Flawed competition rewards mediocrity

[Demonsone 1,596]

Unbelievably Pies could finish 2nd if WC lose or 4th with only 1 win vs a top 8 side! So 13 wins against bottom 8 sides & finish as high as 2nd! 

Call me old fashion but finishing 2nd meant you had a number of wins against top sides! 

Would be interesting to see what the ladder would be if we only played each other once.

 

[sue 8,417]

3 minutes ago, Hogan2014 said:

Unbelievably Pies could finish 2nd if WC lose or 4th with only 1 win vs a top 8 side! So 13 wins against bottom 8 sides & finish as high as 2nd! 

Call me old fashion but finishing 2nd meant you had a number of wins against top sides! 

Would be interesting to see what the ladder would be if we only played each other once.

 

I doubt we'll hear much about that in the media. Just the sound of air being pumped into C'wood tyres,

[Biffen 12,323]

We are in a similar boat.We flogged weak teams and only beat one or two teams up the ladder.

We will see if our game holds up in September.

 

[Demonsone 1,596]

Just done some numbers on if we played each other once ... 

Pies 10 wins

Demond 9 wins with a game to go...

[Demonsone 1,596]

13 minutes ago, Biffen said:

We are in a similar boat.We flogged weak teams and only beat one or two teams up the ladder.

We will see if our game holds up in September.

 

Major difference finishing 8th vs 2nd or 4th 

[Biffen 12,323]

2 minutes ago, Hogan2014 said:

Major difference finishing 8th vs 2nd or 4th 

The Saints loss effectively cost us four ladder positions.

[Diamond_Jim 11,731]

4 minutes ago, Biffen said:

The Saints loss effectively cost us four ladder positions.

plus they (Collingwood) beat us

Edited August 25, 2018 by Diamond_Jim

[Lucifers Hero 36,991]

Interestingly the 17 game schedule doesn't make a lot of difference.  If played each other once ie 17 games.  Geelong drops out because they beat us twice.

Scroll half way down this article to find the discussion  https://www.theroar.com.au/2018/08/22/one-week-go/  (not sure what the 18 game schedule is).

		17-game sched				18-game sched
Club	GtoG	W	L	D	Pf/Pa	W	L	D	Pf/Pa
Richmond Tigers	1	12	4	0	426	13	4	0	434
West Coast Eagles	1	11	5	0	217	12	5	0	275
Hawthorn Hawks	0	11	6	0	335	12	6	0	346
Collingwood Magpies	0	11	6	0	299	12	6	0	319
GWS Giants	1	10	5	1	247	10	6	1	227
Sydney Swans	0	11	6	0	138	12	6	0	158
Port Adelaide Power	0	11	6	0	120	11	7	0	117
Melbourne Demons	1	10	6	0	350	10	7	0	348
Geelong Cats	0	10	7	0	389	10	8	0	378
Essendon Bombers	0	10	7	0	71	10	8	0	63
Adelaide Crows	0	10	7	0	43	11	7	0	46
N Melbourne Kangaroos	0	9	8	0	110	9	9	0	103
Western Bulldogs	1	6	10	0	-335	7	10	0	-328
Fremantle Dockers	0	6	11	0	-427	6	12	0	-485
Gold Coast Suns	0	4	13	0	-600	4	14	0	-604
St Kilda Saints	0	3	13	1	-415	4	13	1	-413
Brisbane Lions	1	3	13	0	-174	4	13	0	-170
Carlton Blues	0	1	16	0	-794	1	17	0	-814

Edited August 25, 2018 by Lucifer's Hero

[What 18,810]

Hate to say it but the Pies deserve their top 4 spot.  They've been absolutely smashed by injury and kept pushing on.  They also easy beat us on Queens Birthday.

Finals are a new season.....  lets see how things pan out, maybe we will meet them.

[Straight Sets Simon 23,113]

54 minutes ago, Hogan2014 said:

Unbelievably Pies could finish 2nd if WC lose or 4th with only 1 win vs a top 8 side! So 13 wins against bottom 8 sides & finish as high as 2nd! 

Call me old fashion but finishing 2nd meant you had a number of wins against top sides! 

Would be interesting to see what the ladder would be if we only played each other once.

 

It doesn't "reward mediocrity", it simply is the result of a 22 game season with 18 teams.

[Little Goffy 12,547]

It is important that the Pies finish top-4 so that two other clubs can have the pleasure of beating them in a final.

I'll confess a bit of sympathy and even respect for their team and coaching group this season, making progress despite a pretty rough run with injury. But that doesn't change the club they represent, and it is important that the club as a whole suffers horribly.

They are defintely stumbling into finals at the moment, but to say they don't deserve it is just sulky.

[Forest Demon 4,681]

I don't really buy this argument. Collingwood and Melbourne haven't fared as well against other top 8 sides, but at the same time, we haven't dropped multiple games against weaker sides, like Hawthorn, Geelong and other sides have, which is a battle in itself.

The finals will see if either us or Collingwood are good enough.

[Jibroni 4,037]

Hate to say it but the Pies have done a great job considering their injuries, deserve to be top 4

[Pates 9,536]

It is the flaw in our competition that we have 18 teams but only play a handful of teams twice. It's not equitable and teams like the Pies and us get rewarded with a softer draw that makes making finals a little easier for the following year. We're both in the same boat, but they took their chances better and managed to push to get some scrappy wins where we didn't. With their injury list, full credit to them.

Fact is we would be one of the rare competitions in the world where this is the case where you do play a home game and an away game against each team. It's because the athletic demands of our game are so much higher that we can't have midweek games like you would with soccer, basketball, baseball etc.

The NRL is in the same boat as us but I'd be interested to know if the Rubgy League in the UK makes sure each team plays each other twice.

My biggest gripe with the draw (apart from teams like Carlton and the Saints seemingly getting better commercial draws) is the fact that we play some teams twice before playing another team once.

[Demonsone 1,596]

4 hours ago, Petraccattack said:

Hate to say it but the Pies deserve their top 4 spot.  They've been absolutely smashed by injury and kept pushing on.  They also easy beat us on Queens Birthday.

Finals are a new season.....  lets see how things pan out, maybe we will meet them.

Really they had 1 win vs a top 8 team sit higher than the hawks who have had 5 wins vs top 8 team mmmm yeah they deserve it 

[Demonsone 1,596]

4 hours ago, Lucifer's Hero said:

Interestingly the 17 game schedule doesn't make a lot of difference.  If played each other once ie 17 games.  Geelong drops out because they beat us twice.

Scroll half way down this article to find the discussion  https://www.theroar.com.au/2018/08/22/one-week-go/  (not sure what the 18 game schedule is).

		17-game sched				18-game sched
Club	GtoG	W	L	D	Pf/Pa	W	L	D	Pf/Pa
Richmond Tigers	1	12	4	0	426	13	4	0	434
West Coast Eagles	1	11	5	0	217	12	5	0	275
Hawthorn Hawks	0	11	6	0	335	12	6	0	346
Collingwood Magpies	0	11	6	0	299	12	6	0	319
GWS Giants	1	10	5	1	247	10	6	1	227
Sydney Swans	0	11	6	0	138	12	6	0	158
Port Adelaide Power	0	11	6	0	120	11	7	0	117
Melbourne Demons	1	10	6	0	350	10	7	0	348
Geelong Cats	0	10	7	0	389	10	8	0	378
Essendon Bombers	0	10	7	0	71	10	8	0	63
Adelaide Crows	0	10	7	0	43	11	7	0	46
N Melbourne Kangaroos	0	9	8	0	110	9	9	0	103
Western Bulldogs	1	6	10	0	-335	7	10	0	-328
Fremantle Dockers	0	6	11	0	-427	6	12	0	-485
Gold Coast Suns	0	4	13	0	-600	4	14	0	-604
St Kilda Saints	0	3	13	1	-415	4	13	1	-413
Brisbane Lions	1	3	13	0	-174	4	13	0	-170
Carlton Blues	0	1	16	0	-794	1	17	0	-814

Love your work well done! 

Shows a very even competition!

[titan_uranus 22,284]

If we win today, we'll finish the season one win behind Collingwood.

We'll have one more win against the top 8 than them, but we'll also have two losses to the bottom 10 (Port Adelaide and St Kilda).

Collingwood had 14 games against the bottom 10 and won them all. If we hadn't dropped the St Kilda game then a win today would put us in front of them (and we'd be the side finishing 2nd or 3rd, not them).

[beelzebub 22,225]

14 hours ago, Pates said:

It is the flaw in our competition that we have 18 teams but only play a handful of teams twice. 

This ^^^^^^^

it skews the competition no end.

Either they bite the bullet big time and reorganise the h/a season by whatever means ( another time for the discussion of merits of which way )  or it just stays the tilted inequity that it is.

[Macca 16,173]

6 minutes ago, beelzebub said:

This ^^^^^^^

it skews the competition no end.

Either they bite the bullet big time and reorganise the h/a season by whatever means ( another time for the discussion of merits of which way )  or it just stays the tilted inequity that it is.

3 groups of 6 would work better but the resistance to change is immense so the idea has an almost zero chance of even being talked about. 

With a 3 group system all the teams would still play each other once whilst the teams within each group would all play 2 games each against their group rivals.

The winners & runners up from each group go through to the finals with the next 2 overall best performed teams (from any group) qualifying as well.  And then seeded accordingly.

The groups could change every year according to the strength of performance in the year prior. 

Or we leave it as it is now and put up with the flaws. 

[Tony Tea 2,786]

17 hours ago, Biffen said:

The Saints loss effectively cost us four ladder positions.

A typically Demonesque loss. So costly.