Don’t let the loud voices distract you from the fact that Damian Barrett has delivered three fantastic preseason ladder predictions in a row.
Since he finished dead last in Squiggle’s 2019 Rate My Ladder analysis, Barrett has improved every year to become a reliable source of preseason insight. And 2024 was his best yet, smoking not just the rest of the AFL punditry, but all the models, too.
Look at this thing! Sure, he had the Hawks last, and only got 5 of the top 8. But the top 4 are all there. And this was a tough year.
If you’re ready to hop on board the Barrett train, you can find his 2025 predictions here. Or view all collected 2025 predicted ladders from both media experts and models.
As usual, models did better than pundits on average, filling half the top 10 slots but few of the lower ones.
Top 10 preseason ladder predictions
I have also managed to get the Ladder Scoreboard back online after it collapsed last year under the weight of Round 0 bugs. Hooray!
Every year, the AFL unexpectedly releases the fixture on the first day of my holidays. Then thirty seconds later people start messaging to ask when I’m updating the site.
This year, I was in line to board my plane at Melbourne Airport. I’m about to attempt to run a half-marathon up Mt. Wellington in Hobart, by the way, so if I don’t make it back, that’s what happened.
Anyway, Squiggle is now updated for 2024, except for all the things that immediately broke because of Round 0. It will take a while until I get home and take a look at why the in-house model apparently thinks Fremantle are red-hot for next year, and whether that’s legit. I don’t think it’s super urgent because although this model has an outstanding track record, that’s based on final preseason predictions, made once we have info on off-season injuries as well as practice matches, which can change the numbers a lot.
But we have 2024 games up the top, we’re collecting 2024 tips & predictions from models, and you can use the ladder predictor, so, you know, priorities.
You can’t tell, but the first character of “0pen” above is a zero. Because the AFL realized that when everyone wants different things in the first round, it’s easier to accomodate them if you have two first rounds.
So Round 1, 2024 will be the 2nd round. And the first round, if you have to give it a number, will be 0.
That’s problematic for people like me, because I do have to give rounds numbers, and Round 0 is how I’ve always designated ratings and predictions generated prior to the start of a season. So now I have to choose:
Stick to the same numbering scheme, so “1” still means the first round, and “2” the second, etc. This would be ridiculous, because no matter how careful we all are, it will be endlessly confusing for “2” to mean “Round 1.”
Change the numbering scheme, so that “0” means “Opening Round,” and “-1” is pre-season. (Also, in some contexts, change “0” from meaning “no round in particular, give me all the data you have.”) This is also terrible, because that’s not how it’s worked before, and will break some existing third-party apps that rely on the Squiggle API, of which there are quite a lot.
Nevertheless, #2 is less stupid than #1. So I think that’s what I have to do.
For the fifth consecutive year, Squiggle carefully recorded all public preseason ladder predictions made by experts and media pundits, and scored how accurate those predictions turned out to be.
Not all well-known media names do preseason ladder predictions. In fact, only a minority seem willing to put their name to an actual ladder, as opposed to safer, more vague statements about which teams might rise or fall. This year, we found fifty of them. All should be applauded. But also scored.
Since this is the fifth year, we’ve built a reasonable idea of how reliable people tend to be in the long-term; that is, whether a great prediction this year means that person is likely to come back with another the year after. But before we get to that, here’s how 2023 shook out:
Horn led for most of the back end of the year, thanks to his faith in Collingwood and Port Adelaide. But Pierik closed in the final round with a ladder that correctly tipped 6 out of 8 finalists, and placed eight teams within a rung of their actual position. There might have been a fair bit of luck, given the closeness of the middle of the pack, and how easily it might have been different. But it was a great ladder. The rating system judges them different but equally good, so Horn and Pierik share the honours.
It was a poor year for models, who went very heavy on Geelong and underestimated Collingwood. None made the top 10, while many fell to the bottom half of the 50 predictions. The best was Squiggle’s own in-house model, which was ranked 14th.
The betting odds weren’t a great guide, either, with an aggregate of where punters were putting their money landing 25th, right in the middle.
To be fair, this wasn’t Max Laughton’s own prediction (which is ranked 30th). It was, instead, a completely reasonable application of Pythagorean wins to adjust what the 2022 ladder “should” have looked like. But since it was supposed to tell us what the ladder would look like in 2023, too, I included it. And it did badly: worse, in fact, than if no adjustment was performed at all, and we guessed that this year’s ladder would look the same as last year’s.
With only half the Top 8 correct, no team in the exact right spot, and five teams out by at least 8 rungs, it ties with Damien Barrett’s 2019 entry as the worst ladder prediction we’ve recorded.
Long-Term Performance Award
Last year, we lauded Peter Ryan, who over four years maintained an average rank of 8th, including topping the list in 2022. Unfortunately, Ryan had a shocker this year, finishing near the bottom, mostly because of a failure of optimism in Port Adelaide, Carlton, GWS, and St Kilda.
The best long-term performers, counting everyone who made a prediction in at least 3 of the last 5 years, are:
Average Rank
Expert
10.8
Squiggle
14.6
Sam McClure (The Age)
15.4
Peter Ryan (The Age)
15.6
Jake Niall (The Age)
16.0
Riley Beveridge (AFL Media)
16.0
Nat Edwards (AFL Media)
16.3
Sarah Olle (AFL Media)
16.3
Daniel Cherney (The Age)
17.0
Michael Gleeson (Code Sports)
18.2
Jon Pierik (The Age)
Each year there are about 50 expert predictions, so it’s challenging to remain even in the top half on a long-term basis. Or, put another way, ladder predictions seem to be a bit of a crapshoot, with not much evidence that someone who made a good prediction this year will be able to do it again next year.
However…
Squiggle is, frankly, killing it here, outperforming the whole football industry by a significant margin over the tracked period. You can judge for yourself whether this is due to the brilliance of the Squiggle algorithm or the awfulness of the average media ladder prediction. And, to be sure, a big reason for this project was the suspicion that a lot of ladder predictions got tossed around each year by people who didn’t expect anyone to look at them again after March.
Live Running Predictions
Squiggle also tracks ladder predictions made throughout the year by various models, including our own. This year, Squiggle narrowly beat out Glicko Ratings, Matter of Stats, Wheelo Ratings, and AFLalytics.
Welcome to 2023’s first new model: Don’t Blame the Data from data scientist Jason Zivkovic, the author of data management packages worldfootballR, chessR and others.
DBtD is coming out of the gate pretty hard, with some confident early tips and (so far) the only upset tip for the Crows to defeat GWS. Good luck, buddy.
You can now load past years and either click through real results one game at a time, or fill in the whole year with Reset and tweak key results to see what changes.
Load a past season: FIXTURE ➡️ Allow tipping of past games
Progress one real result at a time: keep tapping ACTUAL.
Fill in the whole season: RESET ➡️ RESET TO ACTUAL.
