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Ryan likes his sport played efficiently, effectively and elegantly, like a Nic Naitanui hit out to advantage. Always searching for an interesting angle, Ryan loves nothing more than digging deep into the play and searching for the signal others miss in the noise. You can follow Ryan here (@RyanBuckland7).
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It’s not often you can draw a line through a top four team at the half way point of the season. But here we are, with the West Coast Eagles in 2019.
The top eight looks mighty settled through 11 rounds of the 2019 season, but there’s still plenty of room for teams to rise and fall in the second half of the year.
Next week’s numbers game will show the competition is a race in three, or four, or at most five, as we hit the half way mark.
Nine rounds into the season and the competition is separating in the usual way.
No more. The AFL executive has lost its ability to govern itself, and it cannot be allowed to continue this way for the good of the sport in this country.
This year, more so than in any of the past five, the outcomes of the first seven weeks of football have been impacted by who has played who.
Melbourne has confounded us all. Show me someone who says they saw this Demon season coming and I’ll show you a liar, a fool, or both.
Today in breaking news I can exclusively reveal the AFL is working on a secret plan to start a new professional Australian Rules football league ahead of the 2020 season.
In keeping with this column’s early season capacity constraints, here’s ten significant numbers that help explain the madness of the first three weeks of this year’s AFL season.
Nothing that has happened in the AFL in the first two weeks of the season makes sense. Nothing, except, the team that sits atop the ladder.
If we can extrapolate a significant downside surprise in Round 1, then surely significant upside surprises are fair game.
It’s that time already. A truncated preseason for this column is no excuse for missing out on the whacky science of pre-season predictions.
Acquiring a prime age AFL superstar has been a fraught and surprisingly fruitless exercise, according to recent history.
And so we reach the end of The Roar’s AFL Top 50. Now we’re in the sorts of rarefied air where there’s not much more to add beyond the number next to each player.
Facing one of the longest finals loss streaks in the league, Essendon has emerged as the 2018 offseason’s darling. One key unknown dogs them as the preseason gets underway.
So much of last year’s football palace intrigue centred on just how far the AFL would go to change the rules of the game in response to some meta-elements of the game it found unsatisfactory.
Numbers! Football! It’s time for our annual dispassionate look at some of the numbers behind the numbers in the AFL and see whether we can jag a bit of signal amidst the noise.
Let’s do two sets of rankings for the final BBL column for this year: the finals teams, and four things Cricket Australia should do to fix the Big Bash.
The past 18 months have been challenging for a thinking fan, with the repeated administrative malfeasance of AFL HQ. This year, we cast all of that aside, and go back to what makes Australian rules football the best sport in the world.
With five games to go, this season’s finalists are all but decided. All that’s left to do in these penultimate power rankings is work out who’ll host them.
Too many Pies here for my liking. You’re only as good as your last game after all.
The Roar's 2019 AFL Top 50: 30-21
West Coast was 8-3 on the road last year, including 3-0 at the MCG, and they won the Grand Final there against a tenant club (which was supposed to be impossible).
The Roar's 2019 AFL Top 50: 40-31
Also new rule: someone has to have two voters vote for them in their individual top 50s for them to make it into the overall top 50. Rioli would be out, James Sicily would be in at 50, and Breust would shuffle up to 49. Can we make that a retrospective change? I feel bad (oh wait no I don’t, it’s a list of names that means nothing, but still let’s make that a retrospective policy change).
The Roar's 2019 AFL Top 50: 50-41
I’m just here to say I have taken down all your names and when Dan Rioli kicks 50 goals and makes the All Australian team this year I’ll send you all a personal email.
The Roar's 2019 AFL Top 50: 50-41
There is nothing in what I said that implies or suggests that because a team has won X number of close games in A period that they will then lose Y close games in B period.
Numbers Game: Which teams will rise and fall in the AFL in 2019?
Y’all are overthinking the close game thing.
Numbers Game: Which teams will rise and fall in the AFL in 2019?
I think you do that, then look to add a team or two from New Zealand.
Unfortunately I think the toothpaste is out of the tube on the teams. There has been so much spent on branding I can’t see them ever going back to State-based teams for the BBL.
What Cricket Australia must do to fix the Big Bash for 2020
I’m not sure that there are more 12 win teams is a strong enough argument to expand the finals series to ten teams. But I am sure the AFL will use that as a key argument when it expands the finals series to ten teams as part of the next broadcast agreement.
The AFL is ready for a ten-team finals series
I reckon the Sydney Thunder line up of the first couple of years of the BBL has this one covered in terms of on-paper awfulness.
If there’s any consolation on-paper talent has meant very little in the BBL when it comes to finals spots. Hobart looked like it has put together a bad squad last year, and they made it to the final!
Big Bash power rankings: Week 1
Yeah I really think it comes down to their batting. There is enough there by way of both power and accumulation, but they’ll be fairly reliant on a middle order full of all rounders. Also not sure what Michael Klinger has been up to.
Big Bash power rankings: Week 1
You’re getting caught in the BS media narrative. Look at it objectively: Fremantle converted a player who was evidently going to leave next year plus pick six into 3-4 best 22 players plus a draft hand equivalent to if they’d have finished in the top six. It’s phenomenal work.
The Giants aren't done, Peter Bell is a golden god and other observations from this year's trade period
My top ten moments of the 2018 AFL season. Emphasis on the my. Of course it’s biased.
Best of the best: My top ten moments of the 2018 AFL season
Based on what I’ve heard over the weekend, I’m not celebrating until I see his signature on a piece of paper.
Best of the best: My top ten moments of the 2018 AFL season
I don’t think it’s ranting. Collingwood/GWS will be the third team in 19 years or something like that to play a preliminary final off a six day break. It’s just not the done thing. The AFL has lost the plot when it comes to appeasing its main broadcaster this year and this is just another example of it.
What now for the Geelong Cats, the AFL's most interesting team?
Rance led the league in one on one contests by so far it’s a joke, taking the best forward of the opposition most of the time, and lost fewer than almost all of them. Add to that his spoiling, intercept work and ability to set up the play and he is the first man picked in the team. It’s trendy to say he’s not that good; don’t fall for it.
Here's who should be in the 2018 All Australian Team
And the fans are heading for the exits.
West Coast Eagles vs Melbourne Demons: AFL live scores, blog
Q4 – 28m – And that’s probably the game. Melbourne finds Jake Melksham unmarked deep inside 50. He takes his full 30 seconds and kicks the goal. Melbourne by 17 points.
West Coast: 14.7 (91)
Melbourne: 16.12 (108)
West Coast Eagles vs Melbourne Demons: AFL live scores, blog
Q4 – 27m – Dean Kent takes a mark just inside 50 from some good work from Christian Salem, and he kicks the goal. Melbourne’s up by 11 points, with two minutes on the game clock. Tough ask for West Coast from here.
West Coast: 14.7 (91)
Melbourne: 15.12 (102)
West Coast Eagles vs Melbourne Demons: AFL live scores, blog
Max Gawn has gone behind the ball at this stoppage.
West Coast Eagles vs Melbourne Demons: AFL live scores, blog
Q4 – 24m – Elliot Yeo takes a huge mark to help West Coast exit Melbourne’s half of the ground, but they can’t capitalise with a poor entry kick. Melbourne by five, and they’ve started to slow the game down.
West Coast: 14.7 (91)
Melbourne: 14.12 (96)
West Coast Eagles vs Melbourne Demons: AFL live scores, blog
Q4 – 21m – It’s getting tense out there as the ball is camped on the West Coast forward 50. Melbourne gets a break and Mitch Hannan finds an unmarked Jake Melksham in the goal square. They’re back in front, by five points.
West Coast: 14.7 (91)
Melbourne: 14.12 (96)
West Coast Eagles vs Melbourne Demons: AFL live scores, blog
You might be on to something there Don.
The Roar's 2019 AFL Top 50: 20-11