AFL Power Rankings: Round 3 2019

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.