Not just rankings but more stats
This year I’m adding another table to the usual weekly set. This will be a summary of important statistics for each team for the season, so that you can see at a glance how teams are performing in particular areas. Included in this table for each team will be – both for and against – average points, scoring shots, inside 50s, contested and uncontested possessions, and approximate ‘net possession chains’ defined as intercepts plus clearances less turnovers. These are the statistics I find myself most referring to in seeing where a match was ‘won and lost’, and I hope others find them useful too.
Below is an example, which summarises how each team went during the last AFLW season.
At a quick glance, one can see that there were seven teams that were fairly similar in terms of scoring power last season: Brisbane, Adelaide, Collingwood, Melbourne, Fremantle, the Kangaroos, and Carlton. These seven teams all averaged 12 to 13 scoring shorts and around 40 or more points per game. However, Melbourne, the Kangaroos, and Carlton were a bit more ‘leaky’ on defence, conceding one or two goals more on average per game than the other four sides – although in the Demons’ case that was due more to high opposition accuracy on goal than conceding more scoring shots.
The Bulldogs, GWS, Richmond and St. Kilda formed the top part of the lower part of the league, conceding slightly or somewhat more points than they scored, and having a negative differential with their opponents on most important stats. Finally West Coast, Geelong, and Gold Coast were well off the pace, giving up on average four to six goal margins to their opponents.
Analysing the fixture for 2022 (though it is probably futile…)
For what it’s worth, let’s have a look at how teams fared in terms of the difficulty of their fixtures for 2022. I say ‘for what it’s worth’ because as we know the fixtures of both the men’s and women’s AFL competitions have changed from week to week over the past two pandemic-affected seasons, and we have already had a reshuffle of the Round 1 fixtures just a week before games are scheduled to start. Nevertheless, we can at least see what the AFL is trying to do in determining this year’s fixture.
In a competition with 14 teams but only ten rounds, each team will miss out on playing a few of the others. The AFL has taken a similar approach to what they did in the later rounds of last season, which is to have the lower-ranked teams face off more against each other than the higher-ranked teams and vice versa.
The expected lower sides mentioned above – Richmond, Geelong, Gold Coast, St. Kilda, and West Coast – will all play each other. The main problem for these teams in terms of the ease of their fixtures is that they do not get to play themselves.
Similarly, most of the top sides get to only play two or three of the lower-ranked sides. One exception is Collingwood, who only misses out on playing Richmond. Somewhat amazingly though, the reigning premiers Brisbane get to play all of them! At this stage then, the Lions look to be one of the big ‘winners’ from this year’s AFLW fixture. Runners-up Adelaide, and Carlton – who actually ended up missing the finals last year – look to be the biggest ‘losers’, playing only two of the lower-ranked teams.
Well, time to get ready for the first bounce (hopefully) on Friday. First round tips below:
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