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In 11 of the past 12 AFL seasons, at least six of the teams in the top eight after Round 4 made the finals.
While I don’t believe that GWS and Collingwood will be playing off in a qualifying final this year, as would be the case if the season ended today, this suggests that four weeks is a solid albeit hardly definitive sample size.
So let’s see where every team stands in the AFL hierarchy after the first month.
You might want to give this article a miss, Queenslanders.
Northern Nothingness
18. Gold Coast
17. Brisbane
The real tragedy of Round 5 is that one of these teams will emerge from it with premiership points (a 37-37 draw in Saturday’s Q-Clash seems the fairest, most fitting result).
Brisbane has a terrible list and has dealt with injuries that have unmasked a frightening lack of depth. Their awfulness is explainable. Gold Coast’s is not.
The Suns are the worst team in the competition right now. None of their players can hit a stationary target 20 metres away and Nick Malceski, a premiership player, would start on the bench for most VFL teams on his current form.
Gold Coast ranks last in the league for effective disposal percentage and tops the competition in ‘acts of cowardly indifference’.
At least it’s warm up there.
Planned ineptitude
16. St Kilda
After a competitive loss to GWS in Round 1 and the startling annihilation of the Gold Coast in Round 2, for a moment there it looked like St Kilda might be feisty this year.
Then reality set in, with two blowout losses to a pair of teams that aren’t exactly world beaters. And that’s fine. The Saints are exactly where they need to be, bottoming out and blooding youngsters. See you in 2018 St. Kilda.
Purgatory
15. Carlton
14. Richmond
13. West Coast
Carlton’s woes are well documented but Richmond’s only really came to the surface in the post-mortem of their shock loss to the Demons. The average Tiger on the weekend had played 66.5 games, a number lower than GWS, and a good 14 games less than their opponents Melbourne.
Richmond, whether they know it or not, are rebuilding. Which is unfortunate, because they never built to anything in the first place. They’re rebuilding a pile of dirt.
Speaking of which, how about those West Coast Eagles? Don’t be fooled by the competition’s flat track bullies – the Eagles might look like a million bucks when they’re dominating Carlton or Brisbane, but let’s not forget they did concede the first 11 goals of a match just a fortnight ago.
West Coast’s record against finals teams in 2013 and 2014: 0 wins, 20 losses. Talk to me when they beat one good team, just one.
We’re ecstatic to be 12th
12. Melbourne
Paul Roos, in typical light-hearted fashion, made an excellent point on AFL 360 – every time a team loses to Melbourne it’s automatically that team’s worst performance of all time.
What if the Demons are just good this year? And by good, I mean not abominable. The Dees butcher the ball (17th in the competition for effective disposal percentage) and can’t get it forward (last in inside 50s) but they’re perfectly respectable in contested ball (8th in contested possession differential) and clearances (7th).
What they lack in skill they compensate for in desire. Start taking notes Gold Coast. And I’ll take Jesse Hogan over any player on the lists of Carlton, Richmond and West Coast.
The fallen champs
11. Geelong
The 2015 Cats just aren’t any good. We’ve been predicting the end ever since the Cats got pumped by Collingwood in the 2010 preliminary final and now it’s finally here.
Geelong ranks last in contested possession differential and last in clearances. Outside of Selwood their midfield has been a catastrophe. They’re a young, rebuilding side now.
Against North on the weekend they had more unproven players than proven players in their team. The Cats’ run had to end sometime. It was marvellous while it lasted.
One of us is making the finals
10. GWS
9. Collingwood
8. Western Bulldogs
GWS has the most talent, Collingwood is the most proven and the Bulldogs are playing the best right now.
The Dogs have been the best, most inexplicable story in football this year. How are they doing it? They’re second in the league in tackles and fifth in effective disposal percentage.
Intense pressure without the ball and composure with it in hand has proven a winning combination thus far. If they can maintain even a semblance of that balance they’re every chance to make finals because they have the softest draw in the league from here on in.
Seriously, look at it. The Dogs still have two games against Brisbane, two against St Kilda, two against Melbourne, games at home against GWS and Carlton, and a vacation to the Gold Coast.
If they’re good enough they’ll make it.
If things break right, we can finish top four
7. North Melbourne
6. Adelaide
5. Essendon
Each of these teams is a deeply talented, professional, well-structured outfit, and each of them has one inexplicable shock loss on their resume after four weeks.
Essendon’s is the most explainable – as their coach stated and has been commented on ad nauseam, they tried to play dry weather football in slippery and then lagoon-like conditions and were accordingly punished by a Collingwood side that leads the competition in contested ball.
The Dons, as I’ve written about before, will be fine.
While Adelaide’s loss to the Bulldogs this weekend was bizarre, we’ll give them a mulligan considering their first three weeks.
North’s implosion at the Adelaide Oval in Round 1 was more troubling.
For all the lovely aesthetics of their attacking ball movement (and it is lovely, especially with Brent Harvey creating off the back flank, an inspired move), the Kangaroos are still defensively fragile.
In Round 1 and 3 North were powerless to stop their South Australians opponents from scoring, conceding a ridiculous 63 scoring shots in the two games combined. Brad Scott’s boys are also allowing a mammoth 14.2 marks inside 50 per game, third worst in the competition.
The contenders
4. Port Adelaide
3. Sydney
2. Fremantle
Last Saturday night was football at its finest for the viewing audience and football at its most frightening for the rest of the competition. Aesthetically, the gap between Saturday night’s participants and everyone else seems significant.
While a quality team like Essendon or North Melbourne can play with anyone on their day, one gets the sense already that the second last week of September will be featuring the Power, the Swans, the Dockers and the Hawks.
Of that group Fremantle has been the most impressive so far, and it’s not just because we may have to re-write the Bible with Nat Fyfe as its central character.
The Dockers are leading the league in contested possession differential and effective disposal percentage. They’re the hardest team in the competition and the most skilled.
That should be a universal impossibility, or at least really unfair. And yet, as magnificent as the Purple Haze has been…
The favourite
1. Hawthorn
If you had to bet your life on one team to win the flag, who would it be?
I thought so.