Join The Roar
Become a member to join in Australia's biggest sporting debate, submit articles, receive updates straight to your inbox and keep up with your favourite teams and authors.
Oops! You must provide an email address to create a Roar account
When using Facebook to create or log in to an account, you need to grant The Roar permission to see your email address
By joining The Roar you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions
Login and get Roaring
Oops! You must provide an email address to create a Roar account
When using Facebook to create or log in to an account, you need to grant The Roar permission to see your email address
Roar Guru
Joined February 2017
146k
Views
221
Published
275
Comments
I'm a Yank who stays up Friday and Saturday nights from February through September to get my fix o'footy.
Published
Comments
Here’s the moral of the story in advance – your best chance to win the Brownlow is to be the one truly outstanding player on your team, even if you’re not on a team that wins every game. You know, like Jack Steele.
Round 18 gets underway tonight, with eight of the nine games being rematches from earlier games this season. Only tonight’s match-up at Optus between Fremantle and Geelong avoids that nomenclature.
2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the last three-time winner of the Brownlow Medal: Ian Stewart won his third Medal in 1971 with Richmond after two with the Saints in 1965-66. Four men won three medals in its first 43 presentations; yet none have done so since!
We promised to keep the Roar readership updated on the 2021 race for our “Following Football” AFL MVP.
I went back through the last 20 full seasons (excluding the COVID-shortened 2020 season) to give you some statistical likelihoods of the current top eight teams remaining there for September and the teams below them jumping into finals.
Who’ll claim the four points in each of this weekend’s nine matches?
In the US, where I reside, June 14th was Flag Day, meant to be a day we honor the American flag. Instead, let’s use that as a pretext to consider what the chances are for each of the teams in the AFL to win the flag, and I don’t mean the American stars and stripes.
Here are our Following Football predictions, given what we now know about game locations for Round 13.
It’s time to share data on the individual races for the Brownlow Medal, and the All Australian team.
Given that the fixture for Round 12 is as fluid as the entire season’s schedule was last year, we’re not only late this week, having waited for the final decision on sites, but we’ll be really quick about our picks this week because we still don’t trust what the weekend will look like and also […]
Here we are, at the Sir Doug Nicholls Round, leading into the byes and the practical halfway point of the season.
Another great weekend for us – with our relatively ‘safe’ predictions on an almost-upset-free round, we hit eight of nine and were even happy about the one we missed: North winning their first of the season.
In Part 1, I looked at how the individuals compared with each other after eight rounds.
Four weeks ago, I published an update on the individual and team ratings accumulated by our band of merry men and women at Following Football.
I’ve decided that it’s too risky to make predictions only about the margin of victory for a particular team, possibly the most veiled of all outcomes to forecast.
Followers of my writing know I work with a group called Following Football, which uses a simple method to rate teams in a wide range of sports – all football-adjacent such as Aussie Rules, American football, rugby and the like – and use those ratings to forecast game outcomes.
Last week was tough for me and (to a lesser extent) the ELO-Following Football rating system.
Riley Beveridge wrote a great article on the AFL website on Monday that delved into the recent history of other teams which like Melbourne and Footscray had also started their seasons with six consecutive wins.
Here are the Following Football ELO ratings for each of the 18 AFL clubs, and the predictions they present for the upcoming games in Round 6 of the 2021 season.
Great choice of topics — the perfect fodder for conversations a plenty! Well written and thought out. Your defenses are hard to refute, especially when your premise specifically says the ones YOU liked. My list would be slightly different (not much!) but it doesn’t make yours wrong. Keep up the good work!
The best twelve Australian rules players I have seen in 50 years watching the game
Good first article — good topic — good way to get the readership involved. There is no right answer to this type of question, of course, which is what makes it so much fun. Thanks for joining the team!
Who have been the best teams in AFL history?
Thanks for taking me under your wing, Daniel, and getting me into gear with The Roar. Getting past the bumpy spots would have been much harder without you. Best of luck with your adventures outside of this venue; here’s prayers for your health.
Four incredible years of sport: My farewell to The Roar
The Suns are one of those teams “behind Fremantle” – they had the same attention as the other seven clubs in that group from slot 12 to 18, where we listed the four times in recent history that such teams actually made finals. (The Suns and Giants are my two teams to barrack for, officially, because I’m not Australian and I figured they needed the fans, so I wear my gold and red on weekends. However, if I’m writing an article about historic odds to make finals, the Suns’ percentages, historically, are famously easy to calculate.)
Each club's statistical finals probabilities with nine rounds to go
With the Giants game moved to the MCG late in the week, it’s hard to know how the point spread will and should adjust. To be safe, we are moving our wager to simply “Giants win”, which as of this moment pays $3.14 on two.
Who wins each of Round 15's matches and why
Given the vibe that always revitalizes a team in Collingwood’s situation – their coach taking the sword in the name of continuity and harmony within the team – expect the Pies to play much harder than they thought they could have before Buckley’s announcement yesterday. So I’m changing my play on this game: Melbourne to win, and that’s it. The circumstances are much more volatile now, and it could be a one-point win or a one hundred point win if the emotions get the better of Collingwood. It’s impossible to be sure.
Week 13: The shifting sands of non-Victorian footy
If what I’ve written can be considered a slight to the Sir Douglas Nichols round itself, I agree that I should retract it and apologize. But the meat of the salutes to the great man and the indigenous people comes in round twelve, as far as I can tell, and except for the Friday opener, there really isn’t anything in the rest of round eleven we can say properly salutes the cause at hand. If that’s worth complaining about, I would argue that’s an argument for the AFL, rather than me for pointing it out…. I am honestly looking forward to Dreamtime and round 12, though.
Round 11 preview: Demons-Dogs and eight filler games
I count myself a Suns supporter from afar, but I kinda hope you’re right — only if it’s because Hawthorn rises from the dead, not because the Suns hit one of those terrible stretches they have been known for.
Round 11 preview: Demons-Dogs and eight filler games
Two answers: for some reason, they’ve stretched the Nicholls round across both 11 and 12. Don’t understand it either, but you’re not wrong about Dreamtime…. Also, in a week when I don’t see a game closer that double digits, I’ll stand by eight fillers. TBH, the Dogs may make the headliner just as much of a rout and make the entire round one to sleep through. At home, West Coast will demolish the Bombers in the first half and coast the rest of the way.
Round 11 preview: Demons-Dogs and eight filler games
In all the years I’ve written for the Roar, I don’t recall ever seeing any article of mine have its comments section turn into a singles bar before this… First for everything, I suppose.
Safe predictions for AFL Round 9
Not that I don’t think they’ll be there, you dirty punster you, but I don’t count that as all that safe a prediction at this stage — the Eagles do have this tendency to fall apart once every few years when injuries pile up. Odds are you’re absolutely right. I suspect Sydney will be there too, especially given their schedule before the bye, but that’s not a “safe prediction” quite yet either.
Safe predictions for AFL Round 9
There were a bunch of those concealed injuries that came out in the open after the season ended, not just Lutkins — but you’re absolutely right to praise her in particular.
The pinnacle of women's football - so far
It means that when you see the Bulldogs favored by eleven, they’ve won that game by more than eleven. That’s happened four of their five games (now five of six). Thanks for asking! I always worry about assuming too much…
Round 6 ratings and projections
Absolutely. Once wrote a piece to that effect: six or seven of the finalists in September are currently in the top eight in round seven. The trick, most years, is figuring out which two will drop and which two will rise. You’d think Melbourne and Footscray are safe.
What does the unbeaten start from the Bulldogs and Demons mean?
And my relative recent attachment to the game (twenty years) means that I don’t remember many of the situations first hand, and some of those injury details are hard to come by this far along. But that’s always of great significance: I made the comment in my pre-season prediction article that whichever of the four teams I thought were the best of the lot that was most free of injuries would win the cup, and I’m thinking that to be true of the Demons, Dogs, Power, and perhaps a couple of the 3-3 and 4-2 teams as well. Thanks for the compliments.
What does the unbeaten start from the Bulldogs and Demons mean?
The average nine-game week has three “upsets”, of varying sizes. Sometimes it’s a Tigers/Port type, when it was 55/45 to begin with, and sometimes North Melbourne will rise up and beat someone by forty, and anyone claiming to have predicted it is lying… The trick, of course, is knowing when and where those upsets are coming. And our guesses keep the casinos in business. Smart of you not to have confidence – the moment you feel confident on picking sporting events is the moment you lose it all.
AFL Round 5 betting preview
I agree that most of that sounds like good advice … hard for me to know what to make of the Psychotic Psaints right now, though, and since two of those we’re s’posed to keep the faith with are playing each other, Im stuck with my dilemma.
AFL Round 5 betting preview
Avatar, I’m right with you on both games, even to the point spread on the Crows (I have the Lions by four)…. I’m curious if you have any thoughts on the men’s round four this week: any games you think might not go the way the oddsmakers say they will? (I’m leaning Gold Coast, Richmond, and Melbourne myself.)
2021 AFL Women's finals series: Week 2 preview
As for Adelaide: lower scores are also better for the same reason – it preserves the extremely high percentage. So if they win with 50 points, they have to hold Collingwood to 41 to gain the top seed. If they score 60, they must hold them to 46 points; at 70, they’ll have to win by 19, and so on. But if they can manage a 34-32 victory, they can take the top seed, keep Collingwood’s percentage slightly above Brisbane’s so the Pies have the second seed, and drop the Lions down to third. That’s about the only way Brisbane does NOT have a bye next week!
My AFLW Round 9 preview
SUNDAY MORNING COMMENT:
With the standings and percentages as they are following the wins by Melbourne and North on Saturday, Collingwood’s path is easy: win and you have the #1 seed. Lose and they still have the #2 seed (even an 80-0 loss won’t sink their percentage to where Melbourne’s is. The Demons are locked into the #3 if the Pies win.) But Collingwood can still keep the #1 seed (important for the GF) if they keep the score low: if Adelaide scores 36 points and wins, Collingwood cannot hold on to the top seed. If they limit Adelaide to 30, they can lose by as much as six and hold the top seed. And if Adelaide only scores 20, Collingwood can score just five points and still beat Brisbane’s percentage.
My AFLW Round 9 preview
That’s above my pay grade, I’m afraid. I just write the articles.
Stirling? Can you answer this question?
My AFLW Round 9 preview
I thought so, too. Had not seen the Bruton suspension when I wrote this; it does make the argument harder to defend. But North has a wider variety of tools at their disposal; the suspension means less to them than it would have to the Dockers. I’ll still take the Kangaroos, although I have no cheering preference myself.
My AFLW Round 9 preview
Doran, I’m starting to really look forward to your 18 in 18 article every week – it’s an intriguing concept and you do a great job of starting with the handful of players that “must” be there, and filling in around with the best of the rest as positions allow. I’ve had niggling differences in my selections, but never a prohibitive objection. Nice work.
The AFL team of the week Round 19: 'Chris Scott will definitely have to find a spot for him'