WheeloRatings

It potentially increases the chances of a team "tanking" in round 17. Lose this game and play the last five games against teams below you, or win this game and play the last five games against the best five teams. I'd almost want to see a conference system in place for the last five rounds if that approach was adopted - e.g. the last five rounds are used to rank teams within each group of six teams, but the top 6 teams are set after round 17 and 7-12 can play off for the last two spots. Alternatively, each team's last five games could be played against teams around them on the ladder but without specifically grouping teams into blocks. E.g. Top plays teams 2-6, 2nd plays against five of teams 1-7, 3rd plays against five of teams 1-8, etc. It can be random but within certain constraints like teams 4-15 need to play at least two teams above them and two teams below them. Regardless, I agree that the draw/fixture could definitely be improved and Geelong should not be playing four games against the likely 17 & 18!

I guess the issue with that approach (i.e. top 6 playing each other, 7-12 and 13-18 likewise) is that 6th gets a really tough final five rounds and much tougher than the teams in the next group. If 6th is a game ahead of 9th after 17 rounds, they could easily miss finals due to the much tougher final five rounds.

For what it's worth, here are the average ladder positions for each team's opponents this year, based on (a) last year's ladder position and (b) this year's projected ladder positions from https://squiggle.com.au/ladder/ Of course, ladder position isn't an authoritative ranking of team strength as teams may finish higher because they have an easier fixture and lower because of a harder fixture.

Here are the number of matches each team plays against each other based on last year's final ladder position. Geelong, Adelaide and Gold Coast are the three teams to play both West Coast and North Melbourne twice this year but I don't think the AFL can really base the fixture on how they think certain teams will perform.

Just an update on Richard Little's analysis. A lot of that analysis relied on access to the API behind the AFL app's "AR Tracker" which gave you access to the location of every possession, disposal, along with many other stats. It may be a coincidence (but probably not), but The West Australian ran an article last Friday morning with some of the data from the API and by Friday night the API was returning a 403 Forbidden response! It may not be possible to undertake that level of analysis any longer which is such a shame.

Yes, last year we were 1st in tackles and 1st in tackles inside 50, this year 16th and =4th. Here are the average tackles per match this year compared to last year (values in brackets are the number matches played): Player stats: https://www.wheeloratings.com/afl_stats.html Team stats: https://www.wheeloratings.com/afl_stats_team.html

Richard Little (https://twitter.com/alittlefitness) has been posting some interesting match previews and reviews on Twitter looking at stats which aren't typically reported, and trying to summarise each team's game style. Here is the preview for Melbourne v St Kilda but he has posted previews for all games this round.

First time poster here. For anyone interested, I have set up a website where I publish a wide variety of AFL stats for the last couple of seasons (among other things). @binman suggested I post the links to my site on this thread, which looks like a great read. Team Stats https://www.wheeloratings.com/afl_stats_team.html Player Stats https://www.wheeloratings.com/afl_stats.html