This AFL season has me pleasantly surprised

So, with the top eight set, we can move on to… What? You don’t think it’s settled yet? Au contraire!

We’ve used the ELO-Following Football ratings to project forward through the end of the season. Here’s the projected ladder up through Round 14, through all the byes, for the convenience of comparison.

Remember, this is an expected projection, minus the inevitable upsets…

Richmond: 11-2
Geelong, Hawthorn, Adelaide, Sydney: 10-3
Giants: 9-3-1
West Coast, Collingwood: 9-4

Then there’s a big gap.

Port Adelaide and Melbourne: 7-6
North Melbourne: 6-7

And another gap.

Essendon, Fremantle, Western Bulldogs: 4-9
Gold Coast: 3-10
St Kilda 2-10-1
Carlton 1-12
Brisbane 0-13 (but with the highest percentage of any winless team ever)

Our projected top eight solidifies after ten rounds, and then the gap widens as Round 14 approaches.

Now, expectations are notoriously fickle. In my experience, one-third of the games anyone forecasts will be upsets the other way, but the projected gap between the top eight and the other ten gives us pause.

For comparison, I consulted three other private sources who use concrete numerical rating systems to separate the wheat from the chaff. The Arc, the Wooden Finger, and Footymaths all have the same thing: nine teams included in their highest ratings, with the ninth being Port Adelaide. But in all four cases, Port is seventh or eighth and dropping. More to the point, the schedule suddenly gets harder over the next few weeks, pulling the Power back to the pack.

Looking at Rounds 15-23, North actually seem most likely to break into the eight, rather than Port. The most common final order reads Richmond, Adelaide, Hawthorn, Sydney, Giants, West Coast, Collingwood, and Geelong, with North, Port, and Melbourne the only feasible threats to those eight.

It may be wrong about one team (especially when injuries come into play), but I’ll wager that at least six and more likely seven or eight of those nine-win teams make the finals.

So, as I was saying before being so rudely interrupted…

Photo by Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images

I started this article intending it to be one of those ‘good-bad’, ‘pros-cons’ pieces that throws two columns of items at the reader: ‘Pleasantly surprised’ and ‘Marginally disappointed’. So I set up the two lists in my notebook and began sorting.

But in this fantastically topsy-turvy 2018 season, a pleasantly surprising thing happened: the list was insanely out-of-balance towards the positive side.

It really is hard to look at any of the 18 teams and feel any sense of profound disappointment. Sure, an individual loss is hard to take, and it seems like just about everyone’s thrown a stinker in somewhere, but positives are sprinkled throughout the league this season – even the two winless teams have a great deal to be happy about.

Carlton has talent throughout its line-up: Patrick Cripps, Marc Murphy, Jacob Weitering, Jarrod Garlett, Levi Casboult, Paddy Dow, Kade Simpson, the Curnows, the Silvagnis, and they’ve had games that make you realise how good they will be.

Will they win this year? Of course, probably more than once or twice. And yet they’re still the spoon favourite because Brisbane may be the most competitive 0-fer in recent history (bar the occasional rout they suffer). When the Daynes are firing on all cylinders, this is a good team. But there are 18 good teams in the AFL, and winning is never a given.

I’m pleasantly surprised by Richmond’s defence of their premiership so far. It’s hard to argue they’re not the best team in the league, and that wasn’t even true last year until the end of September! I’m pleasantly surprised by Dusty Martin’s post-Brownlow season: he’s playing like last year was no fluke. He simply is that good.

I had both of West Coast and Geelong dropping out of the eight this season, and so far I sure look foolish. It’s not the superstar trio that’s making the Cats successful; their first two losses came when that trio was intact!

In the Eagles’ case, it’s been the leaders – Elliot Yeo, Shannon Hurd, Luke Shuey, Dom Sheed, Andrew Gaff, Mark LeCras, Jack Darling, Chris Masten, Jeremy McGovern, and even Josh Kennedy and Nic Naitanui. I retract my predictions of failure for these two teams; I’m pleasantly surprised that they’ve found the way.

I’m pleasantly surprised by the renaissance of Nat Fyfe and Lance Franklin. Two of the greatest players of their generation have returned to the top of their games, and it’s a privilege to watch them.

Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

I’m pleasantly surprised by Ben Brown leading the Coleman race. He’s going to be legendary before his career is over.

I’m pleasantly surprised Rory Laird is up there with Tom Mitchell leading the league in disposals. Laird lurks behind so many Crows in popularity, but when you’re leading every midfielder in the most iconic stat in the league? You’re first team.

The ultimate road warriors, the Gold Coast Suns, have somehow come up with a 3-3 record despite only being favoured once (and that just barely, in game one in a Cairns deluge). I had them ranked 19th in an 18-team league this year and am pleasantly surprised I was wrong.

Was it actually the subtlest tanking job in history? Last year’s Hawthorn Hawks shot their season by the time Anzac day had arrived, and although they approached .500 by season’s end, they never felt like a serious threat.

Alastair Clarkson, the greatest coach of this century, spent games seven through 22 experimenting and reloading last season, and to my pleasant surprise the Hawks are right back in the thick of things this season after a single year vacationing in September. Expect them to be right there at the end this season.

I’m pleasantly surprised to see North Melbourne so competitive. Yes, their wins three were against teams with a combined record of 5-12-1, but nobody had them at 3-3. Oddsmakers have favoured them in exactly one game so far: Round 4, where they were favoured by just eight points over a Carlton team they beat by 86.

And I was pleasantly surprised by Sydney’s seven-goal fourth quarter on Saturday afternoon. I had chalked the game up in Geelong’s win column, and was checking out Port’s revival against the Kangaroos when I noticed that the other game had switched leaders. I love that this sport can have a seemingly insurmountable lead, and yet you can’t just put the subs on and sit on that lead! 50 points isn’t insurmountable!

For that matter, no losing record is insurmountable until you’re mathematically eliminated. Sydney’s 0-6 start last year is proof, as was Richmond’s nine-game winning streak to move from 3-10 and tied for the spoon in Round 14 to a 12-10 record and the eighth finals spot back in 2014.

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I’m pleasantly surprised that only three teams have fewer than two losses, and only three have fewer than two wins (out of six). Simple math means two-thirds of the league is within a game of .500, which means when Melbourne and Essendon played this Sunday, two tired teams battling at 2-3 to avoid 14th place, we considered them our ‘disappointments’.

Really? Last season, they each finished 12-10. This season, they are still more than in range to finish 12-10 or better, even at 2-4 right now. That’s a disappointment? In 2018, that’s as disappointing as it gets, yes.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised how long a week is in footy this year. It seems like every time a team throws down a shockingly bad effort, we are rewarded the following week with a reminder that this league is very balanced.

In Round 1, arguably the worst performance was the 39 points the Kangaroos mustered in Cairns against a young Suns team – the following Saturday, they routed St Kilda by 50. In Round 2, Richmond was embarrassed in the grand final rematch by Adelaide; the next week, they pounded the undefeated Hawks 102-89. So what does Hawthorn do the next round? Destroy the Demons, 115-48.

The worst performance of the year was in Round 4, by Brisbane in their 110-17 defeat. So the following week, of course, they come within one errant Cam Rayner kick from matching Gold Coast.

By this logic, we should expect Geelong to rise up against the Giants next Friday, following their trouncing at home by an undermanned Swans team, and North and Carlton to put together miraculous comebacks on Sydney and Adelaide, respectively on Saturday. It’s that kind of season.

I’m particularly surprised that I felt pleased that we had another draw so soon. It’s easy to disparage the ‘kissing your sister’ outcome, but what it does for a team, generally, is shift them out of phase with their rivals on the ladder. Now, the Giants don’t really care about their percentage, because they won’t be tying those rivals. Instead, unless they score a second tie (which is impossible, right, GWS?), they’ll be two points off in either direction on the premiership point list.

Devon Smith of the Giants (AAP Image/Craig Golding)

And I’m happy that we can follow ‘projects’ like my American brethren Mason Cox or the supremely athletic Majak Daw. With the VFL and its sister leagues to build skills, those borderline performers have a place to hone their talents, rather than (for example) in the NFL, where you either have a job, or you don’t.

Then, I’m also happy to see the stunning entries of new stars breaking in to the AFL, and the joyous celebration that surrounds them – the presentation of their first guernsey, the video of their phone call home with the news (posted on the Web for all to enjoy), the mob celebrations of their first goal in an AFL game. What delights!

I’m happy to see the reverence and traditions of Anzac Day, even though I am American. I wish our nation took its traditions more soberly.

I’m pleased to live in the era of the internet, where every game is available online from half a world away.

I’m pleased to hear the honesty of coaches and players, willing to talk about their mistakes and acknowledge their failings, in a world where too often our public figures blame everything on anyone else.

I’m pleased to see women’s footy treated like a real sport.

I’m pleased to see the reduction in player-forced movement between teams – suck it up, boys, most of us would gladly move out of state to pursue a career improvement.

And I’m always pleasantly surprised that folks like you are interested in my ramblings half a world away. Thanks for taking the time to read, friends, and thanks to my buddies at The Roar for publishing my weekly columns.

Next week’s predictions: after guaranteeing earlier in this article that a third of our predictions will end up being mistaken, it tickles me to tell you our ELO-Following Football season record is now 36-18, exactly two-thirds accurate and one-third upsets!

Point spreads for next week, according to ELO-FF:

Geelong by six over GWS
Bulldogs by 18 over Gold Coast
Hawthorn by 25 over Essendon
West Coast by five over Port Adelaide
Sydney by 29 over North Melbourne
Adelaide by 51 over Carlton
Richmond by 56 over Fremantle
Melbourne by 11 over St Kilda
Collingwood by 23 over Brisbane.