A slight change of format for the MAFL MARS Leaderboard this week, consolidating information about the week-by-week changes in each team's MARS Ratings and the most recent 5 weeks into the one table.

The History column now shows the Ratings Points (RPs) acquired (in green) or surrendered (in red) by a team each week of the season so far, and the Change Last 5 columns show the accumulated increase or decrease in RPs over the most recent 5 rounds and the rise or fall in Ranking that has resulted. All other information in the table is as before.

Data in the new columns shows that, from a MARS Ranking point of view, it's the Blues and the Crows that have been the biggest climbers in recent weeks, up four places each since the end of Round 3, each on the back of 7 to 9 RP increases. Richmond and St Kilda are the biggest sliders, falling five places during that same time.

Richmond's decline has transpired despite their shedding only a couple of RPs, a consequence of the generally congested nature of the MARS Ladder in their vicinity and the RP acquisitiveness of the teams around them. One of the teams that's slipped by them is the Roos, who've snagged 10 RPs in the last five weeks, rising just two places as a consequence, one of them at the Tigers' expense. Prior to their run, the Roos were a sub-1,000 Rated team. Now they're almost Rated 1,008.

The Dogs and the Giants are the teams that have shed most RPs, though their already lowly position has meant this has had relatively little impact on their Rankings.

Looking just at last week's moves, we see that only six teams changed position, all of them from around mid-table - none from the top 4 and none from the bottom 8. Adelaide, Carlton and Collingwood were the only risers, West Coast, Essendon and the Roos the only teams to fall.

While we're dealing with matters solely MARS related, we might as well take a look at the all-team chart of MARS Ratings for the season so far.

GWS once again appears to be a team that's not content with the confines of their designated cell; if I were Sydney, I'd be getting nervous again ...

Next let's expand our view to take in the other Rating Systems.

Most of the Systems continue to hold similar opinions about the appropriate ranking of most teams, the few exceptions being: 

• Adelaide, which Colley ranks lower than any other System
• Collingwood, which Colley ranks higher than any other System
• Essendon, which MARS ranks lower than any other System
• The Roos, which Massey ranks higher than any other System
• Port Adelaide, which Colley ranks higher than any other System
• West Coast, which MARS ranks higher than any other System

If predictive accuracy is your metric, then, amongst these Systems, you'd be inclined currently to take most notice of MARS' opinions, since it is now a clear leader on that metric.

Predicting winners based on Massey Ratings has produced the next-best set of results but, interestingly, the third-best results have come from taking notice of the Offensive Ratings from the ODM System, a strategy that has performed even better than taking notice of the full ODM System Ratings, which incorporate Offensive and Defensive components.

Here are the details of the team rankings based on the ODM System and its two components.

ODM still rates the Crows', Dockers', Saints' and the Swans' (though no longer Port's) offences significantly more highly than their respective defences, and also still rates the Pies', Cats', Roos', Tigers' and Eagles' (though no longer the Giants') defences significantly more highly than their respective offences.