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Why the stats predict a Richmond premiership next year

4th November, 2018
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Roar Rookie
4th November, 2018
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Sitting at the pub and listening to the conversations around who will win the flag in 2019 – and ignoring the biases – three common choices stand out.

1) The defending champions – West Coast.
2) The best team of the home and away season in 2018 – Richmond
3) The challengers of 2018 – Collingwood

I thought it was worth doing a statistical exercise in trying to understand which team has the greater chance of winning the 2019 flag.

For the purposes of this exercise I reviewed data from the past 30 years. Specifically I looked at the following year finishing position of premiers, grand finalists, and minor premiers who finished at least game clear on the ladder but failed to win the premiership (happened on ten out of the 30 years).

The statistics show that on 20 per cent of the occasions the defending premiers have won, 17 per cent of the time the grand finalists have won – and interestingly on 50 per cent of the occasions the minor premiers who were a game clear on the ladder but failed to win the flag succeeded the following year.

To support Richmond’s case even stronger, I looked at the following year finishing position of minor premiers who finished at least two games clear on the ladder but failed to win the flag. This happened on four occasions, and the team won the flag the following year on three occasions and lost in a grand final replay on the other occasion.

So what can we gauge from this for 2019? Clearly teams that perform exceptionally well during the home and away season but fail in the finals get it right the following season more often than not.

However before we all rush out to the local TAB and bet our house on a Richmond premiership, it is worth noting this simple exercise fails to take into account variations from year to year for player movements, injuries, and the age profile of the club.

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Also the sample size is rather small. Then there are anomalies, such as Fremantle who finished a game clear on the ladder in 2015 but finished in 16th spot the following season.

On a lighter note more recently the past four grand finalists have finished fifth, 13th, eighth, 13th the previous year. Maybe it is lucky 13th next year? Bulldogs fans rejoice, you will be playing in a grand final in 2019.

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