2016 - Team Ratings After Round 23

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There was a little movement on MARS this weekend, though nothing altering its opinion of the Top 3 teams, which remain Sydney, Adelaide and West Coast in that order. Team ratings matter considerably less though now than does access to the double-chance, so the Cats' move into 4th-place on MARS is probably of more significance for the Flag.

At the end of the home and away season, MARS rated exactly half the teams as "better than average", the Pies' final push leaving them just 0.4 Rating Points (RPs) short of that mark.

ChiPS, which has recently had a more compressed set of ratings for the teams it rated highest, re-ranked nine teams on the basis of the weekend's results, including all but one of the teams from its previous Top 9.

The team staying put was Sydney, which remains in 1st, now ahead of GWS and then West Coast.

ChiPS now rates Sydney as about an 8.5 point better team than GWS on a neutral venue.

GWS, in turn, is rated as about a 3 point better team than West Coast. Thereafter on ChiPS, the gap between West Coast in 3rd and Hawthorn in 6th is only another 3.3 RPs. A little further down the order, interestingly, ChiPS rates the Pies more highly than the Dogs.

So, as at the end of the home and away season, the largest differences between ChiPS' and MARS' team rankings are for:

  • Adelaide, which MARS ranks 2nd and ChiPS 5th
  • GWS,which MARS ranks 5th and ChiPS 2nd.

For no other team is the difference in ranking more than two places.

Further testimony to the Systems' broad agreement is the fact that the raw correlation between their ratings now stands at +0.988.

MoSSBODS RATINGS

MoSSBODS was busy this week too, but not quite to the same extent as ChiPS, re-ranking 8 teams, including 6 of its previous Top 9.

Only two of those teams moved by more than a single spot though, West Coast climbing two places after increases in both its Offensive and Defensive ratings, and the Western Bulldogs falling two places after decreases in both of its component ratings.

That leaves MoSSBODS with a Top 3 of Adelaide, Sydney, Geelong, but also with a much-diminished gap between those first two.

MoSSBODS finishes the home and away season then with 10 teams having above average Offensive ratings - though St Kilda only just makes the cut-off - with 9 teams having above average Defensive ratings, and with the same 9 teams having above average Combined ratings.

MoSSBODS, like ChiPS, ranks the Pies in the Top 8, but it would swap out the Roos rather than the Dogs to facilitate the Pies' entry.

Looking across all 18 teams we find that MoSSBODS broadly agrees with ChiPS and MARS in terms of final team rankings, not differing by more than two places from both of them for any single team.

This week, to provide some historical context for the current MoSSBODS ratings we'll chart them against the ratings of every team in V/AFL history as at the end of their respective home and away seasons.

We see from this that:

  • Adelaide is amongst the Top 20 or so teams ever in terms of end of home and away season Offensive Rating
  • The Brisbane Lions are amongst the Bottom 5 teams in terms of Defensive Rating
  • Adelaide and Sydney both have Combined Ratings that would put them close to the Top 10% in terms of eventual Grand Finalists
  • The nine teams from Port Adelaide down all have Combined Ratings lower than that of any previous Grand Finalist

If we focus solely on this year's Finalists and previous Grand Finalists we can get even more of a feel for where the current teams sit and can call out more of the outstanding and outlying teams of the past.

One of the interesting features of this view is that we can see only six teams have previously won the Flag after finishing the home and away season with a negative Defensive Rating

  • Richmond 1974 (Minor Premiers, but conceded more points than 4 of the 11 other teams in the competition)
  • Essendon 1912 (finished 3rd of 10 teams and conceded more points than all but the bottom 3 teams)
  • Essendon 1962 (Minor Premiers, but conceded more points than 2 of the 3 other Finalists. Also, allowed 23 and 26 Scoring Shots in their last two home and away games of a relatively low-scoring season) 
  • Fitzroy 1916 (finished last of 4 teams, conceding more than 2 of them and only slightly less than the 3rd)
  • Fitzroy 1904 (Minor Premiers and conceded fewest points of any team, but allowed 21 and 17 Scoring Shots in their last two home and away games of a very low-scoring sesaon)

Also, we see that nine eventual Flag winners have finished their home and away seasons with a negative Offensive Rating:

  • Footscray 1954 (finished 2nd but scored fewer points than 4 other teams including 2 of the 3 other Finalists)
  • Melbourne 1948 (finished 2nd but scored fewer points than 4 other teams including 2 of the 3 other Finalists)
  • Adelaide 1997 (finished 4th and with the 2nd-highest points tally, but generated only 91 Scoring Shots in its last 4 home and away games including only 18 against the eventual 10th-placed Pies)
  • Sydney 2005 (finished 3rd but generated fewer points than all but the 2nd- and 3rd-last teams)
  • Essendon 1942 (Minor Premiers, but generated fewer points than the 3 other Finalists)
  • Carlton 1981 (Minor Premiers, but finished 7th of 12 teams on points scored)
  • West Coast 1994 (Minor Premiers, but finished 7th of 15 teams on points scored)
  • West Coast 1992 (finished 4th and ranked 9th of 15 teams on points scored)
  • North Melbourne 1977 (finished 3rd and ranked 6th of 12 teams on points scored)

As usual, we'll also take a look at the round by round progression of the current teams' ratings

(Note that the sparsity of teams in the final, post Round 23 view is because we include here only teams that had a Round 23 in their season.)

This week I'll finish with a table (that can be clicked to access a larger version) that summarises, for ChiPS, MARS and MoSSBODS, each team's change in rating across the entire home and away season.

This table shows that Geelong and GWS (and, to a lesser extent, St Kilda and Carlton) were the big improvers across the home and away season, while Hawthorn, Port Adelaide, Richmond and Fremantle regressed furthest.