Geelong’s win over Melbourne was enough to see them snag top spot from the Dees on both MoS Rating Systems this week, and Sydney’s win over Western Bulldogs was enough to convince MoSHBODS to join MoSSBODS in ratings them third.

Overall, 13 teams moved places on MoSSBODS this week, including all but the teams in 3rd, and 15th to 18th. The same number moved places on MoSHBODS, leaving the two Systems agreeing about the ranking of only the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 11th, 17th and 18th teams. There are only three teams, however, where they differ in their rankings by more than two places: Carlton, Collingwood, and Richmond.

Eleven teams are now rated as above-average on MoSSBODS and on MoSHBODS,.

Altogether, there were six multiple-spot movers on MoSSBODS, including Carlton up 4 spots, Port Adelaide up 2 spots, Brisbane Lions down 3 spots, and Collingwood, Gold Coast, and St Kilda all down 2 spots. There were nine multiple-spot movers on MoSHBODS, including Carlton up 3 spots, Fremantle, Port Adelaide, Richmond, and Essendon all up 2 spots, Collingwood down 4 spots, Brisbane Lions down 3 spots, and Gold and GWS both down 2 spots.

The correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Combined Ratings remains very high, however, and now stands at +0.9924. The correlation on defence alone is +0.988 and on offence alone +0.989.

To provide some historical context to the teams’ current Ratings, the chart below shows the Ratings of selected teams from V/AFL history after 17 rounds of their respective seasons.

Melbourne and Geelong remain the only teams rated higher at this point in the season than 50% of the teams in history that subsequently made the Grand Final, while North Melbourne has one of the lowest-ever offensive ratings.

The animation below maps the path that each 2022 team has followed to reach its current Rating.

On the Component Ratings, on offence, we find MoSSBODS now with a Top 3 of Cats, Dogs, and Swans, and MoSHBODS now with a Top 3 of Dogs, Cats, and Tigers. On defence we find both MoSSBODS with a Top 3 of Cats, Dockers, and Dees, and MoSHBODS with Cats, Dees, and Dockers.

On MoSSBODS, 6 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (down 2), 7 are rated negatively on both (up 1), two are rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (up 1), and 3 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (no change). The correlation between the teams’ MoSSBODS offensive and defensive Ratings still stands at +0.73.

And, finally, to MARS, which re-ranked only nine teams this week, and only four by multiple spots, including St Kilda down 3, Western Bulldogs down 2, and Port Adelaide and Gold Coast both up 2.

MARS continues to have its own thoughts compared to the MoS twins about a number of teams, most notably Brisbane Lions (3rd vs 8th/9th), and Port Adelaide (5th vs 8th/9th).

In terms of groupings, we now have, according to MARS roughly:

• Melbourne and Geelong

• Brisbane Lions and Sydney

• Port Adelaide, Western Bulldogs, Richmond, and Fremantle

• Carlton

• Gold Coast, Collingwood, and St Kilda

• GWS, Essendon, and Hawthorn

• Adelaide

• West Coast

• North Melbourne

Twelve teams are still rated as better-than-average by MARS.

The Rating gap between first and last currently stands at about 87.5 Rating Points, which is down about 4.5 Rating Points on last week..

Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder, we still find relatively large differences for a few teams, the largest being for Brisbane Lions (MARS aside) and Collingwood, where the teams’ ladder positions are well above their System Ranking, and for Western Bulldogs, Sydney, and Port Adelaide, where the teams’ ladder positions are well below their System Rankings.

MARS currently has the outright most-extreme ranking for 13 of the teams, MoSSBODS for nine, and MoSHBODS for four.

MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS agree about the ranking of six teams, MoSHBODS and MARS about four teams, and MoSSBODS and MARS about only two teams. That’s quite a lot of disagreement so late in the season.

If we consider the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team, we find that Brisbane Lions (6 spots) has the widest range of rankings, but that the range is just two spots or less for 11 teams.

The three Systems have the same ranking for North Melbourne and West Coast.