AFL Power Rankings: Round 21 2017

A couple of weeks ago the GWS Giants were the team that had lost the most ranking points in 2017. But with their big win against the Western Bulldogs this week they pass the title of ‘club that has taken the biggest step backwards in 2017’ to the Dogs, their 2016 preliminary final conquerors. Of course when you are high up to begin with you have further to fall. The Bulldogs are now ranked thirteenth (by a close margin) – which is a fair drop for a reigning premier – though they were never ranked higher than fifth here in 2017, even at the start of the season.

I’m going to continue on with my ‘end-of-season’ summary for each side: this week it’s Geelong to North Melbourne. As was the case last week you can see their ranking points for each round in the graph below.

Geelong Cats: The Cats were above average yet again in 2017. Their peak came in Round 5 a week after slaughtering Hawthorn, but losses to Collingwood, the Gold Coast Suns (!), and Essendon brought them down from a ‘four goals better than average’ side to about ‘two goals better than average’. That’s about where they have been ever since, and in an even season that’s generally been good enough to have them ranked third or fourth for most of 2017.

Gold Coast Suns: As of this week the Gold Coast Suns have become the first side other than the Brisbane Lions to be ranked last in 2017, after the Lions themselves thrashed the Suns in the second QClash of the season. They started off OK … after that aforementioned win against Geelong in Round 7 they were ranked as respectably below average. But it’s all gone horribly wrong from about Round 13 onwards, and based on form since then they have comfortably overtaken their fellow Queenslanders as the competition’s worst performed side. When even your departing coach regrets having come to your club in the first place you know you have some issues.

GWS GIANTS: As I covered a few weeks ago the Giants took a huge stride backwards this season, from being great to being merely good. I suggested then that injuries and suspensions (combined with some weaker ‘replacement players’) may have played a part. Big wins against the Bulldogs and Melbourne in the past couple of weeks have restored some of the Giants’ standing, so it may be that they are on their way to being a dangerous side in the finals again.

Hawthorn: The Hawks have had one of the odder seasons in 2017. In the first seven weeks they were awful, getting destroyed by Geelong, Gold Coast, and St. Kilda within the space of four weeks. But from Round 14 to Round 18 they were fantastic: including beating Adelaide on their home turf, having a draw with GWS, and narrowly losing their return bout with Geelong. Overall then they rate about average for the year, but – like Sydney – it’s really been a season of two very different halves for the Hawks.

Melbourne: The Demons have had easily their best season since these rankings began, and have been rated as above average since they also beat Adelaide on their home turf back in Round 8. Melbourne’s improvement this year could be seen as basically the next step in the steady progression of a young side. Actually though, it’s likely primarily due to the massive improvement of Clayton Oliver, and bringing in good veterans Michael Hibberd and Jordan Lewis. We’ll see if their other young players aside from Oliver have enough improvement left in them for Melbourne to take another step forward.

North Melbourne: The Roos had the semblance of still being an average side up to about Round 10, with only some close losses keeping them from being mid-range on the actual ladder. But after that they dropped away badly, due both to heavy losses and defeats to poor sides. They haven’t quite been as bad overall during that time as Fremantle and Gold Coast – both of whom they lost to – but the Kangas could be starting from a fair way back in 2018.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 20 2017

And so – at the top of the rankings – we’ve ended up about where we started, with Adelaide and Sydney once again clearly ahead of the rest. The Crows and the Swans put some distance between themselves and the other top teams this week, with the Crows destroying Port Adelaide, and the Swans easily beating Geelong on the road.

Over the next few weeks, as we approach the end of the home-and-away season, I’m going to give a summary of how each team’s ranking points developed through 2017. This week I’ll look at the first six clubs in alphabetical order, which are Adelaide to Fremantle. You can see their ranking points for each round in the graph below.

Adelaide Crows: Adelaide has held the top ranking for most of 2017. Once the rounds got under way the Crows only surrendered the top spot in Round 8, following successive beltings by North Melbourne, and Melbourne at home. That may have been the correction that revealed the Crows’ true level of ability, because they have stayed around the 20-25 ranking points mark for most of the time since. Still the Crows are considered by many to have the best chance of winning the premiership this year. They have been a very good – although not dominant – side throughout the season.

Brisbane Lions: Brisbane has been clearly the AFL’s worst team so far in 2017, and has been on the bottom of the rankings for the entire season to date. But having both Adelaide and Brisbane in the graph this week helps illustrate one of the major themes for 2017: the teams became more even. The Lions have improved from being relatively awful to merely relatively bad over the course of the season. Their improvement picked up the most steam over the second half of the season, particularly with their big win against Fremantle in Round 12.

Carlton and Fremantle: These teams followed similar paths in 2017, with both being rated below average across 2017. Fremantle had some observers fooled that it may contend for finals earlier this year following a few close wins, but the Dockers’ mammoth losses against Port Adelaide and Adelaide should have had the alarm bells ringing. Carlton has steadily improved for much of the year – with its biggest improvement in ranking points coming after it beat the GWS Giants – but the Blues have similarly never really threatened to reach even an ‘average’ status.

Collingwood: Speaking of ‘average’ Collingwood has been consistently average to below average for the majority of 2017. Their performances from week to week have generally been reliably average, albeit with varying results. The Magpies slipped a few weeks back after getting comfortably beaten by Hawthorn and Essendon, but have since regained some ground with a win against West Coast, a draw against Adelaide, and a win by a big margin against North Melbourne.

Essendon: Obviously the big improvers of 2017. That was not a surprise, given that the Bombers regained several senior players from year-long suspensions. What was perhaps a surprise was how much they improved. The Bombers rose up well past their 2015 form to a level that resembled more their early-2013 performances. Young players like Zach Merrett and Joe Daniher are clearly better than they were a couple of years ago, and combining them with the returning veterans has resulted in a solid football team. For a stretch in the middle of the season there they were even an elite one.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 19 2017

GWS has now lost the most ranking points of any club this season, and fallen from third to sixth on these rankings (though if the Giants had kicked a bit more accurately in front of goal on the weekend they would probably be fifth). It has been often noted by the media and fans this year that the Giants’ players have missed a lot of games through injuries. But how much has that really contributed to the Giants’ loss of form (noting that they are still an above average side)?

The biggest loss this year for the Giants has been Stephen Coniglio, who was one of the Giants most productive players last year, and has so far missed most of the season. Many matches have also been missed by Ryan Griffen and new recruit Brett Deledio. Deledio of course wasn’t there last season so he doesn’t really explain anything in terms of the Giants’ form compared with 2016.

The other regular productive Giants to miss significantly more time than last season are Toby Greene (who has missed five games), Steve Johnson (five games), Rory Lobb (four games), and Lachie Whitfield (seven games). Greene and Whitfield have lost time to suspensions rather than injury. Devon Smith and Nick Haynes have also missed matches, but at comparable rates to last season.

So Coniglio, Griffen, Johnson, and Lobb are arguably the only important players from 2016 that have missed significantly more time to injury this season. But the suspensions of Greene and Whitfield have added to that extra time lost. Johnson has also been a lot less productive than last season, which has added to the Giants’ decline.

In terms of other changes of form for regular players many SuperCoach owners will tell you (including me) that Heath Shaw has been significantly less productive than last season. Many SuperCoach owners (including me) will also tell you that Josh Kelly has been significantly more productive. If you consider statistics to at least be indicative of a player’s value then there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot more that is different among the Giants’ regular group. So it’s really more to do with the Giants’ ‘replacement players’. They have had to use them more often due to injuries and suspensions. Also, their ‘replacement players’ haven’t been as good – they lost a couple of better ones over the off-season in Rhys Palmer and Jack Steele, and Matthew Buntine has generally been unavailable this season.

The Giants were great last season with most of their top players being regularly on the field. This season they have lost a few of them for significant amounts of time, and have been merely good. They could well improve if Coniglio and Griffen become regulars again and others can stay on the park a little more often; if not then having to use their thinner reserves may keep them from reaching their heights of 2016 in the near future. 

AFL Power Rankings: Round 18 2017

In the early rounds of 2017 two powerhouses of recent years – Sydney and Hawthorn – were falling fast. Both lost around three goals worth of ranking points over just the first five rounds of 2017.

But over the past five weeks they have been the two best performed sides in the competition. Based only on their past five weeks Sydney and Hawthorn would both be at around 30 ranking points, better than current top team Adelaide.

There isn’t much more of a point I’m making here other than credit where it is due: the Swans and the Hawks came back.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 17 2017

AFL Power Rankings: Round 16 2017

Earlier in the week The Arc did a post on how much past seasons affect its current AFL ratings. There were a few teams that were notably affected by their performances in past seasons, but in general by this stage of the season it’s the current season that primarily matters. This gave me an idea though:

Working out the effect of past seasons in my rankings is pretty easy. My rankings are just based on a team’s past 22 matches, with more recent matches given more weight. Only the current and previous season matter and, unlike The Arc’s ratings and some other rating systems, teams do not regress towards the average between seasons – Round 1 in the current season just carries on from a team’s last game in the previous one.

The weights given to the previous season’s matches go down during the year. After one round into the season they are still up at about 91 per cent of the total, but after Round 5 they are down to about 60 per cent, after Round 9 they are about 36 per cent, and currently – after Round 16 – they are down to just 11 per cent.

Hence, as you can see from the table below, last season’s matches don’t matter much by this stage of the season. No team gains or loses more than about five ranking points from its results in 2016. Essendon, not surprisingly, is held back a bit by its weak, personnel-affected performances last year. Last year’s grand finalists – Sydney and the Western Bulldogs – are held up a bit by their strong performances in last year's finals series.

An interesting case is Sydney, which as The Arc noted were a top team in 2016 but has performed less well in 2017, particularly early in the season. As you can see in the graph below, when the Swans performed badly at the start of the 2017 their ranking points dropped fairly consistently from round to round as last season’s accumulated points fell away.

However, after Round 7 Sydney’s ranking points have been stable, as its improvement in this season has offset its loss of points from 2016. The result is that the Swans are still among the better teams even without last season’s performances holding them up.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 15 2017

Richmond takes Essendon’s spot in the top eight of these rankings this week. The Tigers had a win over Port in Adelaide, while Essendon lost at home to bottom-ranked Brisbane. It is the first time Richmond has been in the top eight of the rankings since Round 4 of last season.

The Tigers have been consistent across matches this season rather than brilliant in a few. The win against Port Adelaide rates here as their best for the year, with a net margin adjusted for home ground advantage and opposition strength of +41 points. Only the bottom three ranked sides – Carlton, Fremantle, and Brisbane – have a ‘best adjusted net margin’ result for 2017 that is lower than Richmond’s, and Richmond only passed two of those sides with the win against Port this week.

But Richmond has been pretty consistent in its performances. It has the lowest variation (standard deviation) in adjusted net margin across its matches of any side this season, at +23 points. Its worst result this year, in adjusted net margin terms, was its 2 point loss to Fremantle at home (-43 points in adjusted net margin).

In other words, in this even season, Richmond’s season has been the most even of all.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 14 2017

In keeping with a major theme of this season that teams that look like they are moving ahead will soon put in a bad performance, Adelaide marked its clear break at the top of the rankings by losing at home this week to lowly-ranked Hawthorn. The Crows still keep top spot in these rankings for now, but Port Adelaide and GWS now look about just as good.

Also showing the even nature of this season is that it doesn’t take much for the teams in the middle to move around a few spots in the rankings. Essendon moves up from tenth to eighth after the narrowest of losses in Sydney, Richmond moves up from twelfth to tenth, Collingwood drops from ninth to twelfth, and Geelong drops from third to fifth after squeaking home against Fremantle.

After three narrow wins this season Fremantle’s luck in close games ran out against the Cats. (As a Richmond supporter I wish Freo’s missed shot at goal near the siren had come against us.) Those narrow wins have been keeping the Dockers much further up on the ladder than they are rated here.

Melbourne’s rating moves a little higher still after its exciting win in Perth against the West Coast Eagles. The Demons are rated as basically as strong as fourth-ranked Sydney and fifth-ranked Geelong. Can they become an actual top-four ranked team – and actual top four ladder team – with a win against the Sydney Swans next week?