Who Has The Easiest AFL Draw in 2016?

With the release of the 2016 AFL fixture this week, it is time for my annual assessment of the difficulty of each club’s draw. Which clubs have the easiest and hardest draws in 2016?

To recap here is how my assessment is done: a club’s draw is rated by summing up over every match the ranking points of its opponents as determined by my end-of-season AFL Power Rankings, while adjusting for net home ground advantage.

This means the rating for each club’s draw is in effect the result of three components:

-          The effect of not playing your own club: If every club played each other the same amount of times the best club would have the easiest draw and the worst club would have the hardest.

 

-          Net home ground advantage: This is the net effect of the adjustments for home ground advantage across the season. Not playing your home matches interstate helps out here, as does playing clubs from out-of-town.

 

-          The effect of which clubs your club plays twice: This is the collective strength of the opponents that each club plays twice. A higher rating for this component means that you have easier opponents in your return bouts.

Putting that all together, the easiness/difficulty of each AFL club’s draw in 2016 is shown in the table below, ranked from easiest to hardest:

And the winners of this year’s fixture are … the Gold Coast Suns. The Suns have relatively easy return bouts, playing Brisbane, Essendon, Melbourne, and GWS twice, with only Fremantle expected to be a tough return engagement.

After years of tough draws Geelong’s can look forward to an easy fixture in 2016 after missing the finals for the first time in nine years. The Cats also get Brisbane, Essendon, and GWS twice, and as always, are considered here to be helped by playing some Victorian clubs down in Geelong.

Port Adelaide, Carlton, and St. Kilda should also be pleased with their fixtures. Essendon should be pleased about which clubs it plays twice, but less pleased about the number of times it travels interstate compared to the number of times it hosts out-of-towners.

At the other end North Melbourne is rated as having the hardest draw, slightly ahead of Adelaide. North Melbourne’s chief executive even admitted to the difficulty of North Melbourne’s fixture, though it is not helped by the Kangaroos playing some home matches in Tasmania. Adelaide, meanwhile, has the toughest return matches against clubs, playing West Coast, Fremantle, North Melbourne, Port Adelaide, and Geelong twice.

Reigning premier Hawthorn also has some tough return engagements, playing West Coast, North Melbourne, Sydney, and Richmond twice. But as has been the case for the past few years Hawthorn’s biggest advantage is that it does not have to play Hawthorn. That puts it from having one of the hardest draws to one that is rated somewhere in the middle.

Note again though that the difference between the easiest draw and the hardest draw averages out to about a goal a match. Surely North Melbourne can easily make up that difference with Gold Coast, can’t they?

The Wooden Finger Five - October 2015

5.Bob Lennon John Dylan – Phoenix Foundation

This is a fun, fast few minutes of indie pop-rock nonsense from my favourite New Zealand band the Phoenix Foundation. I don’t think the mixing of names is meant to be significant, more likely it just sounded like a funny idea at the time. Moments of flippancy aside, I found the Phoenix Foundation’s new album ‘Give Up Your Dreams’ to be their most consistent, focused full-length to date, and definitely recommend giving it a few plays if you like blissful, melodic indie rock.

4. Ui Yia Uia – No Zu

We were watching the TV show Rage on a Wednesday night, when this strange and propulsive clip showed up. First these guys that looked like they came from a late night 1970s lounge band came in. Apart from the bass and sax, there were keyboards, a guy with curly hair and a moustache playing bongos, and two other drummers for some reason.

Then in the middle of those guys two women started singing in what sounded like a made-up language. It may well have been a perfectly legitimate language, but it sounded made-up the way they sang it; the phrase ‘Ui Yia Uia’ sounds like it comes two miles east of ‘Ganggajang’ to me.

 

And all the while that this was going on, the camera also panned around these bodybuilders that were surrounding the band. As if the moustache and bongos were not ‘Boogie Nights’ enough.

And somewhere in the room there was also a kangaroo.

When it was finished, not being able to remember either the name of the band or the song, I typed into Google the words ‘video clip kangaroo bodybuilders’ and came up with this article that identified it. I’ve since listened to the track a few more times on Spotify, though a couple of times I’ve mistakenly typed in ‘No Bu’ (a Japanese restaurant in Melbourne) when searching for it.

What a weird and wonderful find.

3.Come Back – Deafheaven

I was first lured into Deafheaven by seeing their beautiful album cover to ‘Sunbather’ on Pitchfork’s year-end best albums list, unaware that they were a heavy metal band. I got about three minutes into the first track, and then my ears rebelled … But something possessed me to give their new track ‘Come Back’ a go, and not only do I like it very much, I went back and listened to more of ‘Sunbather’ again and I like that too. As the Jesus and Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine have shown me, there is something soothing about ear-splitting white noise when played right. ‘Come Back’ though is more than just noise – listen to the last-third for an outro that compares favourably with Eric Clapton’s ‘Layla’.     

2.Academic – New Order

Catching me somewhat unawares, New Order have released their first new album in over a decade, without founding member and bassist Peter Hook. In worrying news for bass players New Order do not sound much different for the change in personnel. Though in part that is because their new bassist seems to have been ordered to play pretty much like Peter Hook. Actually the whole band sound pretty much like they did back in the 1980s, or at least like they did on ‘Get Ready’ a decade and a half ago. ‘Academic’ is yet another New Order track that has a seemingly cerebral title, but is basically about Barney singing of a girl he recalls.

1.Downtown – Majical Cloudz

As I have raved about somewhat incoherently on this blog before, I find Majical Cloudz’s music to be beautiful. Despite the title of their best song ‘Bugs Don’t Buzz’ it has this captivating, buzzing, feel to it, but it’s also very simple and direct, which is a rare feat for electronic music. There are a few tracks off the new album that I could choose to fill this slot, but ‘Downtown’ is my current favourite, though it took a few months of listening for me for ‘Bugs … ‘ to emerge as the standout from the last album. It’s a little bit creepy, dealing with obsession for a lover, but it’s delivered so delicately that the feelings feel more pure than they probably do if you just see them written on paper. If you haven’t listened to Majical Cloudz before don’t let them pass you by this year.  

AFL Power Rankings: Post-Finals 2015

So Hawthorn and West Coast met in the Grand Final, as these rankings expected they would, and Hawthorn came out on top, which was expected as well. Watching the Hawks is kind of like watching a computer at chess. Hawthorn has now finished atop these rankings for a fourth straight year.

North Melbourne was perhaps the only significant surprise in September, or the only other team to raise its form in the past month. Sydney dropped back the most, but it was hit by injuries which likely made it play below its best.

Over the year Hawthorn held the top spot in the rankings for all but one week, all the way back in Round 2. Fremantle, Sydney, and West Coast – the other top four teams after the home-and-away season – were the only other teams to be in the top eight all season. The Eagles making the finals wasn’t a surprise at all to these rankings. The Eagles making the Grand Final was a surprise compared with their position at the start of the season, though less of one after Round 7. More surprising was the capitulation of Carlton and Essendon, particularly the Bombers after the first few matches.

Five teams had a highest ranking of third during the year: Fremantle – who was actually never ranked in the top two despite being the minor premier – Port Adelaide, Adelaide, Richmond, and the Western Bulldogs.

That’s it until 2016!

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 112

TENNIS: Who is the greatest male tennis player ever? And which is the greatest rivalry?

BASKETBALL: How to fix pickup basketball using analytics.

SPORTS: The 100 worst blowouts in sports history.

AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALL: Hipster Australian Football League logos.

ECONOMICS: The economics of commuting – why train strikes actually help passengers.

How Image Comics Have Left Marvel and DC For Dust

This is the current list of Image titles I read: Bitch Planet, Chew, Descender, The Fade Out, Lazarus, The Manhattan Projects, Saga, Sex Criminals, Southern Bastards, Velvet, We Stand On Guard.

This is the current list of Marvel titles I read: Avengers, Ms. Marvel, Star Wars, Thor.

This is the current list of DC titles I read: Batman.

In truth I have never been a big DC reader, except for the Vertigo imprint towards the end of its heyday. But I’ve always been a big Marvel fan, and now Image has well overtaken it.

In part this is because Marvel is now eating itself with its constant stream of re-treads and re-launches. Image though now has it beat for creativity hands down, and has for some time.

Marvel started off the century well, with its best stretch of titles since the ‘80s – including New X-Men, X-Force/X-Statix, the Ultimate line of comics, Brian Michael Bendis’ and Alex Maleev’s Daredevil, and Ed Brubaker’s Captain America. But Marvel just can’t get away from its roots as a superhero line. Even when it tried to branch out into other genres, such as Bendis’ detective-based Alias series, it still had to implant the story in its superhero universe.

Not that this necessarily has to be a bad thing. However Image Comics have now become the home for creators to launch their pet projects – top writers such as Jason Aaron, Ed Brubaker, Kelly DeConnick, Matt Fraction, Jonathan Hickman, Greg Rucka, and Brian K. Vaughan – in tow with great artists such as Steve Epting, Sean Phillips, and Fiona Staples, as well as heretofore relative unknowns such as Chew’s team of John Layman and Rob Guillory. And of course, while I don’t read it regularly (preferring to wait for the omnibuses), there is Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead.

Marvel’s top creators, the ‘architects’ as they are termed by the company itself (many of whom cross over with Image’s line-up of creators), are good at what they do, but all they can do really is play with the same worn-out sandbox and come up with slightly off-the-wall Avengers line-ups. Image is the home to the fresh new concepts. They play well to my twelve-issue theory; that is, that comic book series are at their ‘hottest’ for their first twelve issues before the concept starts to become stale. (See for example American Flagg, Animal Man, Astro City, Bone, Hawkeye, Incredible Hercules, Madman Comics, Planetary, Powers, Stray Bullets, and so on ...) It’s comics’ equivalent of the debut rock album.

Image’s current place used to be taken by DC’s Vertigo. One by one though the series that made Vertigo the ‘HBO of comics’ – Sandman, Preacher, Transmetropolitan, 100 Bullets, and finally Hellblazer and Fables – have ended, without anything substantial enough or (semi-)popular enough to replace them. If Vertigo were the HBO of comics, perhaps Image are the AMC.

It seems a little strange that the company which started off in the 1990s with mostly flashy, but god-awfully written titles should come to be the highest quality of the ‘big three’ companies. A lot of credit seems to go to current publisher Eric Stephenson. Stephenson’s own Age of Bronze series was somewhat acclaimed, and along with Astro City and Powers started to move Image away from its X-Men clones and towards more diverse, more thoughtful titles. He seems to be even better though as a talent-spotter or at least a facilitator for good creators and their work.

Also Image is probably not that concerned with selling movies or toys.

Don’t get me wrong: Image is hardly selling high literature here. Even Saga and The Walking Dead are just well-developed genre pieces. But as far as doing really good genre work, which is what ‘mainstream’ comics at their best do as well as any medium, Image is currently streets ahead.

The Wooden Finger AFL All-Australian Team 2015

B: Heath Shaw (GWS), Alex Rance (Rich), Matthew Boyd (WB)
HB: Robert Murphy (WB), Michael Hurley (Ess), Sam Mitchell (Haw)
C: Dan Hannebery (Syd), Josh Kennedy (Syd), Andrew Gaff (WC)
HF: Chad Wingard (PA), Taylor Walker (Adel), Robbie Gray (PA)
F: Eddie Betts (Adel), Josh Kennedy (WC), Jake Stringer (WB)
R: Todd Goldstein (NM), Nat Fyfe (Fre), Matt Priddis (WC)
I: Nic Naitanui (WC), David Mundy (Fre), Patrick Dangerfield (Adel), Scott Pendlebury (Coll)

Victorian AFL Clubs: Isn’t There A ‘Big Five’?

Maybe I’ve missed it, but shouldn’t we be saying there are five big Victorian AFL clubs now: Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon, Richmond … and Hawthorn?

The Hawks have now won 12 premierships, making them one of the more historically successful clubs. They had the second-highest membership of any club in 2015, and have been near the top over the past few years. They had the third-highest average attendance of any club in 2015.

It seems to me the Hawks now have all the indicators of a ‘big club’. They have big rivalries with Essendon, Geelong, and to a lesser extent, Carlton and Collingwood. Indeed I’d say Hawthorn and Richmond sit alongside Collingwood as the ‘powerhouses’ in Victorian football at the moment, obviously helped by their on-field performances, while Essendon and Carlton have had their recent struggles.

Maybe it will change once Hawthorn starts to fall down the ladder again (I’m assuming that will happen someday). But there are at least two generations of Hawthorn fans now that have had great success, so I reckon their fan base will stick. Their pattern of success over those eras would now look fairly similar to the eras that built the fan bases of the other ‘big four’ Victorian clubs.

At the least, as much as I hate to say it, the Hawks are probably as big as Richmond now.

AFL Power Rankings - Round 23 2015

Clubs resting players in the final home-and-away round of the AFL season not only raises questions about the ‘integrity’ of the competition it wreaks havoc with the rankings. Well, havoc is a bit strong, but it probably means we have to make some mental adjustments if we want to work out where each team is ‘truly’ at heading into the finals.

Serial offender Ross Lyon reduced the rankings’ ability to pick Fremantle’s good September a couple of years back by resting half his first-choice side and consequently getting thrashed by lowly-ranked St. Kilda. This year Lyon has done it again, with the result that the Dockers got well beaten by Port Adelaide on the weekend. We now have the curious result that the minor premier is not even among the top eight ranked clubs. This is not just the result of one week though, and even if the latest result was discounted completely Fremantle would still be considered here to be among the lower-ranked clubs in the top eight. Nevertheless, the rankings rate the Dockers as favourites to win their first final against Sydney, because of their home ground advantage.

North Melbourne is the other club that rested around half its first-choice side this week. But unlike Fremantle, even if the weekend’s result is completely discounted the Roos would still not be considered favourites to win their first final. Outside Hawthorn and West Coast though the other clubs look to be fairly close in ability, so North still has a reasonable shot at winning in the first week.

Based on the rankings and home ground advantages, and after doing the adjustments described above, here are my predictions for how the finals series will unfold:

Week 1
West Coast d Hawthorn
Fremantle d Sydney
Western Bulldogs d Adelaide
Richmond d North Melbourne

Week 2
Hawthorn d Western Bulldogs
Sydney d Richmond

Week 3
Hawthorn d Fremantle
West Coast d Sydney

Grand Final
Hawthorn d West Coast