With all the current talk about Geelong and Melbourne Storm underachieving this year because neither of them won the Premiership even though they were both the standout teams during their respective home and away seasons, I started to think about how often a team should expect to win a Premiership when they start the finals series as Top Dog.
I then cast my mind to recent AFL history, and thought about the last two teams to have finished top of the ladder for three consecutive years:
Essendon 1999, 2000 and 2001 - 1 Premiership from 2 Grand Final appearances;
Port Adelaide 2002, 2003, 2004 - 1 Premiership from 1 Grand Final appearance;
I propose the following:
Zero Premierships is Underachieving;
One Premiership is Par;
Two Premierships is Overachieving;
Three Premierships is a ridiculously amazing achievement, which I doubt I will see in my lifetime (remember Brisbane didn't finish top once during their threepeat and only went into one of their winning Grand Finals as favourites);
Mathematics to support this conclusion are as follows:
1. The team that finishes first will make the Preliminary Final 90% of the time (the percentage figure under the current finals system is actually lower than that, so this may be an overestimation);
2. Once in the Preliminary Final, the top team will win approximately 75% of the time (they will usually go in favourite unless they have limped into the finals, and usually have a home ground advantage);
3. Once in the Grand Final, they will win that 65% of the time;
0.90 X 0.75 X 0.65 = 0.44
Hence, the approximate probability of the top team at the end of the Home and Away season winning the Premiership is 44%. Three consecutive cracks with a .44 probability gives the median number of premierships as 1.32. Again, this number is probably overstating things, as since the current finals system was introduced in 2000, only 3 teams from 9 that have finished top of the ladder at the end of the H&A season have gone on to win the Premiership (Ess 2000, WC 2006 and Geelong 2007).
No doubt there are better mathematicians out there than I, so interested to hear your thoughts.
I then cast my mind to recent AFL history, and thought about the last two teams to have finished top of the ladder for three consecutive years:
Essendon 1999, 2000 and 2001 - 1 Premiership from 2 Grand Final appearances;
Port Adelaide 2002, 2003, 2004 - 1 Premiership from 1 Grand Final appearance;
I propose the following:
Zero Premierships is Underachieving;
One Premiership is Par;
Two Premierships is Overachieving;
Three Premierships is a ridiculously amazing achievement, which I doubt I will see in my lifetime (remember Brisbane didn't finish top once during their threepeat and only went into one of their winning Grand Finals as favourites);
Mathematics to support this conclusion are as follows:
1. The team that finishes first will make the Preliminary Final 90% of the time (the percentage figure under the current finals system is actually lower than that, so this may be an overestimation);
2. Once in the Preliminary Final, the top team will win approximately 75% of the time (they will usually go in favourite unless they have limped into the finals, and usually have a home ground advantage);
3. Once in the Grand Final, they will win that 65% of the time;
0.90 X 0.75 X 0.65 = 0.44
Hence, the approximate probability of the top team at the end of the Home and Away season winning the Premiership is 44%. Three consecutive cracks with a .44 probability gives the median number of premierships as 1.32. Again, this number is probably overstating things, as since the current finals system was introduced in 2000, only 3 teams from 9 that have finished top of the ladder at the end of the H&A season have gone on to win the Premiership (Ess 2000, WC 2006 and Geelong 2007).
No doubt there are better mathematicians out there than I, so interested to hear your thoughts.