The rankings (from best to worst) of the 128 VFL/AFL premiership teams.

[Meteoric Rise]

But surely teams that win the most games during the home and away season AND have dominant finals series (of which there have been many throughout the history of the game) should be rated above teams that satisfy only one of the two aforementioned criteria?

And just out of interest, as I'm not sure whether this question has been posed to you yet, where would you rank the Richmond 2017, 19 and 20 teams?

All other things being equal this may have merit.

But there are exceptions I can think of. For eg:

Team A has say a 20w 2l h&a season with a % of 140%. Team A also has a 3-0 finals record with an average finals margin of 20 points & finals % of 120%.

V

Team B has a 16w 6l h&a season with a % of 130%. Team B also has a 3-0 finals record with a finals % of 200%, average winning margin 60 points.

Who wins a sudden death winner take all game between team A & team B both at their best as displayed in finals?

 

[Mr Meow]

All other things being equal this may have merit.

But there are exceptions I can think of. For eg:

Team A has say a 20w 2l h&a season with a % of 140%. Team A also has a 3-0 finals record with an average finals margin of 20 points & finals % of 120%.

V

Team B has a 16w 6l h&a season with a % of 130%. Team B also has a 3-0 finals record with a finals % of 200%, average winning margin 60 points.

Who wins a sudden death winner take all game between team A & team B both at their best as displayed in finals?

Stop deflecting.

Where would you rank the Richmond 2017, 19 and 20 teams?

 

[Fadge]

This goes against your assertion that Dustin Martin's dominant finals performances are not much better than home and away performances.

Does it?

Really?

 

[Fadge]

All other things being equal this may have merit.

But there are exceptions I can think of. For eg:

Team A has say a 20w 2l h&a season with a % of 140%. Team A also has a 3-0 finals record with an average finals margin of 20 points & finals % of 120%.

V

Team B has a 16w 6l h&a season with a % of 130%. Team B also has a 3-0 finals record with a finals % of 200%, average winning margin 60 points.

Who wins a sudden death winner take all game between team A & team B both at their best as displayed in finals?

Who would know, given Team A and Team B's records are in different years, against different opposition, with different situations that influence a margin.

Take one example:
Collingwood beat Geelong in the 2010 Preliminary Final by 41 points.
Geelong beat Collingwood in the 2011 Grand Final by 38 points.

If you're assessing purely by numbers, there is a 3 point differential in those two games.

But if you actually watched both games, you'd know that Collingwood's 2010 Preliminary Final win was far more 'dominant and conclusive' than Geelong's 2011 Grand Final win.

 

[jannissary]

Nice desperate Bomber defending anti-melt.

 

[Meteoric Rise]

Stop deflecting.

Where would you rank the Richmond 2017, 19 and 20 teams?

Read the thread, you can see the criteria and work it out from there, I am not going through the rating of 128 Premiers just to validate my team. There is no way of accurately predicting which premiership teams would beat others in relative terms. All you can do is set a statistical criteria and rate them according to that.

My dying dad(Swans supporter) told me late 2022 he has never seen a team move the ball better than the Geelong 2022 team(he was by then following footy so little he only saw the GF each year.) I did not have the heart to tell him the stand rule had been introduced in 2021.

So you can just watch the game and decide that way as some do, but I know well this is a very unsafe method of judgement compared to properly adjusted & constructed statistical comparisons.

In the end if you are honest you are inferring I am likely to be biased towards my own team. Funny about that. My news for you is we all are. But even allowing for that bias, I am not prepared to create some sort of faulty an imprecise statistical criteria to elevate my own team like the o/p has. I will just say these things:

• All teams who win a premiership achieve the same thing.
• All teams who win 2 premierships achive the same thing, & so on
• The likelihood of a team who won just one flag proving the best premier in history in the event of era-adjusted play-offs is low
• Setting arbitrary cutoffs at 150%, 2 or less games lost etc as the o/p has done is so obviously flawed for this purpose it should not require discussion to establish that
• It is obvious for this purpose teams should be measured at the point they win the Premiership(or for a wider data set their performance in their run to the GF + their GF performance,) if we want to actually compare how good Premiership teams are in relation to each other. How they commenced the season has almost no relevance to how good they are compared to another Premier
• The Richmond teams you ask about are obviously historically excellent, but they are unlikely to be at the very pointy end of all time most dominant teams

The teams I have seen with the most dominant hold over the competition in my judgement were the Hawthorn teams of the Brereton era. The best performed recent dynasty team was coincidentally by my statistical criteria also the Hawks teams or the 2011-15 era. The most dominant teams ever were by my reasonable estimations the Melbourne golden era teams and the Collingwood "machine" teams.

If you set up an era-adjusted playoff to ascertain who is the actual best team ever then you, me, the o/p or even that self-proclaimed great "analyst" Fadge would not have any real clue what order they would finish in. It would be akin to trying to predict next years ladder in order 1-18, only a lot tougher. And predicting the ladder in correct order has a probability of hundreds of millions to 1(from memory.)

 

[Fadge]

[*]It is obvious for this purpose teams should be measured at the point they win the Premiership(or for a wider data set their performance in their run to the GF + their GF performance,) if we want to actually compare how good Premiership teams are in relation to each other. How they commenced the season has almost no relevance to how good they are compared to another Premier

This is absolute codswallop.

If you are trying to judge how dominant a team has been over the full season, you have to use the data for the full season.

Otherwise, you would just say that the team with the best percentage on Grand Final Day is the best team in the history of the game (which may be where you're angling?). But that would bring in all sorts of variables - strength of opposition team (on the day and over the course of the season); did the Grand Finalists play above/below themselves on the day; was the final margin indicative of the difference in the two teams on the day; The list goes on.

Now naturally each finals game should be weighted higher than each home and away game, and Dan appears to have done that. If you give finals performance equal weighting with home and away performances, you are saying each finals game is worth anything between 5 and 8 home and away games, which I guess could be about right.

But you can't weight a small subset of 2 to 4 finals games significantly higher than a full home and away season of between 16 and 23 matches, when you are assessing who the most dominant team over a season has been.

 

[Mr Meow]

Read th thread, you can see the criteria and work it out from there, I am not going through the rating of 128 Premiers just to validate my team. There is no way of accurately prdicting which premiership teams would beat others in relative terms. All you can do is set a statistical criteria and rate them according to that.

My dying dad(Swans supporter) told me late 2022 he has never seen a team move the ball better than the Geelong 2022 team(he was by then following footy so little he only saw the GF each year.) I did not have the heart to tell him the stand rule had been introduced in 2021.

So you can just watch the game and decide that way as some do, but I know well this is a very unsafe method of judgement compared to properly adjusted & constructed statistical comparisons.

In the end if you are honest you are inferring I am likely to be biased towards my own team. Funny about that. My news for you is we all are. But even allowing for that bias, I am not prepared to create some sort of faulty an imprecise statistical criteria to elevate my own team like the o/p has. I will just say these things:

• All teams who win a premiership achieve the same thing.
• All teams who win 2 premierships achive the same thing, & so on
• The likelihood of a team who won just one flag proving the best premier in history in the event of era-adjusted play-offs is low
• Setting arbitrary cutoffs at 150%, 2 or less games lost etc as the o/p has done is so obviously flawed for this purpose it should not require discussion to establish that
• It is obvious for this purpose teams should be measured at the point they win the Premiership(or for a wider data set their performance in their run to the GF + their GF performance,) if we want to actually compare how good Premiership teams are in relation to each other. How they commenced the season has almost no relevance to how good they are compared to another Premier
• The Richmond teams you ask about are obviously historically excellent, but they are unlikely to be at the very pointy end of all time most dominant teams

The teams I have seen with the most dominant hold over the competition in my judgement were the Hawthorn teams of the Brereton era. The best performed recent dynasty team was coincidentally by my statistical criteria also the Hawks teams or the 2011-15 era. The most dominant teams ever were by my reasonable estimations the Melbourne golden era teams and the Collingwood "machine" teams.

If you set up an era-adjusted playoff to ascertain who is the actual best team ever then you, me, the o/p or even that self-proclaimed great "analyst" Fadge would not have any real clue what order they would finish in. It would be akin to trying to predict next years ladder in order 1-18, only a lot tougher. And predicting the ladder in correct order has a probability of hundreds of millions to 1(from memory.)

So it looks like you can't even name where you'd rank the '17, '19 and '20 Richmond sides. Therefore you have no right to criticise their placement.

When this changes let me know and then all of your hard work won't have to go in the bin.

 

[STPer18]

P-please rate Richmond...

 

[Dirty Bird]

I love how you make comment that your #127 team was helped by a finals system, when your #2 was as well.

Ah, the good old challenge final to give a minor premier another chance if they fail the first time.

 

[Meteoric Rise]

So it looks like you can't even name where you'd rank the '17, '19 and '20 Richmond sides. Therefore you have no right to criticise their placement.

When this changes let me know and then all of your hard work won't have to go in the bin.

I didn’t specifically criticise their placement, you just made that up. I didn’t even note where those teams were placed in the o/p’s list.

But those teams combined have the highest gf % of any team ever to play multiple gf’s, and are some of the most dominant finals teams in history, so it would not be credible to not rate them highly.

 

[Meteoric Rise]

This is absolute codswallop.

If you are trying to judge how dominant a team has been over the full season, you have to use the data for the full season.

Otherwise, you would just say that the team with the best percentage on Grand Final Day is the best team in the history of the game (which may be where you're angling?). But that would bring in all sorts of variables - strength of opposition team (on the day and over the course of the season); did the Grand Finalists play above/below themselves on the day; was the final margin indicative of the difference in the two teams on the day; The list goes on.

Now naturally each finals game should be weighted higher than each home and away game, and Dan appears to have done that. If you give finals performance equal weighting with home and away performances, you are saying each finals game is worth anything between 5 and 8 home and away games, which I guess could be about right.

But you can't weight a small subset of 2 to 4 finals games significantly higher than a full home and away season of between 16 and 23 matches, when you are assessing who the most dominant team over a season has been.

Your premise is irrelevant. The thread is purporting to locate the best premiership team ever, not the team to play the most dominant whole season. By extension that means which Grand Final winning combination would beat all others. The best evidence of that is how well the team played on Grand Final day. Other evidence is of course relevant but not nearly as relevant.

It is correct that how well a team plays on any given day is influenced by something no team can fully control, ie how well the opponent plays. There are other factors as well, injury, umpiring, conditions and so on.

So you are wrong to think I am suggesting the GF score should be the only arbiter. But it is clearly the best starting point.

A finals game isn’t worth 5-8 home & away games, you can’t calculate it that way. The finals are the prism through which all teams must be judged as they are the narrow end of the funnel through which all premiers must pass to emerge premier. Those who play best in finals are the best teams, it is as simple as that. The trick is working out how well a team has played in finals. But that calculation must commence from the best evidence available, which is the final score, and also must include how well the team has stood up in finals over multiple seasons.

 

[Mr Meow]

I didn’t specifically criticise their placement, you just made that up. I didn’t even note where those teams were placed in the o/p’s list.

But those teams combined have the highest gf % of any team ever to play multiple gf’s, and are some of the most dominant finals teams in history, so it would not be credible to not rate them highly.

Yet they can't even be ranked by their most die hard advocate. That says a lot.

 

[Meteoric Rise]

Yet they can't even be ranked by their most die hard advocate. That says a lot.

Can not & will not are 2 separate concepts.

Why don't you have a crack at it in your spare time?

It is simply not a fruitful enough endeavour to warrant me spending hours on it. I would come up with a list that wouldn't even be close to the actual order of merit. As has the o/p, as would you, Fadge or anybody else who attempts it.

The o/p has not produced a list anywhere near what the actual order of merit would be. He has produced a list that roughly represents how teams performed against his own limited criteria, eschewing some more credible markers, and with a good measure of obvious personal bias mixed into the whole process.

 

[Fadge]

Your premise is irrelevant. The thread is purporting to locate the best premiership team ever, not the team to play the most dominant whole season. By extension that means which Grand Final winning combination would beat all others. The best evidence of that is how well the team played on Grand Final day. Other evidence is of course relevant but not nearly as relevant.

It is correct that how well a team plays on any given day is influenced by something no team can fully control, ie how well the opponent plays. There are other factors as well, injury, umpiring, conditions and so on.

So you are wrong to think I am suggesting the GF score should be the only arbiter. But it is clearly the best starting point.

A finals game isn’t worth 5-8 home & away games, you can’t calculate it that way. The finals are the prism through which all teams must be judged as they are the narrow end of the funnel through which all premiers must pass to emerge premier. Those who play best in finals are the best teams, it is as simple as that. The trick is working out how well a team has played in finals. But that calculation must commence from the best evidence available, which is the final score, and also must include how well the team has stood up in finals over multiple seasons.

Just say you're desperate to manufacture parameters to favour Richmond 2017/19/20 without saying you're desperate to manufacture parameters to favour Richmond....

 

[Meteoric Rise]

Just say you're desperate to manufacture parameters to favour Richmond 2017/19/20 without saying you're desperate to manufacture parameters to favour Richmond....

Lol you are certainly not going to stop saying that regardless of how much evidence is on the thread to say otherwise.

Yet you are all in agreement with the o/p who is very obviously doing exactly what you are desperately trying to pin on me.

All part of being fadge I guess.

 

[Fadge]

Lol you are certainly not going to stop saying that regardless of how much evidence is on the thread to say otherwise.

Yet you are all in agreement with the o/p who is very obviously doing exactly what you are desperately trying to pin on me.

All part of being fadge I guess.

Except the OP's parameters are very reasonable and logical.

 

[Meteoric Rise]

Except the OP's parameters are very reasonable and logical.

Yes of course they are the precise things one with no affiliations would think of when trying to work out the best Premiership team ever, lol.

 

[Do the Dew]

Except the OP's parameters are very reasonable and logical.

Said no-one ever

 

[Fadge]

Yes of course they are the precise things one with no affiliations would think of when trying to work out the best Premiership team ever, lol.

Most games won / fewest games lost across a season, and equal highest cumulative finals margins are pretty important metrics when assessing the teams on paper, but then when you consider how brutal they were when you actually watched them play - they stand alone in my time watching football.

 

[Mr Meow]

Can not & will not are 2 separate concepts.

Why don't you have a crack at it in your spare time?

It is simply not a fruitful enough endeavour to warrant me spending hours on it. I would come up with a list that wouldn't even be close to the actual order of merit. As has the o/p, as would you, Fadge or anybody else who attempts it.

The o/p has not produced a list anywhere near what the actual order of merit would be. He has produced a list that roughly represents how teams performed against his own limited criteria, eschewing some more credible markers, and with a good measure of obvious personal bias mixed into the whole process.

If you simply cut out 10 of your daily sooky rants, you'd free up a lot of time to perform such an exercise.

You're whinging and moaning, without having any idea where you would actually rank the various Richmond premiership teams.

It's therefore impossible to know how the list would change based on your supposed ideal criteria. At the end of the day, it's just one guy making some criteria to form a list. It shouldn't cause this much despair.

 

[Meteoric Rise]

If you simply cut out 10 of your daily sooky rants, you'd free up a lot of time to perform such an exercise.

You're whinging and moaning, without having any idea where you would actually rank the various Richmond premiership teams.

It's therefore impossible to know how the list would change based on your supposed ideal criteria. At the end of the day, it's just one guy making some criteria to form a list. It shouldn't cause this much despair.

All the same can as easily be said of your triggered reactions to my posts you stupid stupid campaigner.

 

[jannissary]

to be fair to the tigers, 2000 and any of their recent premierships aren't comparable. essendon actually played good football when they won, consistently throughout the entire season.

richmond had the help of the CFL, meaning their premierships are worthless.

 

[Mr Meow]

All the same can as easily be said of your triggered reactions to my posts you stupid stupid campaigner.

Triggered reactions = showing you how moronic your tear-soaked rants about anything "diminishing" Richmond are. If someone made a list of the most intelligent/well constructed posts on BigFooty and somehow had yours in the top 10, at the very least I would be able to say where I thought they belonged. You can't even do that with the Richmond premiership sides, hence the whinging ramblings are irrelevant to the thread.

 

[Fadge]

We can also say how they finished the H&A season has no relevance. Fadge once told me the strongest team in 2008 was Hawthorn and not Geelong, I was trying to tell him that it was Geelong and that the GF result was an upset, and then he ran to the mods and I got banned.

He said that Gary jnr's 2008 GF performance was all the more special because Geelong weren't the strongest team. I said Geelong was the strongest team and Gary jnr's efforts were all for nothing while playing for the strongest team.


Anyway, my ranking, I'll just do the top 4. The main thing for me is the quality of the football.

1. Richmond 1980
2. Richmond 2019
3. Richmond 2020
4. Richmond 2017

Interesting that you're referencing historical conversations with me, despite this post being only your third in your time on BigFooty...