Only one genuine upset this week, for a change, with the Hawks surprising Sydney at the SCG. Aside from that, we had two games that always looked likely to be close (Geelong pipping Port Adelaide and the Giants scraping home against the Eagles) plus a bunch of wins by favourites.

But there was still plenty of chart movement, with some of those wins turning out to be bigger than expected:

It was Adelaide’s week, since a 100 point win is always a big deal, even when it comes at home against Fremantle, a team that should never have been allowed to pretend it was 5th. I mean, it’s Round 10, for God’s sake. We had North Melbourne on top and undefeated this time last year and that still wasn’t as absurd as the Dockers’ ladder position.

Fremantle remain above Port Adelaide on the ladder, separated by one win (in the Dockers’ favour) and 62.9 percentage points (in Port’s). This is pretty crazy. Either one of Fremantle being top 8 with a percentage of 81.5% and Port being outside the top 7 with 144.4% would be remarkable. Currently we have both at once.

The Western Bulldogs had a good week, too, keeping St Kilda to just 50 points. That’s worth some significant sideways squiggling.

There’s actually a bit of lateral spread on the chart this week, with defensive teams defending and attacking teams attacking. The Bulldogs and Tigers in particular were defensive specialists last year and are headed that way again in 2017. And going in the other direction are North Melbourne and the Gold Coast, who have leaned towards attack in the past and still seem to be going that way.

Sydney are more balanced in 2017, but only because their defence has fallen away, which makes them look more like a normal team instead of the defensive specialist they’ve been for most of this century.

The Swans remain a surprisingly good prospect for finals, though. They’re 15th, and with the bye next week, will be 16th if Gold Coast beat the Eagles. That should rule them out completely, with the Bulldogs up next, and a bunch of other contenders in their run home, including the Giants, Cats, and Crows, the Hawks in Melbourne again, and the Tigers at the MCG. But despite all that, they’ve shown enough fight that it’s still plausible that they go 8-4 from here. And 11 wins may be enough to finish 8th.

Similarly, North Melbourne are going along all right. Their 0-5 start hides a bunch of very close losses, and the fact that they’ve been a much stronger team than most people expected in 2017.

Squiggle is still fairly pessimistic on Richmond, with the Tigers failing to put anything really convincing on the scoreboard against Essendon. But they did win! That was nice.

As a random oddity, Richmond are what you get if you combine Brisbane’s attack with Adelaide’s defence. Which sounds horrible, but actually isn’t that bad. So if Richmond and Brisbane played the same team, they would kick the same score, but Richmond would keep the opposition to less. And if Richmond and Adelaide played the same team, they would keep the opposition to the same score, but Adelaide would kick more themselves.

E.g. Squiggle tip at home vs West Coast:

• Brisbane 81 – 122 West Coast
• Richmond 81 – 78 West Coast
• Adelaide 112 – 78 West Coast

Port Adelaide were expected to just fall short against the Cats, so don’t move anywhere much on the chart. But dropping a 50/50 game is bad news for your ladder position, so it hurt their top-2 prospects quite a lot. Especially since Adelaide and GWS both won.

And who’s still #1 on Flagpole? Yes! That’s right!

Discuss on BigFooty!

Animated!

Everyone knows the AFL ladder is a filthy liar until at least the halfway mark of the season, but right now it has its own alt-right web show advertising male vitality pills. The official ladder is so full of crap, it could and should be dumped outside Punt Road as a warning for the Richmond coach.

More on that later. It was a great week for Sydney, who came to Melbourne to face a red hot St Kilda, and played like they just remembered they were a pre-season flag favourite.

It was also an excellent week for Essendon, who put the Eagles down by 10 goals.

Adelaide returned to the winners’ list, although an 80-point victory over Brisbane was only par. Maybe even below par, if you consider the number of Lions scoring shots. Still, that was better than GWS, who managed to extract a win from their game against the Tigers only after a twist of fate so heinous, DVDs of the game should only be allowed to be sold under the counter in Canberra. I just want to say, it goes to show that the Geneva Convention has a long way to go before the world can be truly free of acts of horrific torture and abuse. Also that when you think you’ve been hurt so badly you can never feel anything again, you actually can. You can.

I’m going to the Dreamtime game this weekend and I already feel twitchy and fragile, like I’m coming home to an abusive husband, and the house is dark, and I’m pushing open the door and I just know he’s in there somewhere, sitting in his chair, smoking. I just hope this time he’ll be good to me.

Anyway. After three wins by minuscule margins, the Giants are flattered by their ladder position. They’re also suffering through an injury blight, so it may all even out. But Squiggle thinks close wins are only a little better than close losses, at least in terms of rating team strength. There’s quite a lot of good evidence that the result of close games is a coin toss, with teams winning close ones due to luck more than skill.

Some will inevitably string together a series of close wins or close losses, the same way that if you toss a coin many times, you’ll eventually get a run of heads or tails. But it’s not reflective of an ability to keep doing so, so when this happens, the team’s ladder position becomes deceptive.

Fremantle notably did this in 2015, becoming an incredibly unlikely minor premier, and duly crashed down the ladder the following year. But here they are again in 2017! They’re sitting 5th with a percentage that would make a 14th placed team blush. Certainly a lot of that is because of one terrible game, when they lost by 89 to Port Adelaide. But with victories by 2, 5, and 2 points, and no close losses, they could very easily be bottom 6.

So the official ladder is lying. We’re more likely to wind up with something like this:

And believe it or not, Brisbane are also flattered by their ladder position, with their sole win so far this year coming by 2 points at home against Gold Coast in Round 1. None of their 8 losses have been close.

Port come off the killer bye this week, so that will be interesting. They managed to improve their standing during their off-week, mainly thanks to the Eagles sliding.

We’ve had a super-likely wooden spooner for quite a while, but the race for 17th is coming down to just three teams: Gold Coast, Hawthorn, and Carlton, and most likely one of the latter two.

Flagpole! It’s Crow favouritism, as usual. Flagpole still loves you, Adelaide.

Pray for me.

Discuss on BigFooty!

Animated!

Squiggle is very excited about Port Adelaide this week, because keeping an interstate team to 38 points in one of their home games is a big deal, normally. It may be less so when the game is played in China, and the nominal home team has a whinge beforehand about how they don’t even want to be there. Nevertheless: An excellent defensive performance by the Power, timed for maximum gloating value with Adelaide losing at home.

Adelaide have fallen swiftly for two reasons. Firstly, both weeks they’ve lost by a lot, which is never good. You don’t want that. Secondly, they’ve been held to low scores, when high-scoring was the main thing they were good at. It’s concerning because unbalanced teams (as Adelaide are, being an attack specialist) are fragile: They often win a lot of home & away games, or run close, but come unstuck when it counts. So the task for Adelaide now is to prove that they’re more than a one-trick pony with a trick that’s been worked out.

Melbourne are the other big winner, and Essendon and Sydney had positive weeks. In the Swans’ case, it was the first time all year they outperformed expectations. Lowered expectations, that is. If you keep sucking often enough, eventually the bar gets so low you can’t help but clear it. And clear it they did! So that’s something. In fact, it’s enough to make finals more likely than not:

That’s Richmond sliding out of the top 8, despite their excellent comeback win over the Dockers. Honestly, at three-quarter time, when we were down 35-65, I didn’t think we could win it. Then we kicked 5 goals unanswered goals to hit the lead with only 21 seconds left on the lock – an unloseable position! I leaped up in the stands and cheered my lungs out, thinking, “Wow, this is so un-Richmond-like!”

Oh, but then it was. Suddenly it was all very, very Richmond-like.

Fortunately, at this point, my heart is already about 99% scar tissue. I mean, you can only stab me there so many times before I cease to feel anything.

Adelaide’s grip on top spot loosened considerably this week, and a bunch of teams benefited, because someone has to finish top 4, even if right now no-one seems like they want to. Essendon’s win over Geelong opened up some bottom-2 real estate, with Hawthorn, Carlton, and Gold Coast the most likely buyers.

Fortunately in these turbulent times Brisbane provide some reliability. To Brisbane fans, all this talk of 2017’s unpredictability is probably pretty grating, because every week the Lions are getting beaten by exactly as much as you’d expect.

Speaking of the Lions’ next opponent, Adelaide are still #1 on Flagpole, even if the Season Predictor is tipping them out of the top two.

Discuss on BigFooty!