Since there is no actual football, we will do the next best thing: simulate it.
With the support of the world’s best football computer models, Squiggle will play out each and every cancelled game in real-time, as if it were really happening.
Goals. Behinds. Score worms. Quarter time breaks. They will all unfold here at the exact same time the match is supposed to be played.
It will look like this:
This will continue all season long, game by game, until actual games resume. We will track a virtual Ladder and Top Eight. If, God help us, we don’t get real football back by September, we will hold virtual Finals and award a virtual Premier.
This Thursday night at 7:25pm Eastern Time, Collingwood will play Richmond in the first virtual match in real-time, here on this site. You can check in and see it happen.
Why Tho
I believe Australia needs football. I need football. Or, in the absence of the real thing, a simulated version from computer models.
How It Works
Usually models make predictions about the most likely outcome of a game (e.g. “Collingwood by 4 pts”). But they can also generate batches of simulations, where if Collingwood is a 60% win chance over Richmond, then in 100 sims, Collingwood will win 60 of them. In the other 40, Richmond will win. (In a few, unusual things might happen, like a team scoring over 120 points.)
Participating models supply Squiggle with their sims. At match time, Squiggle randomly plucks one out and unspools it in real-time. No-one knows in advance which sim it will be.
My Promise To You
This is as rigorous a process as I can make it, drawing from the work of highly talented football analysts and math wonks who created the world’s best football models.
There will be no bias or fiddling. Just hard maths and cruel random variation.
It’s not the real thing. But it’s virtually season 2020.