With the return to 20-minute quarters in 2021, I have re-adjusted the rankings by multiplying last year’s results by 1.25. The rankings prior to Round 1 2021 are therefore:
The tips based on the rankings are:
With the prospective finalists playing off against each other in Round 7, there was a bit of a change in each team’s finals prospects, and a bit of a change in the ranking order here. The Adelaide Crows – who had been looking ominous – were stopped in their march quite sharply by an impressive Melbourne team, putting them on the edge of the top four. Brisbane squeaked past Collingwood, as tipped last week although the tip would have been different if it had been known the match would be played in Victoria, placing those two teams on almost equal footing.
This week the big matches are Brisbane against the Kangaroos, Fremantle against Melbourne, and Adelaide against the Bulldogs. The tips are that the former teams, all in the top four, will comfortably solidify their places there, but few viewers will complain if the matches are as tight as the ‘mini-finals’ we had last Sunday.
[A technical note: I’ve extended the amount of games that the rankings are calculated over back to a team’s past seven games. I’ll slide this forward progressively to nine matches over the remainder of the year.]
The OG’s beat up on the new kids.
As
predicted in last week’s post Round 6 of AFLW was one-sided,
with the final aspirants – which aside from the Kangaroos consist of the
competition’s original teams – easily beating the lower, newer sides. The
average winning margin was nearly eight goals. However, since many of those teams
were expected to win easily, their ranking points did not change much or even
fell. The main teams that gained several ranking points included Collingwood
for their six goal win against a Bulldogs side still competing for a finals
spot, and Melbourne with their larger-than-expected win against a Saints team
that had won a couple of games this season.
Fortunately, next week’s
matches – possibly not coincidentally – are a more interesting prospect. The
eight finals hopefuls play off against each other (while the other six teams
try to get a rare win). The rankings predict that the field of finals
contenders may effectively get narrowed to six teams, with the seventh and
eighth placed teams – the Bulldogs and Carlton – tipped to be handily beaten by
their opponents (the Kangaroos and Fremantle) next week.
Even if the finals race looks like it’s sorting itself out though the battle for one of the prized top two spots – which comes with a first week ‘bye’ in the finals, and hence one less win required for the premiership – could come down to the wire. The Brisbane-Collingwood matchup in Queensland looms as an important one. A Lions win will place them above the Pies, while a Collingwood win will put them two wins ahead of Brisbane with just two rounds to go.
The ‘old’ power is rising…
Collingwood is the only undefeated team left in the AFLW this season after five rounds, following Fremantle’s loss on the weekend. It’s a good achievement, and the Magpies should be considered one of the favourites for the premiership. The main doubt around them may be that they may not be able to count on teams being as inaccurate as their last two opponents – the Kangaroos and Melbourne scoring a combined 1.16 – going forward.
But it’s not the Magpies that will
be striking the most fear in opponents’ hearts at the moment. The two-time
premiership winning Adelaide Crows look to be back to something nearing their
imperious best, smashing St. Kilda by 53 points on the weekend. Their four wins
have now come at an average of 38 points, bringing back memories of the
dominant run they went on to win the 2019 flag, before slipping
last season.
The Crows’ form is clearly correlated with the form and availability of two-time AFLW best and fairest player Erin Phillips. Phillips is the equal leading goalkicker, second in marks, and seventh in contested possessions. Phillips, Ebony Marinoff and Anne Hatchard – along with Chelsea Randall arguably the main players behind the Crows’ last premiership – are all back in the top twenty for disposals. Marinoff in particular is also having a great season, ranking in the top five for disposals, metres gained, contested possessions, and clearances.
The current Crows’ side is probably not quite as dominant as that 2019 team. However they look like they’re going to again be very hard to stop.
Yes, I will acknowledge Fremantle…
In last
week’s post I said that even though Fremantle had won ten matches straight,
they were ‘beatable’ and arguably hadn’t been as dominant in their wins as the
Kangaroos. The Kangaroos have then proceeded to lose their second straight
match, didn’t kick a goal, and the Dockers now sit on top of the rankings.
So yes, OK, the rankings say
that Fremantle are the best team now. Though watch out for those Crows lurking
just behind … they did have as many scoring shots as the Dockers when they
played them, you know – which brings me to my next topic…
Points
or scoring shots – what’s a better indicator of form?
My rankings are based on the
final points margin. On the weekend though, Melbourne had double the scoring
shots and inside 50s of the Bulldogs, and lost by two goals. The Kangaroos had
as many scoring shots and more inside 50s than Collingwood, and lost by 20
points. As I mentioned above, Adelaide had as many scoring shots and inside 50s
as Fremantle last week. Should we really be looking at the number of scoring
shots instead, at least for AFLW where there’s less opportunities for goal
accuracy to even out over the game?
Fremantle’s ten wins in a row is very impressive, but they still seem to be ‘beatable’.
It may seem like being a ‘hater’ to say it – I assure you I am not – but as great an achievement as the Dockers’ ten straight wins is, don’t declare the premiership race over yet.
Yes, Fremantle flattened two-time premiers the Adelaide Crows by 30 points on the weekend, but they did it with the same number of scoring shots, less disposals, and about the same number of inside 50s (although the Dockers do tend to get higher impact per disposal). In fairness, they could well have beaten West Coast by much more than nine points if they had higher accuracy in front of goal the week before, in a game where they had 35 to 14 inside 50s.
Nevertheless, I would still say they are not a nigh-unstoppable force, just a leading contender. The majority of their ten wins have been by three goals or less. The Kangaroos have arguably been slightly more dominant overall in their wins, though they keep falling short against Melbourne and snuck home in their final against Colingwood. But another undefeated home-and-away season (assuming the season finishes), and then home finals, would certainly help the Dockers in their quest for a first flag.
Aside from the Dockers and
Kangaroos, the other teams that the rankings like to contend for the final six
are Adelaide, Brisbane, Carlton, Collingwood, and Melbourne, keeping in mind we
do not the rest of the fixture. Carlton has only one win out of three matches,
but does play Richmond next week.
Or at least they do at the moment. Here are my tips until the next set of state border closures changes the fixture…
Collingwood’s win against Carlton was perhaps not that much of an upset.
Welcome back to my AFLW Rankings, for season 2021.
In the season opener, Collingwood recorded a one goal win against Carlton (it would have been two goals if not for a goal after the siren to the Blues), which was largely proclaimed as an ‘upset’. This would likely be because last season, before it was prematurely halted, Carlton finished second in their conference while Collingwood finished fourth, and because the Blues easily won their first final while the Magpies narrowly lost theirs.
Collingwood though finished off 2020 really well. Their narrow finals lost was against the mighty Kangaroos, by a mere two points. Prior to that they beat Brisbane and the Bulldogs by around five goals each, and lost to the other top team Fremantle by only three points (they also lost to Melbourne – note though they also beat Carlton prior to that, but that isn’t counted in their ranking points). After adjusting margins for opponent strength and home ground advantage, that gives them an average adjusted net margin of over 20 points (see chart below).
[Note: if anyone is comparing the ranking points and changes with those from the end of last year, I made a slight change to the formula at the start of this year. I had been using a team’s past seven matches to calculate ranking points, but I have reduced that to six matches given the premature end to last season, and that it removes the last ‘proxy’ result for the expansion clubs. I may expand this out to nine matches as the season progresses, given the number of rounds this year… but let’s see how far we get through the season first.]
