2020 - Team Ratings After Round 1

/

With football due back now in under 10 days, it’s time to make some decisions about how the MoS twins and MARS are going to treat 2020 results. While it’s not yet clear how much 16-minute quarters will ultimately affect team and total scoring, for the time being I’m going to assume the effects are linear and therefore gross-up scoring by 25%.

Having done that to the Round 1 results we find that Port Adelaide and St Kilda are the big climbers on MoSSBODS, and the Western Bulldogs and Adelaide the teams falling furthest. MoSHBODS has a similar list, but with Port Adelaide and GWS the teams climbing furthest, and Geelong, the Western Bulldogs, and Adelaide falling furthest.

That left both Systems with a Top 3 of, in order, Richmond, Collingwood, and Port Adelaide.

The two Systems currently differ in their rankings of only two teams by more than two spots:

  • St Kilda: 7th on MoSSBODS and 11th on MoSHBODS

  • Western Bulldogs: 12th on MoSSBODS and 9th on MoSHBODS

Partly as a consequence of the start-of-season regression of Ratings towards zero, on MoSSBODS, 1st and 17th are separated by just over 6 Scoring Shots (and 3rd and 13th by only just over 3 Scoring Shots), and on MoSHBODS 3rd and 12th are separated by only just over 10 points.

The correlation between Combined MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Team Ratings stands at +0.9891.

On the Component Ratings, we have as our current Top 3s:

Offence

  • MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS: Tigers, Lions, Power

Defence

  • MoSSBODS: Pies, Tigers, Hawks

  • MoSHBODS: Pies, Hawks, Tigers

The correlation between the underlying offensive ratings of the two Systems is +0.9855, and between the underlying defensive ratings +0.9901.

Currently then, there’s a whole lot of agreement going on.

On MoSSBODS, 5 teams are rated positively on offence and defence, 6 rated negatively on both, none rated positively on offence but negatively on defence, and 7 rated negatively on offence but positively on defence. For MoSHBODS, the equivalent numbers are 6, 5, 1 and 6.

Only two teams are in different quadrants under the two Systems:

  • Western Bulldogs (negative offence and defence on MoSSBODS, positive offence and and negative defence on MoSHBODS)

  • Hawthorn (negative offence and positive defence on MoSSBODS, positive offence and defence on MoSHBODS)

We can put the 2020 teams’ current MoSSBODS offensive and defensive ratings in an historical context by plotting them against every other V/AFL team in history as at the end of their respective Round 1s.

The retirement of ChiPS this year leaves only MARS Ratings for us to review, and these show Richmond, Collingwood, and West Coast in the Top 3 places, with the Pies and the Cats swapping 2nd and 4th on the basis of Round 1 results.

Last season saw a number of closely-matched teams vying for mid-table spots and ended with 3rd through 11th separated by less than 20 Rating Points on MARS Ratings. That, along with the regression of Ratings that MARS also undertakes at the start of each season, sees MARS at the end of Round 1 with only 17 Rating Points separating Richmond in 1st from North Melbourne in 10th, and with 14 teams having Ratings above 990.

Collingwood and Sydney were the only teams to climb multiple spots, and Geelong and the Western Bulldogs the only teams to fall multiple spots.