It seems like we hear both sides of the argument every few weeks. Some weeks of footy leave us feeling as if the AFL is as competitive as a North Korean election, while other weeks give off the impression that the league is as fickle as Cyril’s hamstrings.
For the most part, Round 18 was shaping up to be a tipster’s dream but an absolute nightmare for the AFL, with six out of nine games pitting teams in finals contention against teams that find themselves in the bottom third of the ladder.
Expectations were that we would see a round full of one-sided results, with the likely finalists feasting on their weak opposition. The majority of questions about Round 18 focussed on, ‘by how much?’ instead of, ‘who will win?’
What we got was the complete opposite.
While fans of the Blues, Saints, Giants, Demons, Dogs and Lions are left to lament the lack of consistently spirited performances from their clubs so far in 2014, is the rest of the comp uneven?
Of course, there will always be some kind of gap between the legitimate premiership contenders and the teams that languish towards the bottom of the ladder – it is unrealistic to expect a competition consisting of eighteen equally-talented teams – but is this gap as wide as we make it out to be?
We always hear about the NFL’s famous adage of, ‘any given Sunday,’ which means that any team should have a chance of winning any particular game, and about how the AFL wishes to emulate this format. In order to maximise viewership it is crucial that every AFL game is as competitive as possible, which will in turn lead to higher television and gate revenues.
So how successful is the AFL in achieving this?
Since Round 8, eighty-four games have been played. Out of these eighty-four games, the team that started the game in the lower ladder position has won thirty, which equates to 35.7 per cent of the time. This is not a huge number, but it is nowhere near low enough that the AFL should be labelled as uncompetitive. What is more important to note is that every team has lost at least one game in this time period.
This is a vastly improved result from 2013, when, from rounds nine to twenty-three, the team that started the game in the lower ladder position won only 25.6 per cent of the time.
Even though the teams on the lower rungs of the ladder are not winning consistently, the fact that average winning margins have decreased may perhaps provide an even more pertinent evaluation of the evenness of the competition.
For season 2014 to date, the average winning margin is 35.2 points, down from 37.6 points last season. Even this is somewhat inflated – think of the number of games this year that have been close for three and a half quarters before one team eventually kicks away.
We are seeing far fewer games that are uncompetitive from siren to siren, and this is embodied in the fact that only 5.2 per cent of games this year have been decided by ninety points or more, as opposed to 6.6per cent of games last year.
Then again, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by all this. What happened in Round 18 is merely the continuation of what we have seen all season. The tone was set in Round 1, when the Giants stunned the Swans and the rest of the footy world. We can’t say we weren’t warned.
To say that the AFL is uncompetitive and to exaggerate the gap between the teams at the top and the teams at the bottom would be ludicrous. Of course, there is always room for improvement, but compared to many major sporting leagues around the world in which the same three or four teams are competing for the title each year, such as the NBA and European soccer, the AFL is doing a pretty good job.
Instead of snickering when players and coaches serve up the old cliche about the competition being so even that any team can win on any given day, maybe we should believe them. The numbers are certainly in their favour.
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