AFL Power Rankings: Round 11 2015

Pundits have been proclaiming the end of the ‘Cat Empire’ since at least 2010, and after it got well done by Hawthorn in the first round I thought this year may be the end of Geelong’s time amongst the top half of teams. Maybe it still will be but for now Geelong sits fifth on the rankings, after a bunch of decent performances in recent weeks, including a win against Port Adelaide away, and wins against Essendon and Carlton that were big enough to bring heightened media scrutiny upon the performances of both those clubs.

The Cats are still a fair way from the top four according to these rankings, and on that basis one may say that their dynasty has reached its end. But according to at least one definition of ‘dynasty’, it is probably still going. Fivethirtyeight recently rated the best National Basketball Association dynasties, and defined the strength of a dynasty as how far and how long a team remained above average.

It would be interesting to see which has been the most successful VFL/AFL dynasty on that basis. My guess would be that it would be one of either the 1920s/30s Collingwood, 1950s/60s Melbourne, or 1980s/90s Hawthorn sides, or the current Cats era. Unfortunately I don’t have a long-term ratings system to assess this (although somewhere like the Footy Maths Institute does – how about it, Footy Maths?) I could rate it based on win-loss records and percentages though. Since once I get an idea like this I am usually interested to see the outcome I may well post something on this in the next few weeks.