Richmond took 1st place on MoSSBODS this week, relegating Brisbane Lions into 2nd, while the fast-rising Western Bulldogs leapt up into 3rd. On MoSHBODS, Richmond retained 1st, while 2nd and 3rd were filled by the climbing Western Bulldogs, and a drifting Geelong.

Amazingly, all but three teams moved places on MoSSBODS, and all but two moved on MoSHBODS.

The big movers on MoSSBODS were Collingwood (up 3 spots into 5th), GWS (down 3 spots into 9th), and Port Adelaide (down 4 spots into 7th), while those on MoSHBODS were Collingwood (up 5 spots into 4th), Western Bulldogs (up 4 spots into 2nd), North Melbourne, Sydney and Essendon (up 3 spots each), GWS (down 5 spots into 9th), and Port Adelaide, Melbourne, and Fremantle (down 3 spots each). No other team moved by more than 2 spots on either System.

Despite all that reshuffling, the two Systems now differ in their rankings of only three teams by exactly three spots (Brisbane Lions, Port Adelaide and St Kilda), and just one team, West Coast, by more than three spots. The Eagles are 10th on MoSSBODS and 6th on MoSHBODS.

On MoSSBODS, 1st and 17th (sic) are now separated by only 6.5 Scoring Shots (and 3rd and 10th by only 2.3 Scoring Shots), and on MoSHBODS 3rd and 12th are separated by only 15.7 points.

The underlying Combined MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Team Ratings are even more highly correlated this week.

MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS now rate the same 10 teams as being above-average (those in the upper-right quadrant of the chart above).

On the Component Ratings, on offence we see Brisbane Lions still in top spot on MoSSBODS, with the Western Bulldogs snatching top spot on MoSHBODS, while on defence Richmond remains 1st on MoSSBODS and has reclaimed 1st on MoSHBODS.

On offence, no team is ranked more than two places differently by the two Systems, but on defence we have the Brisbane Lions 7th on MoSSBODS and 13th on MoSHBODS, Port Adelaide 6th on MoSSBODS and 10th on MoSHBODS, and West Coast 10th on MoSSBODS and 6th on MoSHBODS.

All things considered, the two Systems have fairly similar ideas about the relative abilities of most teams, albeit that they might order them slightly differently.

On MoSSBODS, 8 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (up 3), 4 are rated negatively on both (down 1), none are rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (no change), and 6 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (down 2).

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

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

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

Next, let’s compare each team’s current ratings with those of teams from the past at the same point in their respective seasons (ie after 22 rounds of the home-and-away season). Note that we lose any team from a season with a home-and-away portion that didn’t span at least 22 rounds.

Teams shown as red points are teams that eventually finished premiers, and those shown in orange finished as runners up.

It remains the case that no team has a Combined Rating above the median for all previous Grand Finalists at this point in the season, but now Western Bulldogs have joined Richmond and Brisbane Lions as the only teams above the lowest decile. At the other end, St Kilda, Adelaide, Sydney, Carlton, Melbourne, Fremantle, Essendon, and Gold Coast all have Combined Ratings lower than that of any previous Grand Finalist at this point in the season.

If we focus purely on the seasons from 2000 onwards, we find, again, only Richmond, Brisbane Lions, and Western Bulldogs above the lowest decile.

As another way of gaining some historical context, this week I thought we’d compare the current MoSHBODS and MoSSBODS Ratings of the 2019 confirmed and potential Finalists with the Ratings of all the Finalists from 2000 to 2018, coloured by where they bowed out of the race.

The obvious conclusion is that, whichever Rating System you choose, there are no outstanding teams this year, and that many of them might only have been expected to go as far as the Semi-Finals or, maybe, to a Preliminary Final, in previous years. Still, there’s one more round for teams to venture a little further northeast.

The following animation shows the path that each team has followed, at the end of each round, to get to its current MoSSBODS rating.

ChiPS left Richmond in top spot this week, and Geelong in 2nd, but promoted Collingwood into 3rd after demoting West Coast and Brisbane Lions. MARS, for the second week in a row, left Geelong in 1st, West Coast in 2nd, and Richmond in 3rd. Richmond’s rating lead over Geelong on ChiPS is still just under 7 Rating Points, while Geelong’s lead over West Coast on MARS remains at 6.6 Rating Points.

As we saw for the MoS twins, we see considerable Ratings compression on ChiPS and MARS as well. On ChiPS, 2nd to 5th are separated by only just over 3 Rating Points, and 6th to 13th by just under 10 Rating Points.

For MARS, we have 2nd to 5th separated by just 6 Rating Points, and 6th to 10th by just under 7 Rating Points.

ChiPS and MARS both re-ranked 11 teams this week, with only Port Adelaide and Adelaide, both down 3 places on ChiPS, moving by more than two spots on either System.

That’s left the two of them disagreeing about the ranking of only Sydney, Port Adelaide, and Fremantle by more than two places.

We can see the continuing high level of correlation between ChiPS and MARS Ratings by charting them.

Looking across the rankings of all four Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder, we find that:

• West Coast and Western Bulldogs have the widest range of rankings (for West Coast, from 2nd on MARS to 10th on MoSSBODS, and for Western Bulldogs from 2nd on MoSHBODS to 10th on MARS)

• St Kilda and Sydney have the next-widest range of rankings (for St Kilda from 11th on MoSSBODS to 17th on MARS, and for Sydney, from 7th on ChiPS to 13th on MoSSBODS)

• Essendon is next (from 12th on ChiPS to 17th on MoSSBODS)

No other team is ranked more than four places differently across the four Systems, but it’s fairly extraordinary to have even this much disagreement about team rankings so deep into the season. As we’ve noted before, that’s in part due to the relatively small differences in the underlying Ratings in all of the Systems, which means (say) that an 11th might not be all that different from a 5th.

Gold Coast is the only team ranked identically by all four Systems, but seven other teams’ rankings cover only two or three values.

Essendon remain ranked between 5 and 10 places lower by the various Rating Systems than they are by the competition ladder, while the Brisbane Lions are ranked between 4 places lower by the all but MoSSBODS than they are by the competition ladder.