AFL Power Rankings: Round 6 2013

RISING UP

With the mid-range teams being closely bunched together, Collingwood, Adelaide and Carlton all jump up a couple of spots. Collingwood comfortably beat St. Kilda, Carlton thrashed Melbourne by even more than the Demons usually get beaten, and Adelaide had a close game against the #1-ranked Hawks.

FALLING DOWN

With the mid-range teams being closely bunched together, Richmond drop from 7^th to 10^th after a sizable loss to Geelong. That movement in the rankings should be fairly uncontroversial.

What will be considerably less uncontroversial to those who stumble across these rankings is Essendon falling from 6^th to 9^th, given that:

-          Essendon just won their sixth straight game to start the season, and are now one of only two undefeated teams.

-          Essendon has beaten three of the teams above it in the rankings this season: Collingwood (easily), Adelaide (easily, and away to boot), and Fremantle (away).

-          Adelaide lost, Essendon won, and Adelaide still moved above Essendon in the rankings.

Essendon has built up a substantial number of ranking points this season due to its excellent start, but it is still only considered by the rankings system to be mid-range because it was pretty bad in the second half of 2012. And the reason it moved below Adelaide and Carlton this week is because it was relatively more lacklustre against GWS (yes, a 39-point win at home against GWS is considered lacklustre) than Carlton was against Melbourne or Adelaide was against Hawthorn.

If the game against GWS is the bursting of Essendon’s bubble then the Dons’ current ranking might look like genius in a few weeks time. If it is not then I imagine it’ll look pretty stupid. Regardless, if Essendon beat Geelong next week, you can bet it’ll be rated a lot more highly on this blog.      

ALSO OF NOTE

Geelong and Sydney have broken from the pack, and the rankings now consider them as clearly the best teams in the land after the Hawks.

1 (Last week: 1) Hawthorn 38.3 (37.2)

2 (3) Geelong 24.4 (19.7)
3 (2) Sydney 24.2 (22.2)
4 (4) Fremantle 18.5 (17.8)
5 (5) West Coast 15.4 (13.6)
6 (8) Collingwood 13.9 (10.7)
7 (9) Adelaide 11.0 (9.6)
8 (10) Carlton 11.0 (9.1)
9 (6) Essendon 10.0 (13.3)
10 (7) Richmond 7.8 (10.7)
11 (12) North Melbourne 5.6 (5.0)
12 (11) St. Kilda 5.4 (8.1)
13 (13) Port Adelaide -8.0 (-9.5)
14 (14) Brisbane -21.8 (-21.7)
15 (15) Gold Coast -29.0 (-29.8)
16 (16) Western Bulldogs -31.2 (-31.0)
17 (17) Melbourne -50.3 (-49.4)
18 (18) Greater Western Sydney -59.5 (-63.9)

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 58

 

MUSIC/BOOKS: Classic albums re-imagined as novels.

ECONOMICS: Researchers trying to answer why solar lights have been slow to catch on in rural Uganda.

BASKETBALL: The NBA’s most boring star, Joe Johnson, has a big fan.

Film Review: The Never Ending Story

On a recent plane flight home (and actually, on TV recently as well) I watched ‘The Never Ending Story’ for the first time since I was a kid. This was significant because, when I was a kid, ‘The Never Ending Story’ scared the bejesus out of me. I can’t precisely remember where or how I saw it (I think it was at a school friend’s house), but wherever it was I was only half-watching it, so that my lasting impression of it was of it being a series of disturbing, nightmarish images. Watching it again as an adult, the movie was of course not anywhere nearly as scary. Still, it reminded me of what gave me the willies as a child – consider these scenes:

a)    The giant Rock Biter appears: As a kid I didn’t like giants, and I especially didn’t like giants reaching out and eating things – it made me feel helpless. So the introduction of a giant that was grabbing and munching up the landscape didn’t exactly make me feel comfortable.

b)   The horse drowning: I didn’t actually remember this scene until I watched the movie again, and it’s possible I didn’t see it the first time. But if I did, I think a sad horse sinking into the swamp would likely have left me feeling depressed for the entire weekend.

c)    The gate to the Southern Oracle: In this scene, a knight tries to pass two giant fearsome-looking sphinxes, which proceed to shoot beams out of their eyes and obliterate him. Freaking terrifying. The Southern Oracle crumbling to bits after speaking creepily to Atreyu just made it worse.

d)   Atreyu meets Gmork in Spook City: If there is a more disturbing scene in a so-called children’s film than Atreyu looking at spooky pictures of scenes from the movie to date, and then seeing the picture of the wolf-like Gmork in the shadows … and then one second later, actually seeing Gmork in the shadows! … I can’t immediately think of it.* Though I admit that, watching it again, it wasn’t nearly as dark as it had been in my memory for twenty years.

e)    Fantasia is destroyed: The image of Fantasia reduced to nothing more than a few shards of rock floating in space is the final dark, depressing, devastating exclamation mark on an already dark and depressing film. It’s quite possible I stopped watching the movie altogether at this point – indeed, since I didn’t remember the ending at all, it’s quite probable.

Frankly, the only characters that didn’t freak me out were Falcor, the two boys, and maybe the Empress (though I can’t be sure of that last one). But I loved the theme song! (Though even here, my memories were faulty – I thought there was this incredibly romantic line ‘Don’t close your eyes or she may fade away’ when in fact it’s ‘Show no fear for she may fade away’.) And I’m glad I watched it again (and again), otherwise I may have had the embarrassing situation where I was still cowering away from this movie in my 50s. 

*I did think of it later – the room of heads in ‘Return To Oz’. I definitely stopped watching that movie at that point.           

Trading Established AFL Players For Draft Picks: Who Wins?

For the past few years I have thought of looking at all the AFL trades in which an established player was traded for a draft pick, and seeing who ended up playing the most games for their respective clubs after the trade took place. My hypothesis was that the established players, on average, ended up playing more games than the unestablished ones. It’s all in ‘Moneyball’ folks! It’s better to bank on a player that has done something rather than an untried player that might do something … because many don’t.

Investigating this question though wasn’t as clean as I had hoped. First I had to chuck out all the trades where it wasn’t just a trade of one or more players for one or more draft picks. That is, trades where a draft pick was traded for a player and a different draft pick were discarded, because the players involved couldn’t be neatly categorised on each side of the ledger. Second I chucked out all the trades where the club ended up on-trading the draft pick to somewhere else, because the player taken with the draft pick didn’t end up playing for that club, which turns out to be quite a few trades. Third the records on Wikipedia of AFL trades (from where I got the data) are confusing and look a bit dodgy. This left about 70 trades since 2001 that I could use. (2001 was the year of the trade referenced by the pictured above – Trent Croad and Luke McPharlin to Fremantle for the draft picks that Hawthorn would use on Luke Hodge and Sam Mitchell.)

After all that, the results were… unclear. In most years, it looks like the teams taking the established players come out ahead in terms of number of games played. But in 2001, the teams taking the draft picks won out by a large margin: apart from the Hawks getting 200-gamers Hodge and Mitchell, Melbourne took Brad Miller with the draft pick it received for Brent Grgic, and Essendon got Andrew Welsh with one of the draft picks it received for Damien Hardwick. That took the overall total to 3435 games for the established players to 3343 games for the draft picks.

So I’m not quite sure what to conclude in the end. The established players look to have ended up with more games, but not by much, and I’m not putting a lot of confidence in the calculations. I think the established players would also have played better quality games on average, because they would  be closer to the prime years of their career (or at least further from the initial, relatively unproductive years of their career), but again I’m not sure on that. At the least, we can say that a team giving up an established player for a draft pick shouldn’t be overly confident they are going to get more games out of the latter.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 5 2013

RISING UP
After a solid win on Anzac Day, Essendon move up another two spots to 6^th spot, and is very close to being 5^th (even I would probably rank them above the Eagles at the moment). The undefeated Bombers have easily gained the most ranking points so far in 2013.

FALLING DOWN
Last year’s big improver Adelaide has dropped from 4^th to 9^th in five rounds, having lost the most ranking points of any team so far in 2013. Its latest loss was a five goal defeat to the 10^th-ranked team Carlton.

ALSO OF NOTE
Port Adelaide remain 13^th despite starting the season 5-0, as three of its wins have been against Gold Coast, GWS, and Melbourne, and its 17 games before that were, on the whole, horrid. Nevertheless, it has the second highest gain in ranking points this season after the Bombers. Geelong drop back to 3^rd after the Bulldogs ran them closer than expected.

1 (Last week: 1) Hawthorn 37.2 (41.3)
2 (3) Sydney 22.2 (22.3)
3 (2) Geelong 19.7 (23.7)
4 (4) Fremantle 17.8 (19.1)
5 (5) West Coast 13.6 (15.9)
6 (8) Essendon 13.3 (10.9)
7 (9) Richmond 10.7 (10.4)
8 (6) Collingwood 10.7 (15.6)
9 (7) Adelaide 9.6 (12.8)
10 (11) Carlton 9.1 (6.0)
11 (10) St. Kilda 8.1 (7.9)
12 (12) North Melbourne 5.0 (2.1)
13 (13) Port Adelaide -9.5 (-11.1)
14 (14) Brisbane -21.7 (-20.7)
15 (15) Gold Coast -29.8 (-32.2)
16 (16) Western Bulldogs -31.0 (-32.5)
17 (17) Melbourne -49.4 (-50.6)
18 (18) Greater Western Sydney -63.9 (-60.9)

The Wooden Finger Five: April 2013

1.    Sacrilege – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

As the opening track (and first single) of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ new album, ‘Sacrilege’ has a lot to live up to – previous opening tracks ‘Gold Lion’ and particularly ‘Zero’ were two of the band’s greatest songs. This is not quite in the same league, but it is an interesting listen, with Karen O being backed by a gospel choir(!) for the latter part of the song. Similarly, the latest album ‘Mosquito’ does not rock quite as hard as its predecessors, but it is far from a disappointment.

2.    Boss Of Me – David Bowie

Not to dump too much on the Duke’s past three decades of output, but ‘The Next Day’ sounds like the album that many people would have wanted Bowie to release after ‘Let’s Dance’. My favourite track on the album, ‘Boss Of Me’, is one that would have neatly fit into the mid-80s, although what also elevates it above the other songs for me is the ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’-like bridge.

3.    Let The Day Begin – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Yep, bet you thought they disbanded years ago. Indeed, whenever I hear a new track by them it takes me about fifteen seconds or so to register who it is. For example, I first heard this track being played during the football on TV and thought the following:

a)    Gee, that’s a cool track, I wonder who it is?

b)   I should look up who sings it

c)    Hang on … I bet it’s Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

d)   Why yes, it is (hail the internet)

Another thought: are BRMC now at the stage where they are considered elder statesmen?

4.    Double Nickels On The Dime – Minutemen (album)

Yes, I am including a whole album, but how can you separate the 43 tracks on this ‘underground’ punk classic? Well, there are a few standouts: ‘Corona’ brings images of driving on a desert road chugging down the Mexican beer, ‘Jesus and Tequila’ images of stopping at a desert shack downing shots, ‘History Lesson Part II’ is a very nice reflective piece about the Minutemen’s origin, and ‘Dr. Wu’ out-ironizes both They Might Be Giants and Weezer. The perfect set for people with uber-short attention spans.

5.    Get Lucky – Daft Punk 

And you thought David Bowie sounded retro. Daft Punk travel back to the disco era on their latest ‘comeback’ track. Pharrell Williams provides vocals, but to Daft Punk’s (and his) credit does not dominate the track at all.

BEER!![7] – TUSKER

Name: Tusker.

Brewery: East African Breweries.

Place Of Origin: Kenya.

Type: Pale lager.

Alcohol Content: 4.2%.

Why I Bought It: Well there is not a lot of choice in East Africa, with only a few imported beers. Although given that you can get a 500 mL bottle for the equivalent of about a couple of bucks, it’s arguable whether you need much else.

Taste: It’s a lager, and most of the East African lagers tend to taste fairly similar (see: Safari, Kilimanjaro, Castle).

What I did while drinking it: As you can tell by the photograph, I was reading Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘Hell’s Angels’. Not as manic as ‘Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas’ but still worth a read, particularly if you’re in a place where reading material is in relatively short supply.

What I did after drinking it: In this particular instance I simply ordered some food. In other instances, what happens on tour stays on tour.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 4 2013

RISING UP

Geelong had fallen as far down as 9th in the rankings as of Round 16 last season, but finished the season off strongly, bar the final against Fremantle. This year, it has crept up further, and with its win in Sydney it is now the #2 ranked team behind the Cats' nemesis, the Hawks. Not bad for a team that many thought had peaked in 2009.

FALLING DOWN

The West Coast Eagles drop further after losing at home to the #11-ranked Carlton. If you entirely discounted the big win against Melbourne (which of course, the rankings do not) the Eagles would not be ranked within the top 8.

ALSO OF NOTE

All the teams ranked from 2nd to 10th moved into a new spot this week.

1 (Last week: 1) Hawthorn 41.3 (41.0)

2 (4) Geelong 23.7 (20.3)
3 (2) Sydney 22.3 (24.1)
4 (5) Fremantle 19.1 (19.6)
5 (3) West Coast 15.9 (21.3)
6 (8) Collingwood 15.6 (13.4)
7 (6) Adelaide 12.8 (14.7)
8 (10) Essendon 10.9 (7.3)
9 (7) Richmond 10.4 (13.9)
10 (9) St. Kilda 7.9 (11.7)
11 (11) Carlton 6.0 (2.7)
12 (12) North Melbourne 2.1 (-0.4)
13 (13) Port Adelaide -11.1 (-12.7)
14 (14) Brisbane -20.7 (-17.5)
15 (15) Gold Coast -32.2 (-29.7)
16 (16) Western Bulldogs -32.5 (-31.9)
17 (17) Melbourne -50.6 (-51.2)
18 (18) Greater Western Sydney -60.9 (-60.4)