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We’re through the interminable bye rounds, and the season is staring to take shape.
Ryan Buckland cut the race to September down to ten teams for us yesterday, and had a look at prospective “eight point” games, where the contenders play each other, and also how many matches these clubs play against the dregs of the competition.
One thing is becoming clear – the paucity of wins to the teams at the bottom of the ladder means that it’s going to take more wins than ever before to be secure in the final eight.
The final eight was introduced in 1994, and in 1995 Fremantle came into the competition as the 16th team.
Between 1995 and 2011, on only two occasions did a team record 12 wins and not make the eight. A few times, the team in eighth only won ten games, with several more where 11 wins was enough. For the best part of two decades, 12 wins was embedded in the football psyche as a marker for playing in September.
Since we’ve gone to an 18-team competition, in four of six years has a team won 12 games and not made finals – St Kilda in 2012, Port Adelaide in 2015, St Kilda again in 2016, and Melbourne last season.
2017 also saw a gap of only ten wins between first and last – the lowest in the AFL era. It also saw the bottom four combine for 23 wins, which was the most in the 18 team era. It was a fine year for equalisation, statistically the best yet.
But in 2018, the bottom four (Gold Coast, St Kilda, Brisbane, Carlton) have combined for only seven wins from their collective 52 matches, with 36 to go. Noting that Gold Coast won three of their first five games, the stats are even worse from that point on – three wins from a combined 32 games for these four clubs.
Gold Coast Suns players (Photo by Sean Garnsworthy/AFL Media/Getty Images)
The thinning out of wins at the top end has meant more to be spread around through the middle of the table, particularly those in the running for finals.
It is almost certain that for the first time in more than 25 years, a team with 13 or more wins is not going to be part of finals action. There is a good chance that the team in ninth could have 14 wins after Round 23, and that 13 wins might only be good enough for tenth.
Another example of how difficult it will be to nail down one of those final spots in the eight is percentage. Normally, there are six or seven teams with a percentage of over 110. This year, we’ve got ten clubs in that situation, with the lowest percentage of those being the 113.74 of GWS.
Sydney and West Coast, with ten wins apiece, have less than two points of percentage separating them on the ladder.
Melbourne and Geelong are in sixth and seventh respectively, with only one percentage point separating them (127 v 126). Only Richmond’s 135 is higher. It means those two teams have a leg up on their rivals in the race for the top four.
Joel Selwood of the Cats (L) Patrick Dangerfield (C) and Gary Ablett (Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images)
North Melbourne and Hawthorn also have nothing between them, with less than 1.5 per cent the difference. They are both on eight wins, the same as the Demons and Cats, but are also 10 per cent behind them.
Wins will always be the most important thing, but percentage is shaping to play a bigger part in the settling of the final eight than ever before. Small wins over battling clubs will no longer be enough. If everyone else is beating these teams by six goals or more, and you are not, then it is a failure.
There are going to be one or two desperately unlucky clubs once the September line-up is settled, that will feel an injustice has been visited on them after so many wins but no final action.
Losing to one of the bottom six clubs will be catastrophic. Not beating them by enough won’t be far behind.
North Melbourne lost to Gold Coast in Round 1, and only beat a downtrodden and depleted Bulldogs by two points on Saturday night. Don’t be surprised at all if those results don’t cost them at in a big way at the end.