AFL WOMEN’S Rankings: Round 1 2021

Collingwood’s win against Carlton was perhaps not that much of an upset.

Welcome back to my AFLW Rankings, for season 2021.

In the season opener, Collingwood recorded a one goal win against Carlton (it would have been two goals if not for a goal after the siren to the Blues), which was largely proclaimed as an ‘upset’. This would likely be because last season, before it was prematurely halted, Carlton finished second in their conference while Collingwood finished fourth, and because the Blues easily won their first final while the Magpies narrowly lost theirs.

Collingwood though finished off 2020 really well. Their narrow finals lost was against the mighty Kangaroos, by a mere two points. Prior to that they beat Brisbane and the Bulldogs by around five goals each, and lost to the other top team Fremantle by only three points (they also lost to Melbourne – note though they also beat Carlton prior to that, but that isn’t counted in their ranking points). After adjusting margins for opponent strength and home ground advantage, that gives them an average adjusted net margin of over 20 points (see chart below).

Matter of Stats, which has just started predicting AFLW results, also have Collingwood rated highly, and forecast a Collingwood win.

[Note: if anyone is comparing the ranking points and changes with those from the end of last year, I made a slight change to the formula at the start of this year. I had been using a team’s past seven matches to calculate ranking points, but I have reduced that to six matches given the premature end to last season, and that it removes the last ‘proxy’ result for the expansion clubs. I may expand this out to nine matches as the season progresses, given the number of rounds this year… but let’s see how far we get through the season first.]