Squiggle: Port charge into top four

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A good week for the top 3 in Adelaide, GWS and Geelong, who opened up a fair gap on the rest:

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Squiggle also appreciated Port Adelaide pounding the snot out of Carlton to the tune of 90 points.

The rest of the top 7 slid, although for different reasons: The Western Bulldogs got the job done against Brisbane, but not very well; Sydney fell to GWS, which was expected, but not by that much; and West Coast were thumped in a game they were expected to win against the Hawks.

That was a great result for Hawthorn, as a bunch of mid-table teams also went nowhere. So while a week ago they were staring into the abyss, now they’re back in the fight, one of those teams who might plausibly finish in a range of different spots, because everyone’s pretty evenly matched:

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Horrible for Collingwood, though, who are this week’s team to most resemble the passage of digested food through a lower intestine.

The Tower is very suggestive of a top 3 of Adelaide, GWS, and Geelong. The bottom 2 is looking a lot like Carlton and Brisbane. Beyond that, though, things get less certain. From 9th down to 16th, the tower slices are nearly vertical, with plenty of teams capable of finishing in each slot.

In fact, the ladder predictor has 7 teams finishing with 9 wins, which would be really something:

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It’s an inflection point this week, with Richmond expected to start dropping games and Sydney expected to start collecting them. If that doesn’t happen – if Richmond even run it close against the Crows in Adelaide, or Sydney don’t win by much against Carlton – they will move on the squiggle.

Essendon had a good week, beating Collingwood in the ANZAC game, and Brisbane showed something against the Bulldogs, albeit off the back of Inside 50 conversation rates so eerily good that they were probably a statistical fluke.

The Tigers did it again this week, being almost exactly two goals better than expected, which, again, is good but not great. As a result, squiggle is showing a huge disparity between Richmond’s likelihood of making finals (very good) and winning the flag (no chance):

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