AFL finals: Who's hot, who's not, and who's flying under the radar

September comes but once a year, and I’ll be damned if we’re going to let a little break in play dampen our spirits. Football’s best time of year is upon us, and there’s precious little time to get our affairs in order before surrendering to nine games of glory.

There’s a lot to cover. Prepare a beverage of your choice that is time-of-day-appropriate, and lose yourself in the whimsy wonder and weirdness of what I’m almost certain is the longest finals preview you’ll find on The Roar today.

The Siege of Hawthorn

Let’s get this arc out of the way early. The Hawks have a near-pristine injury list, yet enter the last handful of games of the year more broken and beaten than they have during their era of success. That says more about where they’ve been than where they are now.

Their final home-and-away game was symbolic of their season. The Hawks were challenged by a team with very little to lose, and it took an other-worldly event – Jack Fitzpatrick gathering a loose ball and hammering it home from the centre square – to get them over the line. That’s the unflattering take. The more kind and reasoned one is that Hawthorn have been able to do enough to keep themselves in games and the bounce of the ball has fallen their way more often than not.

Winning close games is not a skill. It is luck. But, putting yourself in a position win close games – to make the most of your luck if you will – is most certainly a skill and one that all elite teams possess. The Hawks have had to rely on those abilities more than any other team inside the top eight this season.

Theirs is a season not dissimilar to Geelong’s 2014 year; a heap of close wins, a small percentage in keeping with a team that should’ve won less frequently, a number of veterans plying their trade with some youthful prospects who are a yard or two off the all-time pace set by those that came before them. Those Cats didn’t win a final, getting pantsed by Hawthorn in week one before the Roos eeked over the line by six points in a semi.

Could a similar fate await the 2016 Hawks? Most certainly. Hawthorn were two points away from an elimination final against the Dogs. Their once-legendary offensive capabilities have become more worldly. The Hawks ranked sixth on my Offensive Efficiency Rating (OER) this season, after finishing first or second every year since 2011.

James Sicily has been able to play a role for his team more in keeping with a player in his third or fourth year, but he’s not Jarryd Roughead. Their medium-small forward fleet is the strongest and scariest in the league, but for them to work most effectively requires the ball being trapped down Hawthorn’s end of the ground.

Defensively, the Hawks lack the strength of the Sydney sides and the big bodies of Geelong. They don’t have a McGovernator patrolling the back line, or the swarm mentality of the Bulldogs. Like Sicily and Roughead, James Frawley is no Brian Lake.

Everything Hawthorn hopes to achieve from here relies upon its midfield group. They haven’t been able to recapture past glories in 2016, and as the season has progressed it has looked more a structural decline rather than a cyclical one. It’s why they’re so heavily into a couple of guys from the northern states that are just about to enter their respective primes.

For five years, every club has been hunting Hawthorn, laying siege to their fortress built of premiership paraphernalia. They, more than any team, would have benefitted from the bye week, but even then, the chasing pack of 2016 is the strongest they’ve had to face in their period of success. You sense that’s how the Hawks like it though; until someone beats them in a preliminary final at the MCG they cannot be ruled out.

For the first time in years, Hawthorn aren’t the team most likely to win it all. (AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Hawthorn need to win on Friday night. A victory would give them a direct path to their favourite hunting ground – a day-time preliminary final at the MCG – but even more critically, it would see them avoid hosting a hot Eagles or rampant Bulldogs outfit in week two, only to have to travel to Sydney in week three.

Just quietly, the Hawks have barely travelled this year, playing five games outside of their home or home-away-from-home state. They won three of them, although two were against Brisbane and the Mr Hyde version of Port Adelaide, and their third win was against the Swans by five points. Two losses came against the Giants and Eagles – the two teams that will likely stand between them and a preliminary final in the event of a loss.

Stopping the Cats will be a mighty task, and Alastair Clarkson and his men will know this. But they will also know that their ascension to the title of Greatest Team of All Time hinges on a first up win. Can it be Friday now, please?

This is Patrick Dangerfield’s league

Friday night’s game is the clear highlight in a weekend full of interesting match ups. The last time these two teams met was all the way back in Round 1, with the Cats showing the league they were going to be a force in 2016 with a punishing last-quarter victory.

It was also the game that we Dangerfield Truthers had our ‘oh shit’ moment. The Truthers thought Dangerfield would be an excellent addition for the Cats, but surely the addition of a single player wouldn’t magic away all of the problems that had been allowed to fester in Geelong’s midfield in recent years. 43 possessions later, minds were changed.

He’s not taken his foot off the pedal since. Nat Fyfe’s 2015 was remarkable in the way he was able to consistently impose himself on games, and Dangerfield has done exactly that this year.

Dangerfield is almost certainly going to win the Brownlow to go with his AFL Coaches Association award and prospective AFL Player’s Association MVP award. That’s a treble that I’m not sure has been done before.

After Round 1 this column contained a bunch of fake headlines based on if one week of footy carried forward for the rest of the season. One of my headlines was “Danger Double: Geelong superstar raging Norm Smith favourite after Brownlow win.” They’ve turned out to be sage words. His season has been something to behold, and one that we’ll have plenty of time to reflect upon in the weeks ahead.

For now, I give you the Danger Zone. Like the Nat Fyfe Quadrant and Hogan Hot Plot, the DZ™ plots Dangerfield’s season on two statistical indicators that, as evidenced by the rest of the players plotted, shouldn’t both be off the scale. This time, we have metres gained per game versus clearances: doing the dirty work both inside and out.

Here’s the top 30 on each category (some players, like Dangerfield, are top 30 in both so there aren’t 60 dots for those that feel like counting). It’s handy that a picture says a thousand words, because there’s plenty more still to come.

Same same but different for likely elimination final losers

I’m making a vast, sweeping and risky prediction in writing two teams off in the space of a few key strokes, but for narrative purposes bear with me.

The week off has helped the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne recharge their batteries a little, but unfortunately for them, it isn’t likely to be enough to see them provide much more than a whimper in week one.

Both teams have been hit hard by injuries, with the Dogs, in particular, likely to be missing half a dozen of their first choice or emergent-first choice players for Thursday night’s game. While the Dogs’ trademark defence remains in tact, their ability to force turnovers and win possession back hasn’t translated to competitive scores. North Melbourne, on the other hand, have dropped their already precariously packaged bundle.

For the Roos, it will be the end of an era where they were found to be short of the mark. There is no shame in this, nor can North Melbourne be fairly criticised for choosing the path they did. They have a chance to go out, all guns blazing, and seek to dent a genuine premiership threat on their home turf, knowing full well that what waits for them at the end of the game is either a journey to another contender’s home deck or a trip to Vegas.

A win would prolong things, but either way, this September sojourn will be the final chapter in North Melbourne’s most recent tilt at a flag. A few years on the outside looking in will surely follow.

For the Dogs, this is not the case. Last season was the surge before their time, and if it weren’t for a rash of injuries, this season would have been a continuation of that trajectory. Instead, 2016 has seen the Doggies plateau at the level just below contender.

Where would the Western Bulldogs have finished if they had a run of player availability akin to what Adelaide experienced this year? It’s impossible to say, but an extra couple of wins and subsequent finish in the top four would have been likely. Another finals game, this time away from home in what can only be described as the seventh level of hell (Perth on a week night) will serve the developing team well.

For the Dogs, it is a matter of when, not if, they’ll be a genuine flag contender. For the Roos, the question is the same, but we could be waiting a good while longer to find the answer.

The form

As I said, I’m making a very harsh prediction about the elimination finals that will doubtlessly come back to bite me hard in the next few days. But I do it on the basis of the form of each of the four sides set to play win-or-go-home football this weekend.

The Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne are by far the two worst performing sides still left in the race over the past six weeks.

North Melbourne rank 11th and 10th on my OER and Defensive Efficiency Rating (DER, OER’s evil twin) in the past six weeks, after ranking as high as fifth on OER and third on DER earlier in the season. The saving grace, of sorts, is that North have played what is easily the toughest six-game schedule in the competition, with an average difficulty 27 points larger than the league average.

The Roos have been obliterated in the inside 50 count in four of their past six games, with wins against Collingwood in Round 18 and Round 22 against Sydney stopping a total rout. Critically, Norths have owned the ball more than their opponents (winning the uncontested possession count every week, and the time in possession count every week bar two), but have been unable to make it count.

That’s going to be a problem against the Crows, who have the most incisive attack in the league.

The Kangaroos have struggled to convert possession into goals in recent times. (AAP Image/Julian Smith)

It is a similar story for the Dogs, who’ve dropped from about average to near-catastrophic on offence in the latter part of the season. Footscray rank 12th on OER, but have a rating of -14.6 which pegs them closer to Essendon (-18.3 OER, ranked 16th) than Port Adelaide (-1.5, ranked 10th).

Similarly to North Melbourne, the Dogs’ issue is translating possession to scores. They rank 12th in score per minute of possession at 1.5 – Sydney, the league leaders in this stat in the final six weeks of the season, score 2.1 points per minute. Unlike the Kangaroos, though, the Western Bulldogs have played a pretty mediocre schedule, ranked 10th or around four points easier than the league average.

The team coming into September in the best form is Sydney, who rank first on both OER and DER in the past six weeks. They’ve amassed six wins with an average margin of 54 points, a mark which only Geelong (six wins, 42 points) have come close to.

Now, it came against a powderpuff schedule – about three goals a week easier than league average, ranked the easiest of the past six weeks – but still, the manner of these victories should have us in no doubt as to who the best team in the league is right now.

Per the above, Geelong are also riding a winning wave, and did so against the third easiest schedule in the competition. Greater Western Sydney came within a sweet, sweet Nic Naitanui dagger of running the slate against similarly weak opposition. It’s tough to get a read on these teams because their opponents were effectively non-opponents.

That leaves three teams stuck in the middle: Hawthorn, Adelaide and West Coast. The first two won four games, and West Coast came within a sweet, sweet Nic Naitanui dagger of also finishing with four wins. Adelaide had the fourth-easiest schedule in the league, where as the Hawks had the sixth-easiest and Eagles the 11th. It’s funny how, in a year where the competition has been so even, we have three distinct groups based on form lines.

In games against top-eight opponents, Geelong have been the best-performing side, winning both of their encounters by an average of 28 points. West Coast, GWS and Hawthorn also have either positive win-loss totals, positive net margins, or both, against top-eight opponents over the past six weeks.

Here are some summary numbers for the top eight over the past six weeks.

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The form confirms that it’s a race in six at best.

Write off the Giants at your peril

“They’ve barely won away from home all year.”

“They’re yet to beat a real top eight opponent (sorry North fans) away from home, period.”

“They’re young and inexperienced.”

Folks, write off the Giants at your peril.

I am an outed GWS booster, calling the emergence of their dynasty during a hot streak earlier in the year. There’s no need to rehash those arguments here; the Giants are young, loaded with talent on every line, can play every which way, and when they get going are near-impossible to stop.

That seems to be the hang-up with this team: when they get going, they are near-impossible to stop. It relies on them getting going, which, so the thinking goes, is much harder to do in finals because you’re playing the best teams with the best coaches with everything on the line.

It is a reasonable critique. In all six of their losses, the Giants were beaten in the inside 50 count, and in four of them they were smoked by double digits. When the Giants lose, they lose in the middle of the ground, and they allow their opponents access to the ball. That’s true of most sides, but for the Giants, it is critical.

Like Hawthorn, it seems as though a first up win is of vital importance to Greater Western Sydney. A victory against the Swans means a preliminary final against one of West Coast, Geelong or Hawthorn, all of whom have come unstuck (or nearly unstuck in the case of West Coast, and at GWS’ home away from home in the case of Geelong) on the Giants’ home turf.

Lose and they will likely host the Crows in what could be Superman versus Batman sort of stuff, but the outcome would be far less predictable. They’d then get on the plane and travel to Victoria to play Geelong or Hawthorn with it all again the following week. I know which path I’d rather take if I were Leon Cameron.

The Swans are the form team of the competition on paper, but in my books, the Giants are the form team of the competition on the field. Throw rocks while you can, because very soon the Giants will hurling gigantic boulders right back. There’s no rational reason why they can’t win it all right now.

What’s health got to do with it?

A few weeks ago, we pawed through each top eight team’s injury list in a Totally Subjective Power Ranking that would have been Totally Subjectively Better if we had data on injury and player availability (#freethestats). At the time, I made the call that Adelaide would enter September with the best balance sheet as far as player availability went, and so it is.

Adelaide’s injury list reads thusly.

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Given Sam Shaw has been on the long-term injury list with his concussion symptoms since early August after sustaining the concussion earlier in the year, it is likely Adelaide’s entire playing group is available for selection on Thursday afternoon. I can’t check because I don’t have the data, but one would assume that the Crows are in the best position health wise of any team in recent AFL history. What a time to peak.

GWS are similarly well placed, with AFL.com.au’s injury report listing four Giants as unavailable for selection along with Matt Buntine as a test and, for the most part, those are players that’ll be missed in the NEAFL final this weekend. At Geelong, Lachie Henderson looks set to miss at least a couple of weeks with a knee injury, while a host of role players are on the niggle list. Outside of the canvas tent wards set up at Arden Street and Whitten Oval, theirs seems to be the most concerning casualty list.

Jenkins, Betts, Walker, Lynch… the fully-fit Crows are packing some serious firepower up front. (AAP Image/Ben Macmahon)

Hawthorn are missing Jonathon Ceglar, but when his replacement is loping around bombing match winners from the centre square, well, there’s a silver lining to his absence. West Coast are also down a primary ruckman and not much else, although my description of Jonathon Giles as an expensive ruckwork training bag might have proven a tad unkind.

Player health and continuity isn’t discussed enough as a factor of success in AFL circles. We’ll change that next year, but for now, at the pointy end of the season, it seems as though most teams have their houses in order. An ill-timed injury to an important cog in any one of these machines could end up being a decisive factor in deciding who emerges from the pack come grand final day.

The Crows aren’t in the best form of the bunch, but they have retained their status as the most potent attacking side in the competition. Indeed, in some measures like time in possession, Adelaide have risen up the ranks as the season has progressed. The Crows score 19 per cent more points per minute of possession than the league average, and over the course of the season have possessed the ball for an average of five more minutes than their opponents.

Theirs is something of a house of cards, which the Eagles ruthlessly exposed in Round 23 by playing Jeremy McGovern as their spare man in defence. Adelaide like to play seven defenders as a base stance rather than rolling an extra man a possession behind the play. West Coast coach Adam Simpson unflinchingly stared into the eyes of the dragon and came out victorious, potentially providing the rest of the top eight with a blueprint.

Not every team has a McGovern-type player – most teams don’t, actually – but every team can try and keep a spare man in defence free at all times.

Adelaide are fifth on the betting line, four and a bit times the odds of market favourite Sydney to win the flag. That seems like overs to me, and after the Crows vanquish North by ten goals, the market should correct. It is easy to find flaws in a team after they’ve lost a few games, and that seems to be the Crows’ lot at the moment. I’ll take 18 games of god-like speed and power over five games of mortality.

West Coast’s roller coaster season rides on their recruits

West Coast’s season has taken the opposite turn to Adelaide, with three wins against three top-eight teams seeing them leave the also-rans kiddy pool to swim with the big boys. It seems an over-reaction to me, particularly given the Eagles will play without their most important and influential player, Nic Naitanui.

A one-point win against the Giants away from home was surprising, but not unexpected. Smacking the Hawks at home was more unusual, although it was the margin, not the result, which was most surprising. Ripping the heart out of Adelaide (the city, not the team, although that’s a fitting description) was most certainly surprising and the furthest possible thing from expected. You can rationalise it, but as someone that watches a lot of Eagles football, West Coast’s last three makes no sense.

How does a two-metre tall ruckman not only out-hustle a clearance winning machine in Dylan Shiel on a ground ball, but then have the presence of mind and touch to get boot to ball on his wrong side and slot the ball home?

How does a team that showed the application of a high school footy player in math class land blow after blow on the Hawks on a Friday night under lights? How does a team that has shown no ability to wrestle momentum away from the top sides travel to Adelaide and not only hold them to their lowest home total of the year, but also score 100 points on them for just the second time at home in 2016? None of it makes sense.

You know what else makes no sense? West Coast’s 2015 offseason.

They drafted another gun key position player – seriously guys, can you find an A-grade, ready-made midfielder or two next time, please? – but from a wheeling and dealing perspective, it’s tough to give West Coast’s trade period a retrospective grade above D-. Lewis Jetta has been a vortex of disappointment, and save for a decent game or two Jarrad Redden hasn’t been much better.

The duo were ready-made players, brought in to fix the two most glaring holes in West Coast’s player list (outside run and inside grunt, respectively). Simultaneously, they were a declaration of intent; in 2016 #TheFlagIsOurs. The Eagles jumped into the top six for age and experience last off-season, and their premiership window is as wide open as it is going to get.

Jetta and Redden, and perennial-insurance-policy-cum-primary-ruckman-on-a-flag-contender Jonathon Giles, must play their roles for West Coast to win their next four games. They were brought in to do just that, after all. No pressure.

Cats and Swans haven’t played each other in a final since 2005

If this year’s finals followed the chalk, then the number one and two seeds, Sydney and Geelong, would meet in a final for the first time since 2005. That’s phenomenal for two teams who’ve played in every finals series bar two in the case of Geelong, and one in the case of Sydney.

There’s a chance they meet earlier, should one of them lose in week one.

That 2005 semi-final is remembered for the Nick Davis miracle goal in the final seconds of the game. I can’t hope to describe it (mostly because I was watching on a tiny TV screen visiting my then-kid brother in a hospital ward post hip surgery – don’t play rugby kids), so I’ve reproduced it below.

Why does this matter? It doesn’t really, I just thought it was a cool thing to add to a finals preview. Finals do strange things to people; they turn Nick Davis into a drought-breaking, fourth-quarter-dominating, foot-of-god premiership hero.

On a more relevant point, this season’s top three have played each other four times, with the away team winning every time – or more specifically, the team playing on their opponent’s home ground won each time. That is a bit more meaningful.

Make a prediction, dammit

Ok, ok, you caught me. Other than writing off the two teams that currently sit 67-to-1 and 101-to-1 as flag chances, this column has been a whole lot of “here’s why this team can win the flag”. Want to know why? I have no freaking idea who is going to win the flag.

This time last year had an air of inevitability about it. Yes, Fremantle and West Coast had finished first and second on the ladder, but Hawthorn were still the favourites, and rightly so.

On a side note, I don’t like that a) this finals series is starting on a Thursday night, after which I will still have to go to work, and b) this finals series is starting a full 954,000 seconds after Matthew Pavlich white knighted his way around Subiaco Oval, rather than the usual five days, which seems like a much shorter and more reasonable time between the end of the season and the start of finals, if you ask me.

Anyway. This year, we’re not even sure which planet we’re on. The Big Three ended up being the top three again, and they’re currently the market’s shortest three. But all the way down to sixth, there are means and ways – credible ones, not flights of fancy like a Jarrad Waite bag of 12 or a WWE-style return from Bob Murphy (oh my gawd that’s Murphy’s music!) – each team could win it all.

If you ask me, that’s the best kind of world to live in; one of glorious ambiguity where every quarter can, and hopefully will, swing our sentiment one way or the other.

It’s finals time, the most wonderful time of the year.