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Zach Tuohy's after-the-siren winner was one of 2018's best moments - will we see more of this? (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Roar Guru
21st August, 2018
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The pressure is mounting for some in the AFL community. Others, however, have seen their release valves triggered.

Take Sydney, where a mid-game straw on the camel’s back that is the Giants’ hospital ward led to defender extraordinaire Phil Davis being taken off The King – and Lance Franklin did the rest.

He scored five goals in the Swans’ finals-clinching victory over GWS at Spotless Stadium on Saturday.

The pressure-release on the Demons could undoubtedly be heard all the way back in Melbourne after their first top eight victory of the year, on the road no less at Optus, against top four lock West Coast for lucky win number 13.

So, while eleventeen kajillion ladder analyses are being done this week, we’ll satisfy ourselves with noting that Richmond has a minor premiership and home qualifying finals coming.

West Coast, Hawthorn, Sydney, GWS and Collingwood have clinched berths in the finals, and Carlton has clinched the wooden spoon and their worst record since 1901, when they last won just two games and had a percentage of 47%.

They only won three games in 2002, but they’d have to defeat Adelaide by a minimum of 275 points on Saturday to catch that year’s percentage of 74%. The game is at Etihad, but still.

Oh, and despite what you’ve heard, Melbourne are not a certainty for finals. If they lose to Giants by about 350 points…

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Sydney, Essendon, Brisbane, and Fremantle are the only teams which have yet to exceed either their win or loss total from last year.

Richmond, West Coast, Collingwood, Hawthorn, Melbourne and the Kangaroos have all passed last year’s win totals, while the Giants, Cats, Power, Crows, Bulldogs, Saints, Suns, and Blues have all surpassed last year’s number of losses.

The Saints have also exceeded their total draw count of zero from last year. If Essendon wins and the other three candidates lose, they’ll all four match last year’s records.

Meanwhile, using my patented ELO-Following Football rating system, I’m forecasting the following results for the Week 23 games.

  • Essendon by 12 over Port Adelaide (CrownBet says Port by 10.5)
  • Geelong by 72 over Gold Coast (+ 73.5)
  • Richmond by 55 over the Bulldogs (+ 38.5)
  • Collingwood by 47 over Fremantle (+ 34.5)
  • Adelaide by 38 over Carlton (+ 47.5)
  • Sydney by five over Hawthorn (+ 10.5)
  • West Coast by three over Brisbane (+ 12.5)
  • Melbourne by nine over GWS (+ 12.5)
  • North Melbourne by 15 over St Kilda (+ 23.5)

Given the ‘dead rubber’ quality for certain teams in round 23, adjust your expectations to match the teams – and effort – expected to be put forth by the teams in question.

If all those results were to hold, then we would have a Richmond and West Coast hosting qualifying finals, Collingwood and Sydney also with the double chance, and Hawthorn and Melbourne hosting elimination finals. GWS and Geelong would make finals with 13 wins apiece.

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Incredibly, assuming a Bombers victory, North, Port, Essendon, and Adelaide in slots nine through 12 would all have 12-win seasons, probably percentages above 100 (though the Crows will have to win by at least 29), and yet fail to reach the post-season.

That’s because the bottom six teams have been out of contention for more than a month; in some cases, since going 0-7 to start the season. There’s always a large gap somewhere in every ladder. This season, it was between the top 12 and the bottom six.

Last year, it was either between slots six and seven, once Sydney and Port finished their comebacks, or above the bottom four. The previous year, it was following the Bulldogs, and we know how that one turned out.

I’m also not going to spend much more time trying to ascertain the likelihood of a Riewoldt, Brown, Franklin or Hawkins Coleman medal triumph next weekend, except to say that if the Richmond brain trust decides they want Jack to win the medal, they’re perfectly capable of laying it around his neck the same way they got him a double-digit bag against Gold Coast in round 21.

Geelong could do similar things to Tomahawk’s advantage, but the gap between the two men is pretty wide to start with.

Let’s instead look at the other team table I’m charting, which is the ‘once-around’ schedule that’s the basis of the reduced 17-game schedule being favoured by some coaches, the possible 18-game schedule, or the 17-5 schedule that includes a five-game round-robin after each team has played every other team once.

17-game sched 18-game sched
Club GtoG W L D Pf/Pa W L D Pf/Pa
Richmond Tigers 1 12 4 0 426 13 4 0 434
West Coast Eagles 1 11 5 0 217 12 5 0 275
Hawthorn Hawks 0 11 6 0 335 12 6 0 346
Collingwood Magpies 0 11 6 0 299 12 6 0 319
GWS Giants 1 10 5 1 247 10 6 1 227
Sydney Swans 0 11 6 0 138 12 6 0 158
Port Adelaide Power 0 11 6 0 120 11 7 0 117
Melbourne Demons 1 10 6 0 350 10 7 0 348
Geelong Cats 0 10 7 0 389 10 8 0 378
Essendon Bombers 0 10 7 0 71 10 8 0 63
Adelaide Crows 0 10 7 0 43 11 7 0 46
N Melbourne Kangaroos 0 9 8 0 110 9 9 0 103
Western Bulldogs 1 6 10 0 -335 7 10 0 -328
Fremantle Dockers 0 6 11 0 -427 6 12 0 -485
Gold Coast Suns 0 4 13 0 -600 4 14 0 -604
St Kilda Saints 0 3 13 1 -415 4 13 1 -413
Brisbane Lions 1 3 13 0 -174 4 13 0 -170
Carlton Blues 0 1 16 0 -794 1 17 0 -814
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Having to utilise the actual 2018 AFL schedule, some teams have already finished playing everyone and have a ‘rematch’ remaining in R23, while others have a new opponent to play that would count in their 17-game tally.

Using the predictions from above for the missing games, here are how the three possible finals scenarios would lay out.

17-game season using the current eight-team finals set-up
First plays fourth (Richmond vs Collingwood), second plays third (West Coast vs Hawthorn), fifth hosts eighth (GWS Giants vs Melbourne, very tentatively, depending on the outcome of their match), and sixth hosts seventh (Sydney vs Port Adelaide).

The 18-game season (which includes a duplicate ‘derby’ game)
Here, we’d have identical qualifying finals, but Sydney’s 80-60 win Saturday moves them past the Giants into fifth, momentarily switching their opponents – awaiting the results of round 23.

Otherwise, including the derby games doesn’t change anything, and it grants every team nine home games in theory.

The 17-5 arrangement
I’ve recommended the top six round-robin be used as the de facto finals series. If you insist on having a ‘grand final’, take the top two finishers and have them play a winner-take-all game after the round-robin, even though it would be their third game against each other.

But that more than occasionally happens in our reality as well. Four games between teams are even possible, although it would be interesting to see how often it’s occurred.

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The last time two teams met four times in one season, it took unusual circumstances to make it happen. St Kilda and Collingwood split two meetings in 2010, before playing to a draw in grand final number one and replaying the battle a week later to the Magpies’ benefit.

The last time it happened ‘conventionally’ was during the Swans’ drought-breaking premiership season of 2005, when they met the Eagles twice during the season (Eagles by 45 at Subiaco in round six, Sydney by 21 in round 17 at the SCG), once losing by four out west in the qualifying final and, famously, matching that margin in victory at the MCG, 58-54, in the grand final.

They would meet three more times in 2006, with margins of two, one, and one point in their three games that season. No wonder the rivalry dug so deep in just two seasons.

Under the 17-5 set-up, the top six round-robin would currently include Richmond, West Coast, Collingwood, Hawthorn, Sydney, and GWS. I’ve seeded the Giants ahead of Port and Sydney here because of their game in hand and superior percentage. That would be subject to change next week, of course, as it will in reality.

Ideally, each game would be at the opposite site as their previous game was played earlier in the season; realistically, you’d prefer to guarantee every team eleven home games, and would sacrifice a few repeat appearances to make that happen.

The first time around among these particular six teams, by the way, the round-robin table would have had Sydney and West Coast at 4-1 (the Swans beating the Eagles twice, in fact – the first two times West Coast lost this year), GWS and Richmond 3-2 (the Giants defeating Richmond by two in round 17), Hawthorn 1-4, and Collingwood 0-5.

But of course, we’d ask them to play each other a second time – Richmond defeated the Magpies a second time already, GWS is 0-2 in rematches to Sydney and West Coast, and the Hawks and Swans meet again in round 23.

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Incidentally, Richmond, West Coast, and Sydney should get three home games in this round-robin, ideally, since they played three of these five opponents on the road.

That might presumably change depending on which teams had eight home dates and which had nine in a 17-game schedule; in the 18-game version, that point becomes moot.

It’s possible one team might have played four or even all five of their table mates at home already, depending on circumstances beyond the schedule makers’ control. They should still get two or three home games as appropriate.

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In my simulation of the ‘once-around’ finals, I’ll use the second game any potential pairing of teams actually play as my first choice of games to use.

So, if Richmond plays Collingwood in a qualifying final, I’ll use the round 19 rematch to simulate that, won by Richmond 105-77.

The bottom six have been set since June; Fremantle, the Western Bulldogs, Brisbane, Gold Coast, St Kilda, and Carlton. Their rewards come in draft picks, although you could give the top pick to the highest finisher if you prefer.

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Or we could just enjoy watching competitive games between teams that may not have Richmond’s class and polish – but it was entertaining to watch the Brisbane vs Gold Coast game on Saturday night, and even the Bulldogs-Blues clash on Sunday afternoon.

They were competitive, closely fought, and much more entertaining than the prospect of a second Carlton-Geelong or Collingwood-Fremantle game next weekend.

Call this the futures bracket, maybe put a TAC cup trophy or a bonus pick at the end of the rainbow, and I could get behind this early-pre-season training group for six teams that have nothing to play for now.

Having watched the officiating in the Carlton game Sunday, I would suggest that the 17-game season should also be viewed as a reward system for the officials as well.

Put the demonstrably best umpires in the ‘champions bracket’ with the top six teams; the next three sets of officials in the ‘challengers bracket’, and give the lowest rated officials – or their replacements – the ‘futures games’ and some in-game training to improve their skills for the upcoming year as well.

The middle six – Adelaide, North, Port, Essendon, Melbourne and Geelong – don’t really have anything concrete to play for in this arrangement. Thanks to the miracle run in September of 2016, every seventh-place team thinks it can make a run for the flag.

But the truth is that in 21 seasons under the current finals format, not only are the ’16 Bulldogs the only team to win the flag from outside the top six, they’re the only one to even make the grand final from there!

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The Kangaroos are the only other club to have made the prelim finals from there, doing so – and losing comfortably once there – in 1997 as defending premiers in the first year of the new system, and 2015.

The other 39 attempts were one win and out at best; the majority of those were one loss on the road as reward for their efforts.

So, personally, I don’t feel much obligation to provide a four-road-win quality path to a title for the winner of the ‘challengers bracket’.

But I do feel like providing them the same prize – an extra draft pick, a smaller trophy, some scheduling bonus for the following season – for the opportunity to play five games against similar quality teams and hash out what they’ll need to make the next step into the ‘champions bracket’ the following year.

Neither Adelaide nor, realistically, North Melbourne had anything substantive to play for Sunday, yet they produced a thrilling ending as the Roos fell just short of a dramatic comeback worthy of Round 20!

Now, let’s look at the Meta-Player of the Year standings, and some other details that may help us in evaluating the Brownlow Medalist – which is not quite the same thing.

Tom Mitchell continues to lead my Following Football scoreboard with one round (plus three of the straggler vote-producers we’ve yet to see numbers from for round 22) to go.

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AFL Rank PLAYER POINT TOTAL Team Rank
1 Mitchell, Tom 465 1
2 Gawn, Max 424 1
3 Cripps, Patrick 401 1
3 Grundy, Brodie 401 1
5 Martin, Dustin 394 1
6 Oliver, Clayton 391 2
7 Franklin, Lance 369 1
8 Fyfe, Nat 350 1
9 Dangerfield, Patrick 326 1
10 Macrae, Jack 316 1
11 Beams, Dayne 297 1
12 Yeo, Elliot 296 1
13 Whitfield, Lachie 292 1
14 Higgins, Shaun 287 1
15 Gaff, Andrew 286 2
16 Selwood, Joel 274 2
16 Coniglio, Stephen 274 2
18 Ablett, Gary 265 3
19 Pendlebury, Scott 263 2
20 Sidebottom, Steele 261 3

Here’s another version of that chart, but this time I’m trying specifically to evaluate which players might have had high vote-accumulating games along the way.

The MPotY scoreboard comes from a wide collection of sources (currently 14) where different publications, fantasy point formulas, and panels of voters evaluate the best players in each game or across a round.

I have the Following Football computer set aside games in which at least 90 per cent of the sources recognise a game as superior – I call those “Dominant” performances – or 80 per cent (“Prominent”), and recently I’ve also set up a trigger for 70 per cent (“Notable”).

If you want to think of those as the 3-2-1 of Brownlow voting, you wouldn’t be far off. These got left off last week’s chart, and they’re important to the question at hand.

This week I’ve added another box that seemed useful: the highest scoring player on the winning team for each game.

Those should be the most likely candidates for the three-vote games. To have a handle for this tally, I’m calling these “winning” performances. Because it fell out of the data at the same time, I also have the highest scoring player on the losing team as well in a separate column.

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It’s interesting but probably irrelevant to the question at hand.

Remember, though, the problem with all of these evaluation tools is that different human beings are evaluating the Brownlow votes, using their own standards. So all of this is simply guesswork when the rubber meets the road.

Regardless, here we go.

PLAYER Dominant Prominent Notable TOTAL W L POINT TOTAL
Martin, Dustin 6 2 3 11 3 2 394
Gawn, Max 1 10 11 4.5 3 424
Grundy, Brodie 5 3 2 10 2.5 3 401
Mitchell, Tom 3 7 10 4 3 465
Dangerfield, Patrick 3 4 2 9 4.5 326
Whitfield, Lachie 1 2 5 8 2.5 1 292
Franklin, Lance 4 3 7 5.5 1 369
Fyfe, Nat 4 3 7 4.5 3 350
Pendlebury, Scott 2 3 2 7 1.5 263
Hogan, Jesse 1 5 1 7 3.5 248
Cripps, Patrick 4 2 6 1 9.5 401
de Goey, Jordan 2 3 1 6 4 1 249
Oliver, Clayton 2 3 1 6 3 2 391
Beams, Dayne 2 3 1 6 2.5 5 297
Macrae, Jack 2 3 1 6 2 4.5 316
Yeo, Elliot 1 4 1 6 2 2 296
Merrett, Zach 1 3 2 6 220
Breust, Luke 4 1 5 1.5 1 254
Cotchin, Trent 3 2 5 3 225
Hawkins, Tom 3 1 1 5 2 245

Does all of that mean Mitchell should win the Brownlow? Or that Dusty should repeat? There’s no such word, ‘should’, when it comes to this.

Many people don’t think that Matt Priddis should have won it in 2014; others think Jobe Watson should still be considered the rightful owner of the 2012 medal.

We’ll find out within a month who does receive the hardware; until then, just enjoy the footy!

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