Squiggle: The Door is Open for Melbourne

Animated!

This week it started to resemble 2013, when the Grand Final was between the league’s best scorer (Hawthorn) and its best stopper (Fremantle). Sydney are actually about as defensive as teams ever get, with only a handful of teams treading this territory over the last 20 years. And it’s been a great three weeks for them in terms of firepower, too, scoring 137 against Fremantle, 100 against Port, and 146 against St Kilda.

It was a good week for everyone else in the top 5 as Greater Western Sydney won this week’s episode of WHO WANTS TO DROP A CRUICIAL GAME? (with a gallant effort from Geelong). This meant the Tower of Power, which last week had an even 5-way split for top spot, collapsed into this:

That last-second kick from Naitanui smashed the Giants’ top-2 chances down to 1% and their top-4 chances to 27%.

It’s now curiously difficult for Hawthorn to finish 2nd, as they’ll be #1 if they win both games and probably 3rd or below if they don’t. The real obstacle is West Coast in Perth this week: win that and they’ll roughly double their amount of real estate at the top of the Tower.

Meanwhile Melbourne struck a wedge in 8th spot, expanding their finals chances from 0.4% to 6%, as the other main challenger, St. Kilda, were obliterated by the Swans.

Ladder Predictor! The squiggle is tipping the Eagles over the Hawks, which would see things end up something like this:

Flagpole! A small break on the rest of the comp for Sydney and Adelaide, with the Cats drifting.