With the home & away season tucked away, it’s time to look back and see whether all those preseason predictions that were floating around earlier in the year turned out to be prescient… or putrid.
It’s time for the Squigglies 2019! (Home & Away edition)
Every Expert Preseason Ladder Rated
Best Ladder Prediction: AFL Lab
Head and shoulders above the rest, AFL Lab correctly tipped Geelong for the minor premiership and Sydney to finish bottom 4. It was one of few ladders to resist the temptation to fit Adelaide into the Top 8. While, like every ladder, it had Melbourne much too high (3rd) and Brisbane much too low (12th), it is otherwise excellent, with no fewer than 13 teams tipped within 1 rung of their actual position. Score: 71.5
Best Ladder by a Human: Paul Bastin
In March, AFL.com.au gushed forth ladder predictions from no fewer than 15 journos. One of them was the only prediction to squeeze a computer model out of the top 5: Paul Bastin’s. Paul was bullish on Brisbane (8th) and bearish on Sydney (14th), but done in by his faith in Adelaide (3rd) and lack thereof in the Bulldogs (15th). Score: 67.7
Runner-up: Nat Edwards (65.5)
Best Ladder by a Crowd: AFL.com.au readers
A few media outlets ran preseason fan surveys, drawing on the wisdom of the crowd to compile ladder predictions. Some crowds were more prescient than others. The best was from AFL.com.au, which finished 6th overall, beating out every single expert from the media but Paul Bastin. Score: 66.7
Of other crowd-sourced predictions, The Roar and The Age were also better than most pundits. Reddit r/AFL’s attempt, however, was only marginally better than taking the 2018 ladder and guessing it would be the same again.
Runner-up: The Roar readers (63.3)
Worst Ladder: Damien Barrett
Look, predicting the ladder is hard. It makes fools of us all. Unfortunately, someone has to be last, and this year it’s Damien Barrett, who tipped Adelaide for the minor premiership and Fremantle to storm into finals, alongside Sydney and Melbourne. Damien didn’t have enough faith in Brisbane (15th) or the Bulldogs (14th), and expected Geelong to slide out of finals contention. With only one of the top four correct (Richmond), half of the top eight missing, and ten teams wrong by three or more rungs, it’s a shocker. Score: 50.4