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There’s one more twist in the tail of this historic AFL season

18th July, 2017
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What twists are yet to come in the 2017 AFL season? (AAP Image/David Moir)
Expert
18th July, 2017
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The AFL ladder is looking far more settled than any other time in season 2017. What does that mean? That it is sure to explode in a haze of fireworks and confetti.

Last weekend was the most normal round of football we’ve had in a while. How do I know? Someone scored nine out of nine in the tipping competition I was roped into running at my day job – the first perfect round since Round 2.

It’s an anecdote, but one which illustrates the insane season we’re having, which is about to begin its march to the finish line.

Sydney have taken their rightful place – hey, they haven’t missed finals since 2009 – in the top eight after an 0-6 start. The chasing pack has dwindled to 3.5 teams, depending on your perspective on the Western Bulldogs and their hapless efforts forward of centre, and the only spot that looks available is West Coast’s eighth position.

Up top, there’s plenty still to play out. How far can Sydney rise? Will Port Adelaide’s win total catch up to their percentage? Will GWS have to play both Tendai Mzungu and Matt De Boer in the same line-up again this season? Are Richmond tracking for another Sunday afternoon elimination final, or something greater?

Want answers? You’ve got ‘em, starting with the biggest question facing the league.

Will Sydney’s rise end with a third harbour-side premiership?
AFL statistician Swamp has been tweeting the historic final eight attainment percentage of teams with a record equal to Sydney’s after each of their games.

He started at 2-6, indicating that no team who had gone 0-6 had made it in, compared to 1.4 per cent of 1-6 teams and 2.6 per cent of 2-6 teams. The percentage has been climbing by the win, and now stands at 52.3 per cent.

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Percentages are made to be broken. At 9-7, the Swans are, according to the market, a near-sure thing to play September football for the eighth straight year. What a stunning turn of events, a fitting spine to a season so laden with uncertainty.

What are the Swans doing differently? It’s too simple to put it down to the form of their key players alone, albeit that is surely a big factor. All but Luke Parker have regained their 2016 output over the past 11 rounds. Parker’s season has been something of a delayed sophomore slump after a stellar rise in his first half dozen seasons (he finished third in the Brownlow medal last year, remember).

Losing Dane Rampe, a key defensive cog, for a chunk of the first part of the season didn’t help either. He has returned in stellar form, and has been central to the re-rise of Sydney’s defence as the most miserly in the competition.

The Swans’ full-season metrics haven’t quite caught up to that mark, but if we wipe the first six games of the season out of Sydney’s memory, they have conceded just 69 freaking points per game – a full goal ahead of Port Adelaide in second place.

More broadly, there’s a very clear shift in Sydney’s style of play in attack. In the first six rounds, as last year, the clear emphasis was on scrambling and moving the ball at all costs. Now, the Swans have gone the other way, and started to look to control the ball by foot. The proof is in the pudding – the wins have flowed, and the Swans have stopped the rot down back.

Sam Reid Sydney Swans AFL 2017

(AAP Image/Dean Lewins)

Sydney’s uncontested marks per game rose from 63.3 (last in the league) in the first six rounds to 92.9 in the following 11 rounds (10 games), ranked fourth behind Carlton, Collingwood and Essendon. Their kick-to-handball ratio has lifted from 1.20 to 1.30, their time in possession from -6.1 minutes to +4.2 minutes per game. The emphasis is clear and it is strong.

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An interesting aside: Sydney were being obliterated by opposition defenders in the first six weeks of the season, conceding 1.7 effective tackles per minute of possession – clearly the worst in the league. It stopped everything, the ball unable to move into the space Sydney love to manufacture on the wings and through the centre corridor.

Over the past 10 weeks, that tackle rate has dropped to 1.33, or slightly below league average.

Their rise has been stellar, unexpected, and unprecedented. It harkens back to Richmond’s rise in 2014, albeit without the stretch of doughnuts to kick off the season. Rising from 0-6 to what looms as a potential lift into the double chance region is already a huge achievement.

But here come the caveats.

Sydney’s fixture list between Rounds 7 and 17 was the second weakest in the competition according to my Simple Rating System calculations, worth an average of 5.1 points per week. It’s quite significant, shaving about 10 percentage points off their percentage, which this year is worth a bit over a win in Pythagorean terms over the full season.

The implication of a sustained, relatively soft patch of games is a ramp up in the final part of the season. In their final six games, the Swans face St Kilda at home, Hawthorn at the MCG, Geelong in Geelong, Fremantle at home, Adelaide in Adelaide and Carlton at home. It’s not as tough as some other prospective finalists, but it’s not the past 10 games, either.

The Swans’ form turnaround is real, evidenced by the clear change in tactics and the fact they’ve, you know, won all but one of their games since Round 6. On current information, Sydney look to have four or five wins still available – that will take them to the cusp of the top four. Whether that’s enough to see them rise to the double chance is an open question, because the top six on the ladder resembles the shape of a colossal question mark.

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Jake Lever Adelaide Crows AFL 2016

(AAP Image/Ben Macmahon)

Who finishes in the top four?
The state of play is thus. Adelaide sit atop the ladder on 12 wins with the league’s leading percentage (140.4 per cent). They are half a game clear of Geelong – plot twist: they play each other on Friday night – who are half a game clear of GWS; both the Cats and Giants have a similar percentage.

Port Adelaide lurk one win behind them again, but with a superior percentage (136.7 per cent) that will likely only come into play if the Power end up tied on wins with GWS, Richmond, Sydney or Melbourne, who are the most likely candidates. Also on 10 wins are Richmond, but with a skinnier percentage of 107.4 per cent. As a result, they’re currently fifth.

Six through to ninth are on nine wins each, with percentages ranging from Sydney’s 113.4 per cent to St Kilda’s 99.4 per cent. One further game back sit Essendon and the Western Bulldogs, the former with a percentage that would tip them over three current top eight teams should their win totals be the same.

he Dogs are in the weakest position of all with eight wins and a percentage of 94.2 per cent – all things being equal, to catch West Coast’s 102.1 per cent they would need to win their remaining games by an average of 21 points, a winning margin they’ve reached three times this year.

We are tentatively ruling a line through the rest of the competition, on the basis of them being two games back in addition to requiring a significant percentage build up over the next six games. Hawthorn would have been an interesting proposition on the run home if they’d kicked any one of six relatively easy shots on goal they missed on Saturday afternoon, given their draw against the Giants wiped their weak percentage from the record. Alas.

Still, that we’re concocting assumptions about finals eligibility, and not ruling teams out in bold point pen with just six rounds remaining is a triumph, and a measure of how even this season became. However, parity has now migrated north for the winter.

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It’s going to get real, starting this weekend. Geelong travel to Adelaide this Friday night, with the winner advancing their top two campaign meaningfully. The Giants and Tigers dance on Saturday afternoon, the winner locking themselves into the top four for a weekend at the very least.

Christian Petracca Melbourne Demons AFL 2017

(AAP Image/Tony McDonough)

Melbourne host Port Adelaide at the MCG, Port Adelaide playing for a top-four spot and the Dees to keep in touching distance. Finally, West Coast travel to Etihad to play Collingwood, a tricky match-up if only because the strengths and weaknesses of both sides are in such contrast.

That’s four games, right now, that meaningfully shape the ladder – three of them between teams jostling for position. (Yes, I have reserved the couch for the weekend, thanks for checking.)

Dealing with the top of the tree first, it is really hard to work out who the best four teams in the competition are this year. Adelaide have looked the best for the longest, but when their system has failed it’s looked a lot like Chernobyl circa 1986. Geelong have the atom-splitting Patrick Dangerfield to lean on, and one of the best support acts in Joel Selwood and Mitch Duncan (there I said it), but otherwise there are questions everywhere you look.

Greater Western Sydney might never get to play their death line up, as a persistent injury toll finally looks to be wearing the team out. But boy, if they’re set to get half a dozen of their first choice troupers back before the end of August, they’re still the favourites.

Port Adelaide and Richmond, this season’s leapers, have questions to answer. Will Damian Hardwick’s Dogs-lite scheme hold up against teams capable of putting up 100 points in their sleep? Are Port Adelaide vulnerable against teams with quality ball users – both decision making and execution – on the half back line? We should get some insight into the answers to both of these questions this weekend.

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Melbourne are still capable of rising into the double chance, a kind draw (as we’ll get to below) affording them potential wins and make up percentage. Their own injury outbreak has struck at the wrong time for collecting home-and-away wins, but it could afford them a chance to build back up just in time for them to peak at the season’s apex.

As we mentioned, Sydney have the chops to make it, but they would have to tix almost every box from here. To me, the top four race can be comfortably narrowed down to these seven teams, which isn’t really a narrowing right? That’s because of the varied fixture the septet face.

Adelaide, Geelong and GWS, the trio the market thinks are all but locked into the double chance, play four of the current top eight in their final six games. Geelong play both Adelaide and GWS, while the Giants and Crows might be reserving their Round 1 rematch for week one of the finals. By contrast, Port Adelaide, Richmond, Sydney and Melbourne have two top-eight match-ups remaining.

Richmond have the best run, with a projected schedule strength of -3.0 points per game (ranked 13th in the competition). Melbourne are next, followed by Sydney and finally Port Adelaide. The only game between this foursome is this weekend between the Dees and Power, meaning it will be each other’s respective performances against the lesser sides that will dictate terms.

For what it’s worth, I am still a believer (or zealot, depending on your perspective) in the Giants and expect them to finish in the top two. Adelaide will join them, the duo set to do mortal damage to the Cats’ claims by winning the two match-ups with Geelong.

For fourth, I’m buying Melbourne stocks. They will start clear favourites in four of their final six, should be favourites against Port Adelaide this week, and could catch the Giants just before their full team is made available once more.

Sydney, Richmond and Port Adelaide will take spots five, six and seven, leaving a three-way battle for eighth spot between West Coast, Essendon and St Kilda.

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Darcy Parish Essendon Bombers AFL 2017

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

The final fight to the death
Finals for St Kilda and Essendon are a welcome bonus, the teams at various stages of rebuilding after their conventional and unconventional paths took them to the bottom of the ladder.

Finals is almost a non-negotiable for West Coast, although who am I to argue against the proposition that Nic Naitanui is the most influential individual for his team in the competition?

The trio have remarkably different sprints to the finish line. Essendon have a pristine Olympic-level running track. West Coast have a few hurdles. St Kilda are running laps on a sodden school oval during a hail storm.

Essendon’s final six games are almost comical. The Dons have North Melbourne, the Western Bulldogs, Carlton, Adelaide, Gold Coast and Fremantle. On current form, they will jump clear favourites in five, and host the Crows at Etihad Stadium where the Dons have scored 106 points per game.

That perspective is coloured by the suddenly firm performance of Essendon’s previously up and down midfield. After conceding a negative inside 50 differential of -11.6 in the first seven games (Essendon went 3-4 and John Worsfold declared the team was tired after the fourth loss), they’ve more or less squared the ledger in the subsequent nine games (5-4, +0.6 inside 50 differential).

In their last five, Essendon are 3-2 with those two losses both by less than two goals (and both coming after stirring fourth-quarter comebacks from their opponents). Over that stretch the Dons have an inside 50 differential of +10.6, which would put them over the league-leading Adelaide Crows if it were a full year mark. From here, they look to be the likely finalist.

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West Coast are treading a fine line, stumbling in and out of the eight on the basis of weak performances and the machinations of the ladder around them. Take it from me: Essendon are a better team than the Eagles now.

A soft tank – play the quality youngsters all at once, farewell a few veterans, put Naitanui’s knee in a cryogenic freezer – would be a welcome strategy from here, to lock in a middle tier fixture in 2018 for another dip at the flag. The worst thing that could happen would be the Eagles convincing themselves that they can ‘pull a Dogs’ and rise from seventh or – shudder – eighth.

West Coast Eagles AFL

(AAP Image/Joe Castro)

Which leaves us with the Saints, whose season looks destined to end just outside the eight once again. Friday night was St Kilda’s last material shot at barging their way into the eight, given they could have dented the claims of the Dons (who have a vastly superior percentage) and got ahead of a nightmare run home.

St Kilda play five of the current top eight in their final six, and just one win among them looks within their grasp: against the Eagles at Etihad Stadium. It begins this weekend with what has emerged as one of the toughest assignments in the league (Sydney in Sydney) before a date with Port Adelaide at Adelaide Oval ahead of the Eagles.

The Saints then close out against Melbourne at the ‘G, North Melbourne at Etihad Stadium, and Richmond at the ‘G in Round 23 – the Tigers potentially playing for a top-four spot, the Saints likely out of the race altogether.

The twist? We don’t know, and that’s the exciting part
It’s all well and good to look at this through a lens of logic and reason. These laws don’t necessarily apply to season 2017. There are many bloggers who do their own projections based on ELO ratings or similar systems nowadays, and almost all of them can show you scenarios where a team makes it to 13 wins but misses out on a spot in the finals.

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I’ve seen systems that show the top four with 14 and 15 wins, and finalists as high as sixth making it in over teams in 10th on the basis of percentage.

There are 54 games to go, some with little to offer by way of influence on the season we’re having, but almost all of them will shape what’s to come.

The off-season begins to creep into view from next week, when teams out of the race will begin to manage their assets for investment in future years. Coaching decisions will be made, with many of the bottom six likely to be in the market come September or October.

Nat Fyfe re-signed this week – as he was always going to – but the playing futures of many free agents and high-profile out-of-contract players remain uncertain. In a flexible salary cap environment, the flurry of news will likely be overwhelmed by ‘news’. All in the name of intrigue, of course.

Let’s not lose sight of the here, now, and imminent future though. Seventeen weekends of football have been building to this; the show is just getting started.

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