Absolutely.
There is a lot that goes into assessing the relative difficulty of different teams draws.
And I actually think that when it comes down to it, the variances are negligible.
The bottom line is - if you're good enough, you make it.
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There is a lot that goes into assessing the relative difficulty of different teams draws.
And I actually think that when it comes down to it, the variances are negligible.
The bottom line is - if you're good enough, you make it.
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I cant fathom how Geelong, who finished top 4 last year, only played 8 other top 8 teams and got a double up against both WCE and North, and Collingwood also had to play 8 top 8 teams too with no double ups of the bottom 2, after finishing 17.
I can understand and accept WCE finished 9th but North finished last. A top 4 side gets them twice and second last gets them once the following year. Odd.
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I don’t agree with your last statement, it doesn’t stand to reason. It is a certainty that uneven draws will sometimes elevate a weaker team over a stronger team on the ladder, and this could equally be true for any position on the ladder over the next.
There can be a fairly substantial difference between draws. One simple starting point is to just start from the double up games, and go by the finishing ladder position this season of those teams you need to play twice.
So as things stand, for this year’s top 8 teams:
Geelong 17 + 18 + 11 + 8 + 10 = 64
Swans 16 + 18 + 15 + 8 + 10 = 67
Collingwood 9 + 5 + 12 + 14 + 15 = 55
Lions 15 + 12 + 5 + 10 + 16 = 58
Melbourne 8 + 11 + 6 + 3 + 4 = 32
Fremantle 10 + 17 + 16 + 9 + 5 = 57
Richmond. 9 + 11 + 13 + 15 + 17 = 65
Western Bulldogs. 5 + 2 + 1 + 16 + 13 = 37
So by this method, which I must say is purely objective with no adjustments for conditions, timing of matches and so on, the toughest to easiest draws you would say were:
1. Melbourne 32
2. Bulldogs 37
3. Collingwood 55
4. Fremantle 57
5. Brisbane 58
6. Geelong 64
7. Richmond 65
8. Sydney 67
What we can see is:
- Melbourne and Bulldogs had very difficult double up games, doubling up against teams averaging around 6-7th place on the ladder
- Collingwood Fremantle and Brisbane had moderately easy draws doubling up in games averaging around 11-12th placed on the ladder.
- Sydney, Richmond and Geelong had very easy draws doubling up against teams averaging around 13th on the ladder.
We can see for example 8th placed Bulldogs doubled up v teams on average almost 6 ladder positions higher than 7th placed Richmond. If you swapped the draws there is every chance those teams swap ladder positions.
We can also see Geelong have doubled up v teams that finished on average over 6 places lower on the ladder than the teams Melbourne had to play twice.
So just by this measure alone we can see there is a substantial disparity in draws. The way the draw is worked out based on last season’s finishing positions you would have to say Geelong looks the biggest outlier in terms of lucking into an easy draw. And Collingwood are the opposite. However, apart from Melbourne and Bulldogs, there isn’t a great disparity between the draws of the top 8 teams.
Of the 4 remaining teams Brisbane and Collingwood had the tougher draws, but Geelong and Sydney have the better overall performance and host their respective Preliminary Finals against teams who are interstate away.
Overall you wouldn’t say the draw has been a big factor this season, the two teams with the brutal draws were comfortably beaten in finals. To the extent that luck plays a great role in finishing positions this season I think it would be more to do with injuries and other racing luck than the draw.
Huh?
You disagree with my statement, but then share a whole lot of diatribe using this season as an example, to conclude that you do actually agree with my statement?
Or did you just **** up your last sentence/paragraph?
Also, my point was that you can't simply assess the relative difficulty of a draw by referencing double up games, which is exactly what you've done to disprove your original contention (and prove mine).
What exactly are you trying to say?!?
This is really your only comment in your entire post that supports your original statement that you disagree with my statement.
But despite Collingwood having the 'harder draw' (based on your assessment), they went 0 and 2 against Sydney and Geelong during the home and away season, yet still had the opportunity to jump ahead of Geelong by playing a Qualifying Final against them for the right to host a home Preliminary Final, and also lost that game.
So again, you've lost me. What exactly are you arguing?
More on my statement 'The bottom line is - if you're good enough, you make it.', which I'm still not sure whether Meteoric Rise agrees with or not...
I've seen some Carlton posters point to their 'harder draw' as the reason Western Bulldogs made the finals ahead of them by 0.6%.
A few points to counter that:
1. Carlton knew they only had to win one of their last 4 games to secure a finals position, and they also knew they weren't drawn to play either Brisbane or Melbourne until rounds 21 and 22. They progressed to lose all of their final 4 home and away games, including a very winning game against Adelaide in round 20.
2. Carlton played Collingwood twice and lost both games. Bulldogs played Collingwood once and won it.
Should Collingwood point to their harder draw to use as an excuse as to why we finished below Sydney? Or should we instead look internally and understand Sydney actually beat us during our home and away encounter, and we also lost some winnable games during the course of the season (hello West Coast), so we indeed had our chances to finish above Sydney if we were good enough? I go with the latter.
Every team gets plenty of chance to make top 8, top 4, top 2 during the season. And the best thing about our game is that we have a finals series to determine who is travelling best at the pointy end of the season and therefore take out the holy grail, to enable a team to make amends for any ****-ups during the home and away matches.
I've seen some Carlton posters point to their 'harder draw' as the reason Western Bulldogs made the finals ahead of them by 0.6%.
A few points to counter that:
1. Carlton knew they only had to win one of their last 4 games to secure a finals position, and they also knew they weren't drawn to play either Brisbane or Melbourne until rounds 21 and 22. They progressed to lose all of their final 4 home and away games, including a very winning game against Adelaide in round 20.
2. Carlton played Collingwood twice and lost both games. Bulldogs played Collingwood once and won it.
Should Collingwood point to their harder draw to use as an excuse as to why we finished below Sydney? Or should we instead look internally and understand Sydney actually beat us during our home and away encounter, and we also lost some winnable games during the course of the season (hello West Coast), so we indeed had our chances to finish above Sydney if we were good enough? I go with the latter.
Every team gets plenty of chance to make top 8, top 4, top 2 during the season. And the best thing about our game is that we have a finals series to determine who is travelling best at the pointy end of the season and therefore take out the holy grail, to enable a team to make amends for any ****-ups during the home and away matches.
I am not particularly arguing against you here in terms of who had the easier or harder draws in 2022. I have layed out clearly a simple method that forms a starting point for the relative difficulty of each team’s draw. I am not taking a club v club position, just trying to add to the discussion. You shouldn’t be so defensive.
But the statement you made is an absolute statement. “If you are good enough, you make it.” Because you stated this in absolute terms, I took this as meaning universally in all seasons, all teams that are good enough to make finals do in fact make finals. I think within that statement there is an underlying assumption that the teams finish in order of merit. ie the best team finishes top, the best 4 finish top 4, the best 8 finish in the top 8 positions and so on. We can see the types of disparities the uneven draw can create from the massive disparity between say Melbourne’s and Sydney’s draws, where Melbourne have their 5 double up games v teams on average 7 positions higher than Sydney in 2022. So to make it simple to understand, it would be like the 2 draws being the same in all other respects but Sydney playing Essendon 5 times and Melbourne playing Bulldogs 5 times. So given that, in the hypothetical situation that Melbourne finished 5th and Sydney finished 4th separated by say a couple of percentage points only, you could not fairly say that if Melbourne had been good enough they would have made the top 4. They were clearly good enough, but a team not as well performed as them would have finished ahead of them based on the uneven draw.
That is why I wrote that I disagreed with your statement. I don’t get why you are defensive about it. Your statement is simply wrong in terms of how it characterises the effect of the draw. Imo at least.
No, there is no underlying statement about teams finishing in order of merit.
My statement is what it is.
You have also started with what you say is 'a simple method that forms a starting point for the relative difficulty of each team's draw'.
What is the benefit of even doing this if you're not going to factor in even more important considerations such as the form/health of opponents at the time, in game injuries, etc. which have a much greater impact on the relative difficulty of a team's draw over a course of a season than simply looking at the ladder positions at the end of it?
Look at Essendon's game against Brisbane as an example. Brisbane finished 6th and were one of the better teams in the competition over the course of the season, but the team Brisbane put on the park that day probably could have been beaten by the Mt. Eliza Under 17's.
I'm not defensive, just very confused about the point you're trying to get across, and feel that if you are in fact suggesting the relative difficulty of a draw can impact finishing positions, you probably could have used a different season to 2022 (if in fact there is one).
I think you are wrong here. Where the difference between two teams on the ladder at the end of the season is less than the difference between the ease of their draws, they are entitled to say the draw was the difference in them finishing ahead of the other team. However, in Carlton’s case, I am guessing they did not have a tougher draw that Bulldogs in 2022, but let’s see what my very basic but objective method says…
Carlton double up games v teams 3 6 7 14 and 16 = 46.
So by this objective method the Blues did not have a tougher draw than Bulldogs, but they did have a substantially tougher draw than 6 of the teams who made finals, Geelong, Sydney, Richmond, Brisbane, Collingwood, and Fremantle.
Lol did you just try to use the games that you sold interstate to prove how tough your fixture was?
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Don't believe we've ever sold a game to Tassy or at Geelong.
Rubbish, your statement is absolute, it does not allow that a team with an easier draw could finish above a team with a tougher draw for no other reason than the difference in their draws.
The point of my method is it is an objective way of telling the difficulty of a draw. You can then consider all these other subjective factors but they require detailed knowledge of events game by game, and then very good judgement of the impact of each variable thing. My method is basically as far as you can go objectively.
You are correct in that whilst it may be objective, it is a very basic and flawed way of assessing the difficulty of a draw.
For example, if Carlton had have beaten Collingwood on just one occasion, Collingwood's draw would have appeared 'harder', whilst Carlton's would have appeared 'easier', despite it being exactly the same difficulty
It is absolute in so far as 'if you're good enough, you make it' - that is 'qualify for finals'.
It wasn't 'if you're good enough, you finish in the exact ladder position you rightfully deserve to in consideration of relative difficulty of draws'.
You are correct in that whilst it may be objective, it is a very basic and flawed way of assessing the difficulty of a draw.
For example, if Carlton had have beaten Collingwood on just one occasion, Collingwood's draw would have appeared 'harder', whilst Carlton's would have appeared 'easier', despite it being exactly the same difficulty
I don’t think you have that right either. We are assessing and trying to isolate the relative difficulty of each team’s draw in objective terms rather than trying to assess their relative performance. You are introducing elements of performance. In terms of difficulty of the draw it is easier for Collingwood to beat Carlton(ranked 9th) than it is for Carlton to beat Collingwood(currently ranked 3rd.) That is not even debatable.
You need to give yourself an uppercut Fadge. If a team’s draw is capable of affecting their finishing position on the ladder - and clearly it is - then the statement “if you are good enough you make it(finals)” is clearly wrong. Because you can be good enough to make it but only miss out because you faced a more difficult task than a team who did make it.
It is clear.
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But that is rubbish.
If Carlton had have beaten Collingwood once, by scoring either 2 points more or 5 points more in the respective games, Collingwood would have finished 6th and Carlton 8th.
So it would have been significantly easier for Carlton to beat Collingwood (8th v 6th instead of 9th v 4th), and significantly harder for Collingwood to beat Carlton (6th v 8th instead of 4th v 9th), despite there being exactly ZERO difference in the draws, teams taking the field for the respective games, in game injuries, etc., simply by placing your 'objective' measure on the draw difficulty.
It is completely illogical.
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Which teams in the past 20 years have missed the finals as a result of their unfair draw difficulty, based on how they're performed over the course of the season, and which teams took the more deserving team's place?
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Any fixture that allows certain teams to avoid the hardest road trip each year since 1999 is clearly biased.
You mentioned Darwin. If you want us to go there, stop requesting a home Queens Birthday game then and tell the AFL you want to play Collingwood in Darwin next year. I won’t hold my breath
Pretty sure you guys were also selling your home game against Brisbane to the Gabba in those days too.
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Give us 15 games at the G every year in prime times against Melbourne based teams see how long we need to sell games for then.
Why would the AFL do that and get 40,000 to 60,000 at Melbourne games, when they can give the prime timeslots to Collingwood, Essendon and Carlton and guarantee 80,000 + crowds?
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