one of those was a one-point win at home against lowly-ranked
Gold Coast. They are the quintessential ‘team who hasn’t played any really good
teams yet’.
Essendon got destroyed by GWS, and
beaten by St. Kilda (but did beat Melbourne).
Despite
their relatively bad performances in 2019 so far, Richmond and Melbourne are
still fairly highly ranked. A team’s last three matches count for 25 per cent
of its ranking. The Tigers and Demons are still carrying over a sizable chunk
of ranking points from their
good performance in 2018 (see table below).
This fits
with the view held by some that last year’s performances still hold a decent weight. Of the
teams that have not been playing well in 2019, probably the most people would consider Richmond and
Melbourne as the two teams that stand the best chance of ‘turning it around’ (the
Tigers’ injuries notwithstanding).
For now though, the clear top
four sides seem to be Geelong, West Coast, GWS, and Collingwood. Time will tell
if the Brisbane Lions can continue to improve their standing, and join them.
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