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Certified Legendary Thread Race for the flag, in squiggly lines

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MotlopRules said:
I remember the final against West Coast that we won by 3 points. Was there and was absolutely ecstatic at the time, screaming and jumping up and down in my seat, thought it was one of the best days of my life, etc...

Looking back now, and it probably would have been far better if we had lost that game. :(
Click to expand...

Agreed. Would have hosted collingwood and might have gone out in straight sets but that is still better than what happened
 
I think WCE at full strength would have given Geelong a contest, but Geelong still would have likely run away in the end and beaten us. If Geelong showed up with the form they did on the day, they would have won rather comfortably. After that Rnd 6 smashing of Richmond and the consolidation edging of WCE in Rnd 7, we all kind of knew Geelong would finally win it.

A lot of people assume Collingwood would have walked all over Port, but I think Port would have been favourite. Geelong clearly weren't at their best in the prelim, compared to the GF. But it was a weird finals series, any side (except maybe the Kangaroos, who I guess were ultimately 3rd) could have won the premiership with a little luck, but Geelong were the only side deserving of a premiership that year. Whilst 2008 was a big upset, I think the 2008 Hawks & even the Bulldogs were better than all the bridesmaids in 2007.

I was in recruit school during that finals series, and remember spending the weekend in Melbourne during those two WCE losses. Very tough viewing, that was the most brutally unlucky straight sets exit in the AFL era.
 

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Hawkk said:
I remember that season well. Geelong and Hawthorn were 1-2 after 15 rounds (back in the good old days when you used to play all 15 sides in the first 15 rounds) before the Hawks lost a string of crunch games (North, Port Adelaide + Sydney) that saw us let slip a seemingly attainable top 4 position.

I guess in a way it was a sign of things to come in the following seasons...

Probably a blessing in disguise as Port made a late run (with back to back thrillers away to Hawthorn + Geelong) and made an unexpected GF. If we made the GF that season we would have been smacked and may well not have recovered. Before they self destructed the logical GF pairing was Geelong + West Coast...

I've often wondered if the Eagles would have provided the Cats with a legit challenge if the shit didn't hit the fan...
Click to expand...

Except that we smacked geelong twice in 2006 and 2007. I would have given us as good a chance as i gave us before the 2008 granny
 
Roobs321 said:
I think WCE at full strength would have given Geelong a contest, but Geelong still would have likely run away in the end and beaten us. If Geelong showed up with the form they did on the day, they would have won rather comfortably. After that Rnd 6 smashing of Richmond and the consolidation edging of WCE in Rnd 7, we all kind of knew Geelong would finally win it.

A lot of people assume Collingwood would have walked all over Port, but I think Port would have been favourite. Geelong clearly weren't at their best in the prelim, compared to the GF. But it was a weird finals series, any side (except maybe the Kangaroos, who I guess were ultimately 3rd) could have won the premiership with a little luck, but Geelong were the only side deserving of a premiership that year. Whilst 2008 was a big upset, I think the 2008 Hawks & even the Bulldogs were better than all the bridesmaids in 2007.

I was in recruit school during that finals series, and remember spending the weekend in Melbourne during those two WCE losses. Very tough viewing, that was the most brutally unlucky straight sets exit in the AFL era.
Click to expand...

Both were far superior.

For starters Port Adelaide did a 15-7 season with a 113.5%. From 2nd to 6th just 2 games separated the cluster of teams in the finals. Port were a late runner for the top 4 and then top 2 (running over the top of Hawthorn and Geelong in successive weeks, before Essendon and Sheedy did them a favour with a final hurrah in the West) with the qualifying final with West Coast an absolute classic

In 2008 Hawthorn did a 17-5 season and finished with a 131.9% - 1.5 wins and 13% ahead of the Bulldogs in 3rd who were 1.5 wins and 8% ahead of the Saints in 4th.

The paradigm in 2008 was completely different to 2007
 
Final Siren loving the squiggle each week mate.

I've just been wondering if rankings change retrospectively based on how teams you've already played fare from that point on, or if it only counts at the point in time you play them?

For example: given the start of the year's placement is based 50% or so from the year before, if you had a big win in the first few rounds over a team that was strong in 2013, you'd expect a decent positive shift in your squiggle. If that team continues to lose over the year though they move towards the bottom left and teams that play them later in the season would get less of a shift if they beat them as the result becomes expected.

The opposite would be true of losses to a team like port in early 2013 who turned out over the course of year to be a strong side.

Do those earlier results get adjusted as the season plays out and the truly strong teams declare themselves?

Cheers
 
Round 7, 2014

There's nothing the squiggle likes more than a triple-digit thrashing, so Hawthorn zooms into Geelong 2007 territory:

aovPwZn.png


Collingwood and Carlton don't budge because the squiggle predicted a 104-74 game and it turned out to be 104-70. So that's not worth mentioning at all, except as an excuse for me to point out how awesome that tip was.

North Melbourne... seriously. If you tipped against the odds on every North game, you would be happy.

Who Wants To Be A Runner-Up: Season 2007

Speaking of Geelong 2007, some conjecture in this thread about who might have challenged Geelong in 2007, and whether anyone really wanted to make that Grand Final. According to the squiggle, the answers are no-one, and no. Geelong 2007 are the most dominant team as I've seen in the squiggles in the modern era - not because they chart the highest, but because of the enormous gap they maintained over the entire rest of the field throughout the season.

I've posted this before, but that was last year, so here it is again:

2007​

muvRL3o.png


Usually there's at least one other team to keep it interesting. But not in 2007. Port Adelaide was genuinely the second-best team that year, according to the squiggle.

The other thing to notice is the big white space at the bottom. It's easy to forget that before 2011, wooden spooners regularly finished with a percentage in the 70s. Then Gold Coast and GWS came along, and Melbourne got horrendous, and we became used to teams having percentages in the 50s, or even the high 40s. But this isn't the norm. And if GWS and Melbourne continue their trends, and Brisbane & St Kilda can pull out of their death spirals, it may not be again for a while.
 
Last edited:
Dawggin It said:
Final Siren loving the squiggle each week mate.

I've just been wondering if rankings change retrospectively based on how teams you've already played fare from that point on, or if it only counts at the point in time you play them?

For example: given the start of the year's placement is based 50% or so from the year before, if you had a big win in the first few rounds over a team that was strong in 2013, you'd expect a decent positive shift in your squiggle. If that team continues to lose over the year though they move towards the bottom left and teams that play them later in the season would get less of a shift if they beat them as the result becomes expected.

The opposite would be true of losses to a team like port in early 2013 who turned out over the course of year to be a strong side.

Do those earlier results get adjusted as the season plays out and the truly strong teams declare themselves?

Cheers
Click to expand...
This is a great question.

The short answer is the squiggle doesn't retroactively change anything; it's a very simple model, really.

But what you describe is something I've meant to try and model for ages, just to see if it works. Because that's what humans do; you see these results:

Round 2: Richmond 98 def. Carlton 86
Round 3: Essendon 138 def. Carlton 57

... and after Round 3 you rate Richmond worse than you did after Round 2.

So it makes a lot of intuitive sense to try that in a model: go back and adjust the ratings based on new information about the teams - especially in the early few rounds, when you want to figure out quickly who's improved since last year and who's fallen away.

Whether it will actually help predictive accuracy, though, I don't know; a lot of things that seem to make intuitive sense I haven't been able to make into reliable predictors. The problem a lot of the time is that for every game that it works, there's another where it doesn't. So then you need to figure out why, and when you should apply that function and when you shouldn't. At which point you begin to wonder whether you have enough free time for this. But it would definitely be worth investigating.
 

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I'm not sure it's a great idea to model retrospectively. Because a team's performance in any given week can essentially only be a result of cumulative events leading up to it.

Let's say for instance that Sydney wallop Hawthorn this week. Does that make St Kilda's performance even worse? Not necessarily. Mitchell and Lake started the game against St Kilda, and despite being injured during the game, St Kilda were well on the back foot before either was out.
 
Final Siren said:
Who Wants To Be A Runner-Up: Season 2007

Speaking of Geelong 2007, some conjecture in this thread about who might have challenged Geelong in 2007, and whether anyone really wanted to make that Grand Final. According to the squiggle, the answers are no-one, and no. Geelong 2007 are the most dominant team as I've seen in the squiggles in the modern era - not because they chart the highest, but because of the enormous gap they maintained over the entire rest of the field throughout the season.

I've posted this before, but that was last year, so here it is again:

2007​

muvRL3o.png


Usually there's at least one other team to keep it interesting. But not in 2007. Port Adelaide was genuinely the second-best team that year, according to the squiggle.
Click to expand...
I guess the thing you can notice about Port is they were actually approaching Geelong 2009 territory, and it looks like they were pretty close to it just before the GF. Had they won the GF they may have jumped even further towards the top right.

To me it looks like the GF result pulled Geelong a long way to the top right, and Port to the bottom left, as you would expect. But going into the GF Port were close to some premiership teams.
 
Yeah, Port were generally the second best performed side across the season (other than a mid-season flat spot from memory).

Hawthorn (who I predicted as a fast rising premiership winner after 2006) and Collingwood were okay for the first 2/3s of the season, whilst WCE, Sydney and Adelaide lurked dangerously based on the previous 2 years. I couldn't see North Melbourne winning (I thought they were slightly more dangerous in 2008 actually).

But it was always the Geelong show. The late season win by Port at Geelong, along with Geelong's recent bad luck in the decider, certainly kept things interesting though, at least until early in the second quarter. But it was clear to many football fans at the time that Geelong were playing the most outstanding football since early 00's Brisbane & Port, and their dominance since Rnd 6 was comparable to Essendon in 2000.
 
iluvparis said:
A few interesting matches this week between top left and bottom right teams.

A good one (Port v Freo) and a bad one (Carlton v St.Kilda)

I wonder who usually comes out on top in these sort of clashes?
Click to expand...
I haven't investigated properly, beyond this kind of thing, and I don't know the answer. But my feeling is that defensive specialists might be most vulnerable to balanced teams, and best against offensive specialists. (Which means Freo should have beaten Hawthorn last year... but then they weren't far off.)

One season I find interesting is 1994. At the end of the Home & Away season, the top two teams are:
  1. West Coast (ultra-defensive) 16 wins 132%
  2. Carlton (balanced) 15 wins 133%
Then there's Geelong (high-attack) on 13 wins 114% at 5th, and Melbourne (balanced/high-attack) at 7th with 12 wins 117%.

Now I believe Carlton were primed for a premiership that year and should have won the flag. But it was that wacky McIntyre Final 8 system where 1st played 8th and 2nd played 7th, and Carlton had the misfortune to draw against first Melbourne then Geelong, the two most attacking teams in the league. They lost to both, going out in straight sets.

So West Coast, which Carlton had thumped by 10 goals in Round 22, never had to play the Blues, instead squeaking past a truly mediocre team in Collingwood (8th, balanced, 12 wins 99.9% - didn't even have a percentage above 100!) by 2 points, then easily accounting for Melbourne and Geelong, high-attack teams that the Eagles matched up well against.

West Coast 1994 were a great team, but I think they got very lucky that year, the first ever of the McIntyre Final Eight. The Blues had to wait another year, winning the flag in 1995.
 

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Yes, I think we were cheated a GF for the ages that year. It's a shame WCE-Carlton have met in so few finals, given that their 90s success was close together. 1994 should have been WCE-Carlton, or even WCE-North (battle of the 90s).
 
Final Siren said:
I haven't investigated properly, beyond this kind of thing, and I don't know the answer. But my feeling is that defensive specialists might be most vulnerable to balanced teams, and best against offensive specialists. (Which means Freo should have beaten Hawthorn last year... but then they weren't far off.)

One season I find interesting is 1994. At the end of the Home & Away season, the top two teams are:
  1. West Coast (ultra-defensive) 16 wins 132%
  2. Carlton (balanced) 15 wins 133%
Then there's Geelong (high-attack) on 13 wins 114% at 5th, and Melbourne (balanced/high-attack) at 7th with 12 wins 117%.

Now I believe Carlton were primed for a premiership that year and should have won the flag. But it was that wacky McIntyre Final 8 system where 1st played 8th and 2nd played 7th, and Carlton had the misfortune to draw against first Melbourne then Geelong, the two most attacking teams in the league. They lost to both, going out in straight sets.

So West Coast, which Carlton had thumped by 10 goals in Round 22, never had to play the Blues, instead squeaking past a truly mediocre team in Collingwood (8th, balanced, 12 wins 99.9% - didn't even have a percentage above 100!) by 2 points, then easily accounting for Melbourne and Geelong, high-attack teams that the Eagles matched up well against.

West Coast 1994 were a great team, but I think they got very lucky that year, the first ever of the McIntyre Final Eight. The Blues had to wait another year, winning the flag in 1995.
Click to expand...
Carlton's run into the 1995 premiership was also against high attack sides.

I'd love to know what went wrong for them in 1994.

This was back in the days you could finish top with 16 wins. Just about unheard of in recent years.
 
I think after Rnd 7-9, the top 8 is mostly formed. I'd say that Rnd 17-20 is a good time to start looking at who might be best placed to win the flag, as the final top 8 positions often seem to shake up a little around that point.
 
Final Siren said:
Round 7, 2014

There's nothing the squiggle likes more than a triple-digit thrashing, so Hawthorn zooms into Geelong 2007 territory:

aovPwZn.png


Collingwood and Carlton don't budge because the squiggle predicted a 104-74 game and it turned out to be 104-70. So that's not worth mentioning at all, except as an excuse for me to point out how awesome that tip was.

North Melbourne... seriously. If you tipped against the odds on every North game, you would be happy.

Who Wants To Be A Runner-Up: Season 2007

Speaking of Geelong 2007, some conjecture in this thread about who might have challenged Geelong in 2007, and whether anyone really wanted to make that Grand Final. According to the squiggle, the answers are no-one, and no. Geelong 2007 are the most dominant team as I've seen in the squiggles in the modern era - not because they chart the highest, but because of the enormous gap they maintained over the entire rest of the field throughout the season.

I've posted this before, but that was last year, so here it is again:

2007​

muvRL3o.png


Usually there's at least one other team to keep it interesting. But not in 2007. Port Adelaide was genuinely the second-best team that year, according to the squiggle.

The other thing to notice is the big white space at the bottom. It's easy to forget that before 2011, wooden spooners regularly finished with a percentage in the 70s. Then Gold Coast and GWS came along, and Melbourne got horrendous, and we became used to teams having percentages in the 50s, or even the high 40s. But this isn't the norm. And if GWS and Melbourne continue their trends, and Brisbane & St Kilda can pull out of their death spirals, it may not be again for a while.
Click to expand...

As of Round 7 the current odds for the flag are:

Hawthorn 2.50
Geelong 5.50
Fremantle 7.50
Port Adelaide 8.00
Collingwood 8.00
Sydney 11.00

Looking at the squiggle Port Adelaide + Geelong it would seem really should be equal 2nd short priced favourite for the flag ($4?)
 
Hawkk said:
As of Round 7 the current odds for the flag are:

Hawthorn 2.50
Geelong 5.50
Fremantle 7.50
Port Adelaide 8.00
Collingwood 8.00
Sydney 11.00

Looking at the squiggle Port Adelaide + Geelong it would seem really should be equal 2nd short priced favourite for the flag ($4?)
Click to expand...
If you take the teams rating as Defensive + Offensive Geelong is around 135, Port and Dockers both around 130, Swans and Pies back at around 125. So Geelong should be a clear second favourite, Port and Freo around the same price after that, then Pies / Sydney after them. If it was just done on the squiggle.
 

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Certified Legendary Thread Race for the flag, in squiggly lines

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