Category: Squiggle

Squiggle on Finals Week 1

Posted on

a.k.a. “Richmond goes wheeee!”

Throughout the season, the squiggle refused to rate Richmond any higher than a somewhat-above-average team. Now there are only six teams left, the Tigers are rated 3rd, i.e. still just on the better side of average. But they made a big move after holding Geelong to only 40 points, essentially pulling level with Adelaide in terms of raw form.

That’s still not enough for a flag, because squiggle respects the historical fact that attacking teams have outperformed defensive teams when it counts over the last two decades. So while the Tigers have a dream run to the Grand Final, avoiding both top teams and hosting an interstate opponent for a prelim, squiggle doubts they can contain the scoring power of Adelaide or Sydney if they get there.

Nevertheless, the Tigers are certainly close enough to give it a shake, which is just about the most exciting thing I’ve experienced in my entire football-following life. So that’s something.

There’s not a whole lot to say about Adelaide v GWS or Sydney v Essendon, both of which played out to expectation.

But Port v West Coast! Once again, the Power failed to knock off a well-rated opponent, although only just, in the cruelest possible way. Taking an 8 scoring shot advantage and turning it into 2 fewer goals and 10 more behinds is going to sink any team.

Despite all the evidence Port has offered to the contrary, there’s still reason to believe they’re a very good team, and if they can avoid self-immolating over the off-season, they could follow in the footsteps of Sydney 2015, who kicked themselves out of their first final against Fremantle (7.18 to 10.9), then rebounded the next year to win the minor premiership and contest the Grand Final. Port’s stumbles in 2017 have been absurd, dramatic and memorable, so it’s easy to forget they annihilated the bottom tier of the competition, beat most of the middle tier, and weren’t too far off the rest, while recording wins over Sydney and West Coast.

Meanwhile, the Eagles are lurking just close enough to be dangerous. All year, they’ve been thereabouts, competitive in practically every game, including those against everyone they have to beat for the flag. They are rightly underdogs, but having landed on the soft side of the draw, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the Eagles could defeat the Giants, who they only lost to by 8 points earlier this year, then Richmond, who they lost to by 11, and then take on Sydney or Adelaide, both of whom they’ve beaten.

An Eagles flag would be mind-boggling, given they were unlikely even to make finals a few rounds ago. In another year, I’d say it was fanciful, because normally we have at least one truly dominant team plus a tradition of rested Qualifying Final winners beating up Semi-Finalists. But this year, our top two in Adelaide and Sydney haven’t created as much separation from the field, you only have to beat one of them (unless you’re Geelong), and there’s the unknown quantity of the pre-finals bye in play. So almost anything is within the realms of possibility.

On flagpole, it’s bombs away and lights out!

Richmond squeak into 3rd even with the heavily defensive game plan that Flagpole abhors. And Geelong are still rated pretty well, even though in the real world everyone has concluded that they are the worst football team to ever play the game and who will win that Adelaide v Sydney prelim.

Geelong Cats v Sydney Swans

There’s a long history, of course, of people overrating Elimination Final winners and underrating Qualifying Final losers. But it’s still hard to see Sydney dropping this one: They’re a premiership favourite who finished much lower on the ladder than their form suggested, while the Cats made top 4 on the back of a few close wins and didn’t fire a shot against the Tigers.

GWS Giants vs West Coast Eagles

This one is harder to pick, with neither team having stood out over the season, but both also refusing to go away. In a neutral venue, squiggle would pick the Eagles, but only just; in NSW, it gives it to the Giants.

I’m just going to stare at that for a while now. I basically made that Squiggle Doors function just so I would have an excuse to imagine Richmond Grand Finals in alternate universes. Now there might be one in this one! That’s even better.

By the way, I would also like to take this moment to enjoy when hardly anybody has started hating Richmond crowds yet. I know that’s coming, because Richmond crowds when the Tigers are on the verge of success are the fucking worst. Not for me. They’re fine for me, because I’m wearing yellow and black. But for other teams’ supporters. I didn’t see anything bad at the Geelong game, but I’ve been to every final of the last five years, and they bring out plenty of mentally damaged individuals who have been psychologically broken by the last 35 years of heartache and now clearly believe they are the plaything of a malevolent deity who can only be banished by a spray of alcohol-fueled insults. If we make a Grand Final, it’s going to be so ugly. I mean win or lose, either way, there is going to be some shit on display. So it’s nice to get in before that.

Discuss on BigFooty!

Models Leaderboard After Home & Away

Posted on

2017 has been a rough year for tipping, even tougher than 2016, which itself was a wake-up call after the lovely, predictable Hawthorn dynasty.

Sadly, none of the models managed to outperform the bookies in tipping winners head-to-head during the Home & Away season, nor in terms of probabilistic Bits.

Tips Bits MAE Correct
Punters

4 8 4 7 7 6 3 5 5 7 4 4 3 7 5 5 7 6 6 9 8 7 5

 132 22.1970 66.7%
PlusSixOne

5 8 4 7 6 6 3 5 6 7 3 3 2 8 5 7 7 5 6 5 8 7 6

 129 17.9055 28.89 65.2%

5 9 4 6 7 6 3 5 4 7 4 3 2 6 5 5 6 7 7 8 6 6 7

 128 17.5804 64.6%

3 8 5 6 7 7 4 5 4 7 4 1 3 6 4 6 8 7 7 8 6 6 6

 128 16.3202 28.87 64.6%

5 7 5 6 6 6 4 5 7 7 3 2 3 7 3 5 7 5 7 7 7 7 7

 128 15.4157 30.11 64.6%
Aggregate

5 8 4 6 7 6 3 5 5 7 3 3 2 6 4 5 7 6 7 8 7 6 5

 125 20.1305 28.92 63.1%

5 7 5 6 6 6 3 5 5 7 3 3 3 6 4 6 7 6 6 7 7 6 6

 125 16.5200 29.03 63.1%

4 7 4 6 7 6 3 5 5 7 4 3 2 6 3 5 6 6 7 8 8 6 5

 123 18.6520 28.73 62.1%

5 8 5 5 5 6 3 5 5 8 4 2 2 7 3 6 7 6 6 7 6 5 6

 122 17.0455 29.79 61.6%

A particularly rough year for Squiggle’s in-house tipping algorithm, which came in dead last and didn’t deserve to be any higher. But very credible performances elsewhere, especially from Plus Six One (for the second year in a row), and it’s worth noting The Arc‘s chart-topping Mean Average Error in a year when the line-ball games didn’t fall their way.

I was curious this year to see what kind of performance the Aggregate would have, where it represents a simple average of everyone else’s tips. Would there be some kind of wisdom of the crowds effect, where it could outperform most of the individual models that provided its inputs? Well, kind of: It landed mid-table in terms of tips and MAE, but with more Bits than all models. So there could be something there.

Apologies for finals tipping being a little shaky at the moment: Apparently everyone (including Squiggle) uses different formatting for posting their finals tips, and squiggle-bot needs to learn how to parse it.

Finals Week 1 Preview

Posted on

There’s been a clear top 2 for a while, and it’s Adelaide and Sydney, who are the first and sixth teams on the ladder. If it were one year ago, everyone would be writing Sydney off, as no team had ever come from outside the top 4 to make the Grand Final, let alone win it. But the Bulldogs changed that, and then spent this season dropping hints that it wasn’t because they had become a superstar team without anyone noticing.

So it’s all bets off, as far as I’m concerned, and current form is king.

Adelaide Crows v GWS Giants

The Crows started the year with a series of high-scoring matches, propelling them vertically up the chart. Then before you could say “premiership favourite,” they were humiliated in consecutive matches by a Spoonbowl contestant and a team that didn’t want to play finals if it meant having to beat Collingwood.

Since then, though, Adelaide have toughened up defensively while retaining most of their attacking power.

The Giants began the year as the second-ranked team and fell as injury bit. They could easily have finished outside the top 4, but managed to scrounge together enough close wins and draws to give themselves a straight shot at a Grand Final. It’s been that sort of year for GWS, with few outstanding performances and plenty of shaky ones that haven’t cost them.

Geelong Cats v Richmond Tigers

We need to zoom out a bit further for this one, because Richmond started the year ranked as a bottom 6 team. That means that not only did they have a bad 2016, but they didn’t show anything toward the end of the year that suggested a rise was on the cards, either. But rise they did, becoming a low-scoring but defensively formidable team. And in the final two games, they showed some attacking power as well.

The Cats are in a similar area, but have trod a far more meandering path, with a season that was never too good nor too bad for too long. They’ve demolished poor teams and recorded solid wins over good ones, but also had a raft of eyebrow-raising performances, such as losing to Gold Coast and squeaking home against Fremantle and North Melbourne. As such, it’s hard to draw a steady bead on the Cats, or find anything like a trend.

Sydney Swans v Essendon Bombers

Hard to say which line is more extraordinary: Essendon’s emergence from the absolute bottom to reach finals, or Sydney’s tale of a season in two parts. The Swans were never quite as out of form as their ladder position of 16th at the mid-season bye suggested, but there’s a clear inflection point here, with an early slide arrested and then dismissed as if it never happened. Since Round 7, the Swans have become once again a completely typical Sydney side, of the kind that made the Grand Final in 2014 & 2016 and won it in 2012. There’s an alluring discipline about them, with no really head-scratching performances after those first 6 rounds.

Essendon similarly took 7 rounds to really get going, notwithstanding their emotion-charged Round 1 win over the Hawks. They’ve made finals on the back of a mid-season stretch that saw them account for Geelong, West Coast, Port Adelaide, and St Kilda, during which time they also didn’t fall too short of Sydney, GWS, and Richmond. The last month has been shakier, though, with the Bombers losing comprehensively to Adelaide and the Bulldogs, while not showing terribly much against Gold Coast and Fremantle.

Port Adelaide Power vs West Coast Eagles

All year the Eagles have delivered roughly what you would expect: sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, but never too far beyond expectation. They stand in stark contrast to Port Adelaide, who, when they’re on, are very, very on. When they’re off, Port are still usually competitive, but it’s that gap between their regular setting and the turbo charge switch they flip against lower sides in Gold Coast, Fremantle, Brisbane, and Carlton that has earned them the “flat track bully” moniker.

That’s probably undeserved, even though they haven’t proved it yet. The Power have been a candidate for Top Four for most of the year, holding the league’s second-best percentage, while the Eagles have spent it skirting the fringes of the Eight. If the results of other games had gone only slightly differently, Port could easily be playing a Qualifying Final this weekend with the Eagles players on holiday.

Squiggle on Round 23

Posted on

Animated!

You know I don’t believe in the whole idea of Flat Track Bullies, but god damn, Port Adelaide, you are making it difficult. The Power grew ten feet tall upon spotting a spindly, bedraggled Gold Coast, and proceeded to pound the snot out of them, while periodically stopping to flex and grin at nearby girls, and slicking back their hair with a comb. God damn you, Port Adelaide. That’s so uncool.

When Sydney curb-stomped their bottom-4 opponent, they had a little class. They were positively gentlemanly in allowing Carlton to kick 8.9, compared to the Power’s nipple-cripple of the Suns that permitted just 3.2 20.

Port Adelaide’s performance was mainly impressive for its miserliness, since scoring 135 against Gold Coast isn’t that special. It’s only 30 points more than the average team puts past the Suns. As such, the Power go shoooooting off to the right, but don’t climb much vertically. The Swans, on the other hand, see mainly vertical gains after scoring 138 against a significantly better defense.

Gold Coast finish the year as the worst-ranked team, seeing off a challenge from Fremantle.

The Cats and Tigers both had impressive wins. After some accurate goal-shooting against the Saints, Richmond are almost starting to look like a normal team, i.e. one that can score. In fact, the team that Richmond most resembles right now is Geelong, so it’s fitting that they get to Highlander it in a Qualifying Final.

I hope you appreciated my cool detachment in that previous paragraph. I’m like, sure, I write about Richmond making a QF all the time. No biggie. You can’t even tell I have my legs crossed like super tight.

And now for Melbourne. I take no joy in Melbourne. It’s a bit surprising because I was really pissed at Melbourne after the whole Jordan McMahon game thing. But no, apparently I have no more schadenfreude to give. This one sucks, Melbourne. Here is the tragedy of Melbourne in tower form:

And on Flagpole:

Is now a good time to mention that Squiggle was tipping a Swans v Adelaide Grand Final before the start of the year? I feel like yes.

Still no freaking love for the Tigers.

Last year, Squiggle had an impressive 67% hit rate in tipping finals that didn’t involve the Western Bulldogs. After including the Dogs, it was a bit less impressive, going 3-6 (33%). But 2016 was a strange year; the home (higher-placed) team has won finals regularly since 2000, going at about 72%. So you’re normally pretty safe backing them.

Finals previews to come sometime!

Squiggle on Round 20

Posted on

That was a big round of football!

Sometimes a round is full of crucial matches and they turn out to be close games, so, sure, they’re entertaining, but you don’t learn a whole lot about either team, other than that they’re evenly matched.

Then you have rounds like this one!

Adelaide firmed into a solid, erect position, thrusting firmly into the open, inviting premiership zone. That’s quite a trajectory you’ve made there, Adelaide. There’s a real cockiness about it. It came about after a graphic display against the Power, the Crows taking a liking to the wet, slippery conditions and dominating, especially the behinds (18.22 to 7.4).

Less phallically, Sydney demolished Geelong to move into that part of the chart I should really just go ahead and name THE SYDNEY AREA, because the last season they didn’t spend time there was 2010. No-one else wants to live there, Sydney. It’s really just you and whoever Ross Lyon was coaching at the time. But you keep coming back, year after year.

The week belonged to those two teams, who put a lot of space between them and the rest of the field.

But it was also terrific for Richmond! In fact, I now think Richmond is going to win the flag. This is not supported at all by squiggle. It’s more of a vibe. I’ll explain more below.

It was an interesting week if you’re on Scoring Shot Watch. Essendon’s victory over Carlton wasn’t so narrow (11.18 to 11.10), Collingwood’s over North wasn’t so great (16.15 to 7.15), and GWS really destroyed Melbourne (14.13 to 10.2). Fremantle put away Gold Coast pretty handily, too (12.18 to 10.7).

Gold Coast have had a pretty ordinary second half to the year after a promising start. So have North Melbourne, who were far more competitive a few months ago, even though they weren’t winning games.

And on the chart, Carlton and Freo became one. Think about that for a moment. It’s horrible, isn’t it. There is literally nothing good about that for anyone.

This time of year, the Season Predictor becomes less helpful, because with so few matches remaining, you can just about figure things out yourself. Also it averages out a team’s chances of winning each match, which works much better over the long-term than just three games.

But Tower of Power is always interesting! Lots of movement this week:

Most noticeable is Adelaide turning into a banner ad in the #1 spot. It would take an Adelaide-grade implosion for them to miss from here. Of course, if anyone can do an Adelaide-grade implosion, it’s Adelaide. But top spot is almost certainly theirs.

The trapdoor opened up beneath Geelong, but with games against Richmond (at Kardinia), North, and GWS, they still have a pretty good path to 2nd. And with a 1.5 win break over 5th, things would have to go horribly wrong for them to miss the top 4.

Since Geelong, GWS and Richmond play each other in the remaining three rounds, the effect of each result is magnified. So right now those three teams have a pretty even chance of finishing 2nd, and it will go to whichever of them manages to stand up.

The desolation of Port Adelaide left a lot of room for Sydney and Richmond to move into.

And the Bulldogs still have a remarkable array of plausible finishes! They have a 5% chance or better in every slot from 4th (where Geelong lose a lot) to 11th.

On Flagpole, it’s good night to the Hawks:

And otherwise the usual story. Adelaide are surrounded by premiership cups on the main chart; they are going to be 1st.

Now: Why Richmond will win the flag!

Obviously I’m 100% only writing this because I’m a Richmond supporter. Squiggle doesn’t foresee good things for Richmond in the finals. But this section applies to other teams as well.

It’s all about the killer bye. The bye is bad, for mysterious reasons, and has always been bad, going back decades. More specifically, it’s bad for teams that had a bye last week when their opponent didn’t. There is plenty of data on this: Those teams underperform.

The only mystery has been why the bye becomes good when you get one thanks to a qualifying final victory. In those cases, the bye works like it’s supposed to, and they win repeatedly and reliably.

Until last year, when we had a pre-finals bye for the first time, and after winning Qualifying Finals, Geelong and GWS both lost. Instead, the Bulldogs won the flag from 7th. Now we all know that had never been done before, which is remarkable enough in itself. But what makes it amazing, and a little suspicious, is that no-one came close before.

If the Final Eight system offers a reasonable chance for 7th to win the flag, you would expect, at some point this century, a team to have at least made the Grand Final from 5th or 6th. Not win the premiership; just make the GF. But nope.

For 16 years, we had a near-perfect statistical distribution where the team that finished 1st was most likely to make the GF and win the flag, then the team that finished 2nd was, then 3rd, and then 4th could make the GF sometimes but never win the flag. And 5th-8th never made the GF.

Then in 2016, 7th wins the flag!

It may well be that 2016 was just one of those years, and the Bulldogs one of those teams, and it’ll never happen again. But another explanation is that this answers the mystery of why the Qualifying Final winner bye was good: It was only because it came right at the very end of the year, when all teams were exhausted, which caused the restorative benefits to outweigh the usual negative effect. But since the AFL introduced a pre-finals bye last year, that benefit vanished, and all that’s left is the usual killer bye, where teams that had a week off do worse against teams that didn’t.

This makes me far less certain that it’s necessary to (a) finish top 4 and (b) win a qualifying final to take out the premiership. The fact that the Bulldogs did it last year makes it less certain, and the possibility that it’s due to the pre-finals bye makes it doubly uncertain. It may even be bad to finish top 4 and win a qualifying final.

If so, it’s a far more open race to the flag than anyone thinks. A team like Sydney, in fine form but up against it to make the top 4, has a perfect run to the flag. A team like Richmond, who might finish 4th but be unable to beat 1st in a Qualifying Final, has a much better shot at redemption than history would suggest. And a team like the Bulldogs, or Essendon, who in previous years would be dismissed as just making up the numbers, can actually go all the way if only they find form at the right time.

The only certainty of the finals campaign this year may be that the form team wins no matter where they placed on the ladder.

That aside, the other reason why I think Richmond will win the flag is that statistical analysis like squiggle is only about what’s most likely to happen. Unlikely things happen all the time. They happen all the time in football. I’ve followed the Tigers my whole life and I wasn’t paying much attention to football the last time we were anything like a flag threat, so I don’t want to spoil this one with an over-reliance on what stats say usually tends to happen. I’m going to roll with the fact that anything might.

Discuss on BigFooty!

Squiggle on Round 19

Posted on

Honestly, Squiggle is no good this week. It was one of the greatest rounds of football in history; I can’t add anything to it with charts.

That’s the good stuff. Miracles happening right in front of your face.

But since we’re here:

Animated!

A good week for the Cats, who belted Carlton while the Crows, Swans, and Power struggled. It was just a little spoiled by the fact that Adelaide’s last-gasp draw against Collingwood was no good to the Crows for anything other than pride and finishing above Geelong, since now their percentage matters again. Assuming no more draws, that is. Of course, three weeks ago I said, “assuming no more draws,” and there were immediately two more. Teams are drawing all over the place. So who knows.

These 11-goal-wins-over-bad-teams are the kinds of games that squiggle rates and humans don’t. They’re easy to overlook, because you expect the better team to win comfortably. But it’s worth taking notice when the margin is 70-odd instead of 30.

It’s also worth looking at scoring shots. This year I’ve been trialling a new algorithm in the background that will probably take over from the venerable ISTATE-91:12 in powering squiggle next year. One of the main differences is that it pays attention to scoring shots, since teams don’t tend to remain unusually accurate (or inaccurate) for very long. Most weeks it doesn’t make a huge difference, but this week Squiggle 2.0 rates GWS much higher for their 13.20 to Fremantle’s 13.8, as well as Richmond for defeating Gold Coast 14.14 to 10.5. Geelong’s victory over Carlton becomes even more emphatic (18.15 to 8.10), and Essendon (13.19) look a lot more competitive against the Bulldogs (19.13). Also St Kilda get a technical victory against Port (8.13 to 9.9), as do Collingwood over Adelaide (15.13 to 16.7).

Meanwhile, after Adelaide’s slide, Sydney are now rated the #1 form team! Just. That’s based on their strength in home & away matches; finals will be a little different, both because Sydney are unlikely to finish high enough to get home finals, and because they’re more of a defensive specialist than most premiership teams.

A bit of separation has emerged after the top 2, with Adelaide and Geelong likely to claim those spots. Then Port, GWS, and Richmond form a tier, for the moment, being the most likely to take out 3rd to 5th. Sydney are the most likely to jump up alongside them.

On the Tower, the long, snake-like tendrils of Hawthorn are creeping upward:

That’s a pretty significant chance of a Hawks finals campaign for a team that’s spent most of the season eyeing off 17th.

But there’s a bit of a hard line below that, formed by Collingwood. Basically if you’re better than Collingwood, you might play finals, but if you’re worse than Collingwood, you can’t. Also you can’t if you’re Collingwood.

North’s continuation of their long-running curb stomp over Melbourne had the unfortunate side-effect of making a Round 23 SpoonBowl vs Brisbane less likely. But we can always hope.

This week’s adjusted Flagpole has the Swans slip below the Cats! On original Flagpole, as seen on https://live.squiggle.com.au, Sydney are still a clear 2nd. So I’m not sure about that. But we’ll go with it for now:

Discuss on BigFooty!

Squiggle on Round 18

Posted on

Animated!

Every week I say, “It was Adelaide’s week,” and you know what? It’s Adelaide’s week. It has to be when they put away the 2nd team while a likely 3rd and 4th in GWS and Port Adelaide turn to water. Literally, in GWS’s case. I was at that game. Super wet. Adelaide missing the Top 2 from here would require something extraordinary, like when Adelaide missed Top 4 last year, or Adelaide failed to finish 1st in 2006. Actually, Adelaide does this a lot. But those are coincidences, probably.

Sydney are rolling on, too. In fact, let’s skip right ahead to the brand new Flagpole, which I redesigned due to popular whinging. This one builds in a penalty based on the team’s likelihood of making finals, so flags can no longer fly high on teams with no realistic chance of making the Top 8. More detail to come in another post sometime. The Swans still sit second even though they have more chance of missing finals altogether than their rivals:

There was an article by Rohan Connolly about how the pre-finals bye may mean it’s better than it used to be to finish 5th-8th, since you get to play more than a single game in a month of football, unlike the Qualifying Final winners, who have to sit around waiting for longer than is really ideal. That would be handy for the Swans, if the year that they get off to an 0-6 start, they don’t actually need to finish Top 4. Then again, if they keep up their current form, they’ll snag that anyway, because this is also the year when you won’t need many wins for 4th.

Speaking of 4th, that’s where Richmond now sits on the official ladder. Squiggle, however, probably won’t have any faith in Richmond until Trent Cotchin is on the dias holding the premiership cup. Oooh. That felt good to write. I mean, squiggle is so down on Richmond, it wouldn’t rate us if the team was jogging a victory lap of the MCG as “Yellow and Black” reverberates around and I cry hot salty tears of three decades of pent-up frustration while hugging the old guy in the seat next to me and it’s the best day of my life, it’s just the best day ever, oh God, oh God.

Squiggle can’t get past the fact that Richmond has the third-weakest attack in the league. To be sure, it’s hard to kick a lot of goals in a swimming pool. But the Tigers have been low-scoring all year, and low-scoring teams don’t win premierships. Sometimes, moderately-scoring teams with excellent defences do it. Not often. Not as often as you’d expect, given how many try. But sometimes. Richmond are far short even of that mark.

Hawthorn showed a lot in dispatching Fremantle away, but given that finals are probably out of reach, it doesn’t seem to mean a whole lot. Aside sticking it to St Kilda over that first round draft pick. That’s something.

I want to be hard on Port Adelaide, because it was another disappointing performance by a team that should be capable of more than this, but I actually watched some of the game and Melbourne were red hot. And losing by 23 points (23 scoring shots to 20) interstate to a team that’s challenging for Top 4 is not too shabby. The Inside 50 count was pretty lopsided. But still, it wasn’t exactly a capitulation, and isn’t reason to give up on the Power.

In fact, the ladder predictor still has Port for 4th. But it’s pretty ridiculous:

Thirteen wins for third place would be obscene and probably won’t happen, not unless we get a long-running repeat of that popular game show from last year, “Who Wants to Drop a Critical Game?”

But what it shows is that it’s wide open from 3rd down to 9th or 10th, and Top 4 spots are going cheap.

It was a brutal weekend for West Coast, who dropped a very winnable game while Sydney, Richmond, Melbourne, Essendon, and the Bulldogs all won. That’s knife-in-the-heart stuff.

St Kilda were up against it with Sydney away, and not really expected to win. But they didn’t look much like a finals team, either, and so also faded, partly because of new pressure from the Hawks from below.

But the Lions won! This raises the real possibility of a last-round spoonfight between Brisbane and North Melbourne. Now that’s entertainment.

Discuss on BigFooty!

Squiggle on Round 17

Posted on

Round 17 already! The season’s nearly over. Before you know it, there will be nothing on TV and you’ll have to try to get excited about cricket. I just can’t do that any more. I was ruined by the golden age of Waugh, Gilchrist, McGrath, Warne et al. It’s just lucky I support Richmond, so I can follow footy for decades on end without ever being spoiled by success.

Things are getting messy in there. But look at Essendon go! Or even better, look at them on this chart, showing this year’s improvers:

That’s a mighty rise, especially considering how far back they were. And it’s come in fits and starts, with plenty of breakout wins (over Hawthorn, Geelong, West Coast, Port Adelaide, allllmost Sydney, and now St Kilda) and terrible losses (to Brisbane, Fremantle and Carlton). But when the Bombers are on, they’re on, and they’re on track to make the finals:

The other promising thing about Essendon is that they can score. They’re a balanced team, which is good, but they’re erring on the side of Attack rather than Defence, which is even better, because it’s the attacking sides that have proven the more effective flag collectors over the last few decades. Essendon still have a way to go, and can’t afford to take a two-steps-forward-one-step-back approach into September, if they make it at all, but it’s been a really promising year.

It was another good week for Adelaide, who were 7+ goals to the good of Melbourne. That combined with GWS’s loss to Sydney makes for a happy weekend, the only real downer being the increasing likelihood of sharing Top 4 with Port. Because that would mean no home ground advantage in a final, I mean. Not just because they hate them. But also that.

Richmond are tipped for 5th but there’s a big chance that Sydney will swallow up that spot, leaving 6th-9th to be fought out between the Tigers, Eagles, Demons, and Bombers, with the Saints and Bulldogs capable of sneaking in as well.

While the Dogs currently sit 11th on the ladder and are also tipped to finish there, that’s something of a hard floor for them. They’re currently a game and percentage clear of Fremantle, who won’t be overtaking anybody, and two games and percentage clear of Hawthorn, who otherwise might. So things probably won’t get worse for the Bulldogs, but might get significantly better.

It was a horrible result for St Kilda, who were the latest team to pull on the boots of Top Four Fancydom, take one step, and strangle to death on the laces. Not only did they get thrashed and give away the four premiership points to a fellow contender in Essendon, but every team around them except Melbourne won.

Brisbane lost, but not by as much as the squiggle expected, even though it already thought Richmond were filthy pretenders. With North Melbourne’s decreasing interest in playing football this year, the Lions are looking a little less like a sure thing for the wooden spoon each week.

Flagpole! You know how this goes.

Discuss on BigFooty!

Tip Leaderboard after Round 17

Posted on

The Tip Leaderboard has developed a bit of spread over the last few weeks! PlusSixOne has pulled away to a whopping four tips lead over the next best model, and it’s leading in Bits as well:

Tips Bits
PlusSixOne

5 8 4 7 6 6 3 5 6 7 3 3 2 8 5 7 7

 92 9.5796
Punters

4 8 4 7 7 6 3 5 5 7 4 4 3 7 5 5 7

 91 8.0603

5 7 5 6 6 6 4 5 7 7 3 2 3 7 3 5 7

 88 3.6086

3 8 5 6 7 7 4 5 4 7 4 1 3 6 4 6 8

 88 2.7082

5 7 5 6 6 6 3 5 5 7 3 3 3 6 4 6 7

 87 4.6444

5 9 4 6 7 6 3 5 4 7 4 3 2 6 5 5 6

 87 4.0108
Aggregate

5 8 4 6 7 6 3 5 5 7 3 3 2 6 4 5 7

 86 7.3906

5 8 5 5 5 6 3 5 5 8 4 2 2 7 3 6 7

 86 4.1921

4 7 4 6 7 6 3 5 5 7 4 3 2 6 3 5 6

 83 6.1518

“Bits” from Monash University Probabilistic Footy Tipping rewards tipsters for saying a win was likely and punishes them for saying it was unlikely.

New to Squiggle is Graft Ratings! Head on over for beautiful tips and projections of all kinds. Graft is having what appears to be a typical model year so far, sitting solidly in the 86-88 tip bracket.

And The Arc can be justifiably feeling a little screwed, with the worst tip numbers despite very respectable Bits and MAE (stats available on the main leaderboard page).