Sunday, August 30, 2009

AFL Power List: Round 22 (or, ok, now it’s time to get serious)

So this is the deal:

Saints play Collingwood; the winner goes to the prelim, the loser plays the winner of the Crows and Essendon.
Geelong plays Bulldogs; the winner goes to the prelim, the loser plays the winner of Lions and Carlton.
 
To be honest no side really stands out. The Bulldogs played very well to beat Collingwood, but I can’t say they are favourites. The Saints were not great against Melbourne; Geelong was good, but it was against Fremantle so it counted for nothing. The Crows looked great, but have struggled to get the wins over the top 4 sides.
 
So it is all set up for a great finals series where anyone of five can win – Brisbane or Carlton could go either way given the few Lions’ injuries, but I can’t see either of them beating either the Bulldogs or Geelong, and for Essendon to beat the Crows would require massive changes of form by both teams.
 
When looking at the top 8, it is interesting to look at the Premiership table were it to consist only of matches played by those eight teams.
Position Team Played Win Loss Draw Win Percentage For Against Percentage
1 St Kilda     10 9 1   90.0 1034 736 140.49
2 Geelong     11 7 4   63.6 1144 998 114.63
4 Bulldogs     10 5 5   50.0 984 982 100.20
3 Collingwood     12 6 6   50.0 1019 1050 97.05
5 Carlton     11 5 6   45.5 1043 1141 91.41
6 Crows     11 4 7   36.4 1031 1123 91.81
7 Essendon     11 4 6 1 36.4 1002 1132 88.52
8 Brisbane     11 3 7 1 27.3 957 1044 91.67

Rather interestingly the top 4 is still the same as the actual Premiership table; Carlton is above the Crows even though 2 of the Crows’ wins against top 8 sides were against Carlton. And we can see that Brisbane has been pretty woeful against the top 8 sides. 

In terms of form; the last 4 weeks are:

Position Team Win Loss Draw For Against Percentage
1 Adelaide 3 1   460 308 149.35
2 Collingwood 3 1   414 283 146.29
3 Bulldogs 3 1   409 358 114.25
4 Carlton 3 1   475 401 118.45
5 Saints 2 2   355 290 122.41
6 Geelong 2 2   344 348 98.85
7 Brisbane 2 1 1 378 373 101.34
8 Essendon 2 1 1 400 435 91.95

All of which suggests it is pretty open, given the stumbles by Geelong and the Saints at the end of the season.

And while Round 22 was a good end to a very good minor season, it will be remembered for one thing – Burton’s great hanger.
 

And so to the final Power List of the year:

 

Rank

LW

Team

Record

Comment

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1

2

St Kilda

20-2

Having commentators wondering if the Demons could still get up with 6 minutes to go in the match is not a good sign.

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2

3

Bulldogs

15-7

A strong win by the Bulldogs, and will think they can take the Cats down.

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3

1

Collingwood

15-7

So was that a hiccup, or a are the Pies not good enough?

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4

4

Adelaide

14-8

The Crows kicked the biggest score by any team this year, and will be thinking they can go all the way.

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5

5

Geelong

18-4

Very hard to gauge what the win meant, but at least they have Ottens back.

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6

7

Brisbane

13-1-8

The Lions just got over the line and now host a demoralized Carlton – but perhaps without Simon Black.

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7

6

Carlton

13-9

The Blues played very well in the first quarter, problem was they spent the whole tank doing it.

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8

9

Essendon

10-1-11

The Bombers did well to come back and beat the Hawks, but they don’t look like a finals team.

See  you

next

year

 

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9

8

Hawthorn

9-13

Buddy Franklin will miss Round 1 next year, but expect the Hawks to be fired up to get back into the top echelon.

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10

11

Sydney

8-14

A sad end to the year, and now the Swans rebuilding begins – but they don’t have to improve too much to get back in the finals.

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11

12

North Melbourne

7-1-14

North won against the only team less supported than they are.

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12

10

Port Adelaide

9-13

Bugger all people turned up to see Port lose – so much for Port fans being diehards.

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13

13

West Coast

7-15

The Eagles will look to next year with a fair bit of hope.

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14

14

Fremantle

7-15

The Dockers were never going to win and played like they knew it.

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15

15

Richmond

5-1-16

The Tigers were pathetic, again.

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15

15 

Melbourne

4-18

The Demons did all they could to make it seem that the kinda, sorta wanted to win.

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