How will my team do this year? A historical comparison of past performances

Except in finance, past performance is often a basic predictor for future performance.

Unlike many other sports across the world, the AFL has a lot of churn – the top teams are much less predictable year-on-year, and most teams make the finals within three years.

This shows that predicting which individual team will perform a certain way is difficult; however, there is still room to talk about groups of teams based on historical precedence.

Yes, we remember the unlikely events, but sports, including the AFL, still have results (trends) that happen more often that not, and the latter is what I’m looking at.

This analysis has two sections.

The first section will show how teams that performed a certain way in one season performed in the following season – for example, guessing how the current premier, West Coast, may do based on the performance of past champs.

The second section will give an insight into the possible teams that may perform a certain way this year – what teams are best suited to win the 2019 grand final based on their place on the 2018 ladder.

Dom Sheed of the Eagles celebrates a goal during the 2018 Toyota AFL Grand Final match between the West Coast Eagles and the Collingwood Magpies at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on September 29, 2018 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Media/Getty Images)

Statistics are based on ladder placings starting from 1995, when Fremantle joined the league.

Part 1: Looking at the past’s future

The 2018 premiers: West Coast Eagles
West Coast was already one of the league’s 13 teams to have won a title since 1995 – and a subset of seven teams that have had both a title and a wooden spoon during that span.

Three other teams have won a second or third-straight premier during the time.

Staying within the top four is more likely than repeating. Premiers historically remained in the top four for 63 per cent of seasons, and seven out of eight seasons have at least made the finals.

Only four premiers did what Richmond did and became minor premiers the year after winning the grand final, but getting second or third on the ladder in the year after winning the grand final has been just as common.

Only three teams that won a flag failed to make the finals the next year – including 2016’s title winner, Western Bulldogs.

Conclusion: A good chance to remain in the Top 4, and a really good chance to stay in the Finals at the minimum.

Despite having a great name for a politician, Jeremy McGovern decided to try his hand at AFL.(Photo by Ryan Pierse/AFL Media/Getty Images)

The 2018 minor premiers: Richmond
The minor premier is good, becomes good, and stays good.

Minor premiers fared slightly better than the grand final winner in successive home-and-away seasons.

The same number of teams have made the Top 4 (15, out of 24 seasons), and only two minor premiers failed to make the finals at all – and only in the two of the last three seasons with Adelaide in 2018 and Fremantle in 2016 – compared with three grand final winners that failed to get back in the top eight.

Being at the top has been a more frequent occurrence for the minor premier. More than one in four have repeated the feat, whereas only one in six grand final winners became the top team in the next home-and-away season.

Seven grand final winners were the minor premier the year prior, compared with only three teams and five seasons (Adelaide in 1998, Brisbane in 2002-03, and Hawthorn in 2014-15) in which a grand final winner won a consecutive championship.

Conclusion: A good chance to get in the Top 4, and a slightly better precedence than West Coast to win this year’s home-and-away title and/or the grand final flag.

Sam Lloyd of the Tigers celebrates a goal (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Media/Getty Images)

The top four overall: West Coast, Richmond, Collingwood, Hawthorn
A little less than half of teams – 44 out of 92 – that made the Top 4 remained there the following year.

Only one out of four seasons have three or four of the same teams returned.

In fact, about one in five teams (on average, a little less than once a year) drop completely out of the finals, and one team drops way out of competitiveness (defined as 13th or below on the ladder) one out of every five years.

As a group, there have been as many times (twice each) that the same four teams made the Top 4 in consecutive years as have all Top four teams been replaced the following year.

However, if you want to use recency bias, the complete reshuffle was more than 20 years ago (1996-97), while the two times the Top 4 repeated were in the last ten years (2010 and 2014).

Conclusion: Two teams may be replaced among the top four, and if so then one of those teams may be out of the finals completely.

All finals teams: The Top 4, plus Melbourne, Sydney, GWS and Geelong
At least two, and usually three teams that made the finals don’t return the next year. There has never been a year in which seven of finals teams were the same. Half of seasons end with five of the eight teams returning.

Individually, 65 per cent of teams (121 out of 186) come back to the post-season the next year, while slightly over half of the rest are competitive (35 teams remain in the 9-12 place on the ladder).

Sam Weideman of the Demons. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Last season, Melbourne snapped the competition’s longest finals drought, at 11 years, a notoriety that Richmond shared from 2002-2012.

Meanwhile, Sydney and Geelong have been the most consistently successful teams in the last 24 years, with neither team finishing lower than 12th on the ladder.

Sydney has the most finals appearances – 20 out of 24 seasons – with Geelong and West Coast next best at 17 each. Sydney’s current streak of nine-straight finals appearances is also the most in the competition.

Conclusion: Two or three teams won’t be back to the Finals.

The wooden spoon: Carlton
In the history of the AFL, Carlton has been the top team the most number of seasons. However, in the last 24 years, Carlton has been the worst of any in the competition more than any other squad – with five wooden spoons.

As in any other year, Carlton supporters are overly optimistic before the season starts.

Also, no matter what happens in the best-against-worst-2018-ladder-finishers season opener against Richmond, Carlton supporters will have some of that hope remaining because it has a current AFLW team (unlike Richmond), and that team made the AFLW finals (in a rigged conference system).

Hope is created due to a chance of something positive happening, no matter how small that chance is, and there is a not-tiny chance for Carlton supporters to have optimism.

Once out of every four seasons, a team that got the wooden spoon made it into the finals the next year. And the teams that made it into the finals, more of them (four teams) were among the Top 4 than in the 5-8 group (two).

However, Carlton wasn’t one of those teams to make the finals in the year following a spoon year. Instead, those four other wooden spoon years were among the 14 seasons in which the wooden spoon team remained 13th or lower in the ladder.

They may have had an abysmal season, but Carlton have some of the AFL’s best young talent on their list (Photo by Adam Trafford/AFL Media/Getty Images)

Following its year of futility and suspensions, Essendon made the finals in 2017 as a seven seed. Prior to that, West Coast moved up 12 spots to fourth on the ladder in 2011.

Of note, in that finals the Eagles defeated the fifth-seeded Blues in the semis, the last time the Blues were in the top eight on the ladder. The Blues qualified for the finals in 2013 from ninth on the ladder when Essendon was suspended.

Conclusion: Not unlikely to make the finals, but there’s more precedence Carlton will remain in the bottom third of the league.

Part 2: Using past performance to predict future performance

Who will get the 2019 wooden spoon?

The team that got the spoon is more likely to improve tremendously than any team is likely to drop tremendously.

In 23 seasons, there were only seven seasons in which at least one team dropped more the ten spots on the ladder, whereas 14 seasons had at least one team gain at least ten spots on the ladder.

Only four teams that made the finals – and none in the Top 4 – got the wooden spoon the following year. One of those finals teams was Carlton, which was the highest ranked team on the ladder to fall, going from fifth in 2001 to 16th in 2002.

The teams most likely to get the wooden spoon finished 13th or lower on the ladder the previous year.

After getting the wooden spoon in their inaugural 2011 campaign, Gold Coast has finished with one team worse than them three other times. Western Bulldogs, Fremantle, Brisbane and St Kilda compose the rest of league’s bottom of the ladder in 2018, spots from which the worst team in the league was chosen 13 out of 24 times.

Seven other times, a team that placed 9-12 (North Melbourne, Port Adelaide, Essendon and Adelaide in 2018) got the spoon the next year.

Conclusion: Likely to be a team already low on the ladder.

Who will be the Top 4 teams?
A little less than half of Top 4 teams remain there the following year. Less than a quarter of Top 4 teams were among the other placings in the finals, which is less than the three out of ten times a team that was outside the finals jumps straight into the Top 4.

In all but four out of 24 seasons, a team that was outside the finals made the Top 4. Last year, two teams – Collingwood and Hawthorn – weren’t in the finals in the year prior but jumped into the Top 4.

Conclusion: Only two of the Top 4 have historically remained in the Top 4, and at least one team wasn’t in the finals the year prior.

Ben Stratton has been named as Hawthorn’s new skipper. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

Who will be the minor premier?
In 17 out of 24 seasons, the minor premier has come from the prior season’s Top 4, including ten of the last 11 seasons.

With seven years in which the minor premiers repeated, Richmond has the same precedence as every other team combined who weren’t in the Top 4.

West Coast doesn’t have as high of a precedence. The grand final winner finished at the top of the home-and-away ladder only four times.

Additionally, West Coast finished second last season, and only two teams who finished second on the ladder finished first the next season.

That’s the same number of teams that finished tenth (Port Adelaide in 2018) or 12th (Adelaide).

Conclusion: One of the Top 4 teams likely to take top overall in the home-and-away competition, with Richmond holding the best chance compared to any other single team.

Who will win the premiership?
Collingwood was within two minutes of becoming the second team from 13th or lower to win the flag.

Chris Mayne of the Magpies and Nathan Buckley, coach of the Magpies. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/AFL Media/Getty Images)

Instead, West Coast won, ruining the afternoon of provincial Victorians, who during the home-and-away season choose Collingwood’s opponent as their second-favourite team but in the grand final support any Victorian club over an interstate club.

There have been only three teams that didn’t make the finals one year only to win the grand final the following year.

Only seven teams that from the 5-8 grouping one year won a title the next year – 14 teams that won the grand final were already a Top 4 team the year prior.

Conclusion: Collingwood would have been a very unprecedented champion in 2018, but unfortunately for the rest of us, they won’t be unprecedented to win this year.