The Wooden Finger: July 2022

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

AFL Rankings: Round 17 2022

Collingwood have won their past seven matches in a row, and sit sixth on the ladder. They are twelfth on the rankings. Why the big difference?

The majority of those seven wins by Collingwood have been by small margins, of seven points or less (see table below). If they had lost all of those close games they would currently be twelfth on the ladder. That doesn’t explain everything – winning all of those close games was somewhat ‘lucky’, but similarly it would have been somewhat ‘unlucky’ to have lost all of them – but it shows there was a fine margin involved in their current lofty ladder spot.

The Magpies’ latest close win was against lowly-ranked North Melbourne, which means they actually lost a couple of ranking points on the weekend. However, their average net margin over the past seven weeks adjusted for estimated opponent strength and home ground advantage is similar to their average unadjusted net margin – mainly helped by their impressive win against top-ranked Melbourne.

The main reason the rankings still have the Magpies in the bottom half is that they have only performed like a ‘top eight’ side for the past seven weeks. Indeed their average margin over that time would have them around the top four ranked sides. However, they were only around an average team over the first half of the season, and they were a bottom-ranked side last season. Both of these periods are still to some extent affecting their ranking.

In summary, Collingwood haven’t been quite as dominant as a team with seven straight wins might usually be given some close results, although they have still been pretty good. But before those wins they were around or below average, and that still factors into the rating of them. If the Magpies can keep up the performances of the past couple of months, then the expectations of the rankings – and probably those of the wider football world – will adjust to consider them a stronger premiership threat.