AFL Rankings: Round 24 2024

In most years since the AFL has had an eight-team finals series, the premiership winner has come from the top three. In part this is because the top four teams must win only three games rather than four games to win the premiership, often with home ground advantage. Also, they are usually the best or most in-form teams.

This year however, the rankings have the best teams in the finals as coming from outside the top four. Hawthorn, the Western Bulldogs, and Brisbane are the three highest-ranked teams. Collectively since Round 11 they have won 29 out of 36 games. But due to their low wins in the first half of the season, they have finished fifth, sixth, and seventh on the ladder.

In a straight head-to-head matchup, the rankings currently favour Hawthorn in any final. If they played minor premier the Sydney Swans in the Grand Final, which is played at the Hawks’ home ground the MCG, the rankings would pick them by 22 points with a 73 per cent win probability.

The Hawks however are trying to win the premiership from seventh, which means winning four games in a row. Also, their first match is against the second-ranked team the Western Bulldogs, for which they have a 57 per cent win probability. That makes a Hawks’ flag still a relatively long shot.

It is rare for a team to have more than an estimated 40 per cent chance to win the premiership at the start of the finals, and they certainly don’t this year. The teams with the best chance though may still be the top two teams on the ladder, Sydney and Port Adelaide. They start with ‘home’ finals which they are favoured to win – although Sydney, playing fellow New South Wales side GWS, will not have the home ground advantage that Port will – and with a first-week win would then have another home final to qualify for the Grand Final. On current rankings they wouldn’t be favoured in the Grand Final against Hawthorn, the Western Bulldogs, and Brisbane, but they certainly won’t have to play at least one of the Hawks or Dogs, and they have a decent shot of the other two teams being knocked out before they can get there.

Even still, there is a good chance that the premiership winner is not one of those two teams. Unless a team suddenly hits dominant form, this looks to be one of the most evenly matched AFL final eight series ever.

AFL Rankings: Round 23 2024

Did Essendon actually get found out?

Essendon will now miss the finals in 2024, after sitting in second halfway through the season, and after still being in the top four just six weeks ago. The two most common narratives to explain this fall are: a) Essendon played easy teams earlier in the season and got ‘found out’ as they played harder teams, and b) Essendon drop away as the season goes on. There is a bit of truth to both of these things, but even relatively simple analysis shows there is more to it than that.

On the first point, Essendon’s fixture did get tougher towards the back end of the season. They had a nice little stretch in the middle of the season when they played bottom teams Richmond, North Melbourne, and West Coast twice (see chart below). After that, their fixture did become tougher, although not hugely so. Their early season run looks tough in hindsight, but they did play Hawthorn and the Bulldogs before both of those teams hit their current hot form.

On the second point, Essendon certainly fell away badly towards the end of last season, with some big losses. My rankings had them lowly rated as a result, and it would be tempting to see their recent results as a reversion to this level.

The Bombers though are possibly a bit better than their results suggest. They are one of the leading teams for inside 50 differential this season, which indicates that they are at least putting themselves in a good position to outscore their opponents. They have however struggled to convert their forward opportunities relative to other teams, with about the same number of scoring shots from over five more inside 50s per game (see table below). That they have maintained their inside 50 differential as their fixture has become harder suggests they may have even improved in this area as the season has progressed.

What has turned against the Bombers though is their opponents’ accuracy in front of goal. Since the halfway mark of the season, Essendon’s opponents have averaged around the same number of scoring shots, but two more goals, converting shots to goals at a rate well above the league average. It could be argued then this has been a bit ‘unlucky’ for the Bombers.

Essendon were probably never a ‘top four’ team this season, at least not unless they converted their forward opportunities better. But there may be more cause for optimism about how they finished this season compared with last season, even if the resultant fall in ladder position seems more dramatic.

AFL Rankings: Round 22 2024

A few weeks ago, I tried to make some sort of sense of the large set of teams occupying the middle part of the AFL ladder, and where they ‘really’ stood in relation to each other. Things have shifted a bit since then, particularly in cases where the final result was unexpected – where do they stand now?

One of the most significant changes has been the drop-off in Carlton’s performances, and their chances of finishing in the top four, or even playing finals at all (see table above). A few weeks ago I said they would start favourites in all of their remaining matches, but they have ended up losing three out of the next four. They still have a couple of relatively friendly match-ups to finish off the year, but so do their nearest rivals for finals spots in Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs, and winning both games may not be enough.

In the other direction, Port Adelaide has performed better than expected, beating Carlton and demolishing ladder leaders Sydney by an astonishing 112 points. They have a couple of tricky matches remaining with the Showdown against Adelaide and an away match against Fremantle, but at worst they are almost certain to finish in the top eight now, and they are a very good chance to finish in the top four.

Four results were key on the weekend in terms of involving multiple finals contenders – Sydney beating Collingwood, Geelong beating Fremantle, GWS beating Brisbane, and Hawthorn beating Carlton. This has left Sydney, Port, Geelong, GWS, and Brisbane as the teams most strongly contending for the top four, and Fremantle, the Western Bulldogs, Hawthorn and Carlton as the teams most strongly contending for the remaining spots in the top eight.

The Brisbane-GWS result in particular had a major impact. The Lions are still considered by the rankings points to be the best team, and they looked like it in the first quarter in the Giants with over 20 more contested possessions, and ten more scoring shots. But their problem from the early season of inaccuracy in front of goal, couple with their bad luck in their opponents being accurate, came back to plague them – the Lions had ten more scoring shots and yet lost by 18 points. This puts them now half a win behind the top four, and relying on at least one other team to lose to finish there while not ‘slipping up’ again themselves. GWS meanwhile are now a very good chance to finish in the top four themselves, even with a couple of tricky match-ups to finish off.

It's not overstating things this year to say that the next two weeks’ worth of results will be crucial, particularly with in-form teams Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs lurking in the lower half of the eight. Teams may feel more confident than usual that they can win the premiership from fifth or lower, but home ground advantage and a double chance are still going to significantly improve your prospects of a successful finals run.

AFL Rankings: Round 21 2024