2021 : Simulating the Final Ladder After Round 7

/

The latest round of Standard Methodology home-and-away simulations still has 12 teams with a better than 1-in-5 shot at playing Finals (down 1), and 7 teams with a better than 1-in-5 shot at finishing Top 4 (also down 1). Even under the Heretical Methodology, which tends to push probability estimates closer to 0 and 1, there are 12 teams with a better than 1-in-5 shot at playing Finals (no change), and 7 teams with a better than 1-in-5 shot at finishing Top 4 (also no change).

On that basis, it seems very unlikely that this year’s Finalists have, in any way, been largely determined.

(For details about the methodologies I’ve used, see this earlier blog)

LADDER FINISHES

Team Expected Wins under the Standard Methodology grew by about 1 full win this week only for West Coast, and fell by about 1 full win for Fremantle, Adelaide, and Hawthorn.

The big gainers in terms of Finals chances were West Coast (+18% points to 56%), GWS (+13% points to 33%), Brisbane Lions (+12% points to 77%), and Richmond (+11% points to 80%). The big losers were Fremantle (-24% points to 33%), Adelaide (-14% points to 8%), and Hawthorn (-11% points to 6%).

Also, according to both the Standard and the Heretical Methodology, the Dogs and Dees both remain about 2-in-5 chances for the Minor Premiership.

STANDARD METHODOLOGY

HERETICAL METHODOLOGY

The range of Expected Wins using the Standard Methodology across the 18 teams moved to about 11 wins this week, while using the Heretical Methodology it dropped a little to just under 14 wins.

Of the five teams that started with a 0-2 record (Brisbane Lions, Carlton, GWS, Essendon, and North Melbourne), the Standard Methodology now estimates that there’s about a 94% chance at least one of them will end up playing Finals.

Across the 50,000 simulations there are 48,660 different sets of teams playing Finals, treating different orderings of the same eight teams as a different set. No ordering appears in more than five replicates. If we ignore ordering, there are 3,226 different sets of eight Finalists.

TEAM AND POSITION CONCENTRATION

The HHI figures for the most recent Standard Methodology simulation replicates appear below.

(For information about the HHI, also see that previous blog linked to earlier).

We see considerable reductions in final ladder position uncertainty this week for Adelaide, Hawthorn, and Collingwood, who are now effectively competing for 8 to 10 ladder positions, down 2 to 4 positions from last week.

We also see a sizeable increase for St Kilda, who’ve moved from effectively competing for about 10 positions, to competing for 12.

Fremantle, GWS, and Carlton are now the teams with greatest uncertainty about the positions in which they’ll finish on the ladder, each of them effectively competing for about 14 ladder spots now. North Melbourne still have the least uncertainty, though Melbourne and Western Bulldogs still also enjoy relatively low levels, with each of them effectively competing now only for about four to five different spots.

We also see reductions in the uncertainty associated with all ladder positions except 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 18th, with the largest reductions for positions 15th through 17th.

Despite those increases noted above, it remains the case - and seems almost axiomatic now - that the mid-table positions - 6th through 12th - are the ones that are associated with most uncertainty, and the top and tail positions - 1st through 3rd, and 16th through 18th - with least uncertainty.

There are now, effectively, only about three teams vying for the Minor Premiership, and less than two battling for the Spoon.

IMPORTANCE OF PERCENTAGE

The Standard Methodology simulations suggest that it’s still just more likely than not that the last spot on the Finals will be determined by percentage.

There is now an estimated 51.5% chance that 8th and 9th will finish equal on competition points, a 23% chance that 8th and 10th will, and an 8% chance that 8th and 11th will.

There’s also a 43% chance that the double-chance in the Finals will be determined by percentage.

WINS TO MAKE The 8

The estimates of team chances of playing Finals should they finish on only 11 wins tended to fall this week, and now mostly lie in the 10% to 25% range. It remains the case, however that most teams have an 80% to 90% chance of playing Finals should they record 12 wins.

Melbourne, Sydney, St Kilda, Adelaide, West Coast, Fremantle, Hawthorn. and North Melbourne are least likely to play Finals with 11 or 12 wins, while Geelong, Collingwood, Essendon, Western Bulldogs, Richmond and Brisbane Lions have the highest estimated chances.

TEAM DEPENDENCIES IN FINALS CHANCES

Next, let’s review the dependencies in the estimated Finals chances of the sixteams now estimated to have between a 25% and a 75% unconditional chance of playing Finals.

Using the arrow lengths as a proxy for dependence, we see that:

  • The Blues’ are most dependent on the Giants’

  • The Dockers’ are most dependent on the Swans’

  • The Cats’ are about equally dependent on the Giants’, Dockers’, and Blues’

  • The Giants’ are most dependent on the Blues’

  • The Swans’ are most dependent on the Dockers’

  • The Eagles’ chances are about equally dependent on the Swans’, Giants’, Dockers’, and Blues’

HOW MANY WINS TO FINISH WHERE

Now a look at what the Standard Methodology shows for the joint distribution of number of wins and final ladder position for each team.

WINS FOR A PARTICULAR LADDER POSITION

And, finally, an update on the distribution of wins associated with each ladder position.

It now looks as though 12 wins is more likely than 11 wins to be associated with the team finishing 8th, which is consistent with the general decline in the team-by-team Finals probabilities we saw for 11 wins in the earlier chart.

It’s also still the case that 14 wins are still more often than 13 wins associated with 4th spot on the final home-and-away ladder.

GAME IMPORTANCE

Finally, let’s take a look at how the Standard methodology estimates the importance of each of the remaining 155 games (see this blog for details about how these are calculated).

Here is the list of the 25 most important games in terms of their estimated influence on the composition of the finalists.

West Coast are now involved in 10 of the Top 25, Fremantle and Sydney in 7, Carlton in 6, and GWS in 5. Only four teams - North Melbourne, Hawthorn, Port Adelaide, and Western Bulldogs are currently not involved in any of the estimated Top 25.