For the first time since the end of the 1980 season, Richmond has top rating on MoSHBODS after jumping two places to overtake Adelaide and Sydney this week.

As it happens, the Tigers also have top rating on MoSSBODS, though they had already acquired that at the end of 2017 under that System, and merely maintained it this week with their 26-point and 16 Scoring Shot victory over the Blues.

Games at the start of a season lead to relatively larger rating changes under the two MoS Systems than they do at other points in the season, so it's no great surprise that we saw 11 teams change places relative to their pre-season ranking on MoSSBODS, and 15 teams do likewise on MoSHBODS.

The biggest movers on MoSSBODS were Essendon and Hawthorn, up three places each, and the Western Bulldogs, down five places. On MoSHBODS we had GWS, Hawthorn and Melbourne each up three places, and Adelaide down three and the Western Bulldogs down four places.

(For details on how MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS have been built and how to interpret their ratings, follow this link).

Somewhat remarkably, both Systems now have identical top 7s, which include

• 1st: Richmond
• 2nd: GWS
• 3rd: Sydney

Turning next to the component ratings of the two MoS Systems we find slightly greater agreement about the top teams defensively than we do about the top teams offensively.

MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS now have the same top 4 teams on defence, which are, in order, Sydney, GWS, Richmond, and Port Adelaide.

On offence, MoSSBODS has a top 4 of Richmond, Adelaide, GWS and Essendon, a quartet that MoSHBODS agrees with but prefers Adelaide ahead of Richmond.

Looking across all 18 teams we find that:

• on offence, no team is ranked more than two places differently by either System
• on defence, only Fremantle, ranked 14th on MoSSBODS and 17th on MoSHBODS, is ranked more than two places differently by either System

It is though, early days, so we shouldn't yet expect much divergence of opinion between the two Systems, which finished season 2017 with similarly high levels of agreement.

Lastly for this week, let's take a look at MoS' veteran Team Rating Systems, MARS and ChiPS.

ChiPS also has Richmond in top spot, which is where it also had them at the end of season 2017, while MARS this week elevated Sydney into that position after Adelaide's loss to Essendon. 

ChiPS and MARS also make relatively larger adjustments in the early parts of a season and so have re-ranked 10 and 15 teams respectively, by as many as four places on ChiPS, and three places on MARS.

Looking across the rankings of all four Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder (which, let's be honest, doesn't provide a very useful assessment of team abilities at this point in the season, as numerous scientific endeavours with sample sizes of 1 have amply demonstrated), we find that:

• Essendon has the widest range of rankings, from 6th on MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS, to 11th on MARS
• West Coast has the next-widest range, from 8th on MARS to 13th on MoSSBODS
• St Kilda has the next-widest range, from 8th on MoSHBODS to 12th on ChiPS
• No other team is ranked more than three places differently across the four Systems