The Race for the Flag in Squiggly Lines

Animated!

A good week for West Coast, who ONLY WIN AT HOME and are therefore not a credible flag threat, apparently. This really undersells the Eagles, who so far in 2016 have performed roughly like you’d expect of a good team, if it gets home state games against Brisbane, Fremantle, Richmond, Collingwood and St. Kilda, and away state games against Hawthorn, Sydney and Geelong. Your club would be 5-3 after that, too.

But the “flat track bully” label is back! I think it’s one of those easy generalizations, like “they win the close ones” or “always drop the games they should win,” which human brains like to use to group data, even when there isn’t much to go on. It’s actually very unusual for teams to go out and reliably smash weaker teams then collapse to good ones. It’s far more common for a smashing to be a sign of a genuinely good side.

So the squiggle likes West Coast. It especially likes them holding the Saints to only 29 points.

Also a great week for the Cats! But not as good as it would have been if they’d kicked straight. Geelong have improved their chart position six weeks in a row, each time by a big margin.

North, though, have had consecutive bad wins. You know how bad wins displease the squiggle. Fremantle had a lot of those last year and look what happened. Justice. That’s what. Or more accurately, reversion to the mean. So you’d take 8-0, but the signs are not terrific. Just like “flat track bullies” tend to be actually good teams, clubs that fall across the line against mediocre opposition tend to be not that great.

Worth noting: For a terrible team, Essendon are oddly effective at defending. It may actually be more accurate to say that they’re a reasonable team with a terrible attack.

AND THE BIG NEWS: Richmond had their first positive chart movement for 2016! Yaaaaay.

Ladder predictor: The Cats are still comfortable on top, the rest of the 8 is still wide open.