Here’s my initial reaction to the 110-17 Lions loss on Saturday. ‘Loss’ seems like such an inadequate word here. Demolition? Implosion? Self-immolation? Those words seem a bit more fitting.
Step 1: Enter the team into the Witness Protection Program. (Witness to what, you might ask? To its own murder.)
Step 2: The team is assigned at least two federal agents to aid them in this process.
Step 3: Put uniforms on those agents and play them in next week’s game. They can’t be any worse than the players who wore the lion this weekend.
Seventeen points, believe it or don’t, actually flatters Brisbane’s performance.
Until the final two minutes of the third, the Lions had been stuck on a mere four for about a full quarter of play. Zero goals.
There were a few times when it seemed certain they would put one between the sticks. David Astbury outplayed Stefan Martin for a ball in the third when it seemed Martin had a sure goal coming his way.
But for the most part, the Lions never felt as though they had a chance to score.
Their defence was laughable at times. Their offence ranged the gamut from ineffective to non-existent.
The last of Dustin Martin’s six goals came off a ball sent to him in the goal square by Jack Riewoldt with (I kid you not) a full third of the field between himself and any defensive player.
When young Cam Rayner notched Brisbane’s second goal with 11 minutes left in the game, it prevented the tally from being the lowest in the AFL’s nationwide history.
Fremantle tallied just 1.7.13 against Adelaide’s 130 on July 11 of 2009.
Before that, though, you’d have to go back to 1989 to find another score under 17 points in the league (technically the VFL).
On that Saturday afternoon, the two predecessors of the Brisbane Lions combined for just 40 points.
The Brisbane Bears put just 26 on the board, ironically at the MCG against Richmond. The Fitzroy Lions managed only one goal-eight for 14 points at Princes Park against the Kangaroos.
The year before, the Brisbane Bears kicked two-five themselves losing 80-17 to the Hawks in Round 12.
Had the 2018 Lions not put that second goal on the board, you’d have had to go all the way back to 1961 to find a team less fruitful in a single match.
In fact, it was this very Richmond Tiger franchise which had the dubious honour of being the last team to play a full game stuck in single digits.
They were the last unit to play a full match without scoring a single goal, and the lowest-scoring team in the last 65 years in a 91-8 R16 drubbing by St Kilda on August 12th at Princes Park.
If you wanted to go any lower, still, you’d have to go back to a Fitzroy game in 1953 to find it (those Lions scored just once against Footscray – a fourth-quarter goal that prevented a shutout!).
To go even lower, you’d have look at any of the (mostly Saints) games in the 19th century when the average game scores were in the thirties.
The worst of the defeats the original St Kilda teams suffered, who went 0-48 in their first three seasons, was a description-defying drubbing at the hands of the Geelong Cats on the final in-season afternoon of the 1899 season.
Trailing South Melbourne (now Sydney) by a game for the last spot in the finals, the Cats apparently decided that they needed to make darned sure that if South lost they wouldn’t be nipped at the line by percentage.
And since South Melbourne was playing Essendon simultaneously on the opposite side of Melbourne, and Geelong couldn’t know for sure what was happening there, they decided to take no chances with the hapless Saints.
162 to one.
Read that again, just to make sure you understand that score. One-hundred and sixty-two… to one.
St Kilda registered a behind sometime in the first quarter, and Geelong scored four-goals-seven, leading 31 to 1.
With the victory already well in hand, the Cats could have coasted from there. But, as stated, they weren’t going to take any chances in case South Melbourne lost.
Essendon was a good team that year, completely capable of beating South. If they did, Geelong wanted to be ready to step in. The goals kept piling up.
At the half, they led by 90 points. Before the third quarter ended, they’d broken the league record for points in a full game. This, a record set by Essendon against this very Saints squad two games prior at 120.
By game’s end, the Cats had 23 goals and 24 behinds, 162 points, to St Kilda’s solitary point in that first quarter.
It didn’t help. South defeated Essendon 29-13 and took the grand finals spot against Fitzroy where they lost by one, 27-26.
But Geelong had smashed the league’s scoring record and held it until Essendon did them one point better in 1911.
Meanwhile, nobody has erased St Kilda’s futility from the record book, except perhaps to distinguish the low-scoring era of the 19th century (even into the first decade or so of the 20th) and give Fitzroy’s one-goal effort a place of reverse-distinction.
Carlton felt safe to put a mere thirty points up Saturday night against the Ben Brown Tasmanian All-Stars.
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Likewise, Adelaide’s script flip from thirty-point favourites to fifty-point losers is now likely buried on page two.
(By the way, in sixteen AFLW matches, the lady Lions have never been held to just 17 points despite playing in the shortened game format used by the women’s league. Their lowest score, interestingly, was 21 points in this year’s grand final loss to Footscray. Before that, it was a 22-15 win in Round 4 over Fremantle.)
Since we brought up the Crows’ rout at the claws of the Magpies, it brings up an interesting topic as we were analyzing Round 4 in advance.
What percentage of the time do heavy favourites actually win those games? (Or, conversely, how often do heavy underdogs actually pull the upset?)
We used data from this and last season to get the beginning of an answer.
With 36 games played thus far, there have been as many as 18 that seem to fall into the ‘heavy favourite’ category.
At Following Football we track quite a few prognosticators for accuracy, including how certain they were about the outcome.
For example, there are twelve experts picking games at the Age. In addition, six counting the poll pick and mastermind5991 who posts in-depth picks here weekly and at The Roar.
Afl.com.au also shows percentages for its ‘crowd bet’ for the 200,000 folks who tip games on their site.
We also track a half-dozen sources of ‘point-spread’ predictions that, for the purposes of this research, we’re going to convert to a guesstimate of probabilities of the favoured team winning.
This is based on some work done by Matt Cowgill at The ARC, a good site with a similar bent as our Following Football site.
Here are the games from this season so far which meet any of these thresholds:
Ninety per cent of forecasters at the Age and The Roar favour the same team, 90% of the afl.com.au CrowdBet tipsters lean towards the same team, or there’s a point spread over 30 points for the favourite which corresponds mathematically to an 80% expectation of victory for that team.
| Round | Favourite/Underdog | Roar/Age | Crowd bet | Point spread | Upset? |
| 1 | Richmond/Carlton | 17-1 | 96% | No | No |
| 1 | St Kilda/Brisbane | 17-1 | 93% | No | No |
| 1 | Port Adelaide/Fremantle | No | 93% | Yes | No |
| 1 | GWS/Western Bulldogs | 18-0 | 92% | No | No |
| 2 | North Melboure/St Kilda | 18-0 | 91% | No | Yes |
| 2 | GWS/Collingwood | 18-0 | No | No | No |
| 2 | Melbourne/Brisbane | 18-0 | 90% | No | No |
| 2 | Sydney/Port Adelaide | 18-0 | No | No | Yes |
| 3 | Port Adelaide/Brisbane | 18-0 | 98% | Yes | No |
| 3 | Melbourne/North Melbourne | 18-0 | 91% | No | No |
| 3 | Adelaide/St Kilda | 17-1 | 91% | No | No |
| 3 | Essendon/Western Bulldogs | 17-1 | No | No | Yes |
| 4 | Adelaide/Collingwood | 18-0 | 96% | Yes | Yes |
| 4 | GWS/Fremantle | 18-0 | 96% | Yes | No |
| 4 | Richmond/Brisbane | 18-0 | 99% | Yes | No |
| 4 | West Coast/Gold Coast | 17-1 | 96% | Yes | No |
| 4 | Geelong/St Kilda | 17-1 | 97% | No | No |
TOTALS: (12 up, 5 dn) (11 up, 2 dn) (5 up, 1 dn)
(70.6%) (84.6%) (83.3%)
Interesting totals. Despite the illusion of ‘90% accuracy’, we’re not really getting any better than about 84% or so.
What about last year’s numbers? For CrowdBet, of all the games where the favourite was at 90% or higher, the favourite went 59-17 (77.6%).
Combining the two publication panels, again where the favoured winner hit 90% of experts or higher, their record was 72-29 (71.3%).
And finally, in the situations where the point spreads from the punters and Following Football were over thirty, we expected an 80% probability of victory.
The actual record last year was 34-6, a robust 85% accuracy rate in direct contrast to the percentages we came up with for this year’s games so far!
Our predictions for next week’s Round 5? Are you kidding? On a ladder where the top fourteen teams are within a game of the lead?
Literally, any of those fourteen are just one overwhelming game away from the top of the ladder – or out of the finals. What an amazing season this is shaping up to be!
Sydney or Adelaide? Good question. ELO-FF says Swans by two. GWS over SK by several goals.
West Coast and Port Adelaide appear to have comfortable space. Fremantle loses a one-point game to the suddenly surging Bulldogs.
North or Hawthorn? Good question – we’ll take Clarko in a pinch.
Brisbane or Gold Coast? Depends on which team has more pride and was more embarrassed by its last game or two. Brisbane’s more ‘due’.
ANZAC warm-up: all Richmond.
ANZAC main event: Collingwood is surging.
Last week: 7-2 (like everyone else, missed on Collingwood and Essendon).
Overall: 21-16. Unremarkable but in this topsy-turvy season, well-above average.
Who’s in your ultimate team? Pick the best team and compete with other fans for daily prizes on Draftstars. For the best odds on the game try out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Think. Is this a bet you really want to place? Set a deposit limit.
Things heating up in Canberra!
We’re taking a look at one player from each team that needs to make a difference this week, starting with the ANZAC Day games.
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