2020 : Simulating the Final Ladder After Round 1

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If simulating the end of home-and-away season ladder after one round isn’t already difficult enough in that it typically requires estimates of how good you think teams will be in 6 months time, this year we have the added challenge that we don’t yet even know who will face who from Round 6 onwards, nor where they will meet. Nor do we know when, if at all, fans will be permitted to return to watch games live and, for the time that they’re not, what the effect on home ground advantage will be.

But, in the spirit of endeavour, and with common sense practising self-isolation in another room, we’re going to come up with something.

METHODOLOGIES

Broadly, the methodologies we’ll use here are those described in this earlier blog. For the time being I’m going to continue simulating using both the traditional “hold ratings and VPVs fixed at current levels”, and the heretical “update ratings and VPVs based on simulated results”. I mean, this year has already been crazy enough, so why not?

We need to decide on a few things, however:

  • Fixturing for the remainder of the season: for this purpose I’m going to use the fixture list that AFL Ladder has come up with, which is shown at right.

  • Venueing for the remainder of the season: for this purpose I’m going to assume that the same grounds will be used for the remainder of the season as will be available for Rounds 2 to 6. This disadvantages those teams that are being forced to play their home games at unfamiliar venues, sometimes in non-home States.

  • Home Ground Advantage: it seems likely that at least a portion of home ground advantage can be attributed to the physical presence of a predominance of supportive fans at a team’s home ground. That benefit will obviously be absent for the foreseeable future. But, rather than coming up with some arbitrary adjustment, for the time being I’m going to assume that home ground advantage is solely attributable to venue familiarity and, as a result, make no adjustments to VPVs. I will, of course, track the results over coming rounds and, if a good estimate of the effect of fanless games on VPV emerges, make appropriate adjustments.

  • Impact of 16-minute quarters: Here too, it’s too early to make any definitive calls about the average effects of 20% shorter quarters on team scoring. For now, I’m going to reduce the forecasts provided by MoSH2020 by 25% until such time as we have enough data to come up with a better estimate.

LADDER FINISHES

So, with as many asterisks as you think are appropriate, here are the projections for teams’ ladder finishes. The results from the Standard method are on the left, and those from the Heretical method on the right.

Once again, overall the results of using the two methodologies are remarkably similar. No team’s ranking on Expected Wins except Sydney’s differs by more than a single spot. We see a little more spread in the range of expected wins under the Heretical method, with the gap between Richmond and Gold Coast about 8.8 wins under this method compared to 4.8 wins under the Standard method.

The probability estimates for each team for making the Top 8 or Top 4, or for finishing as Minor Premiers, are also very similar.

Also, under both methodologies, most teams are assessed as having reasonable chances at finishing in quite a wide range of ladder positions.