- Aug 18, 2009
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Grand Final Preview 2014
All year, Hawthorn have looked like the team in pole position, sitting comfortably closer to the mass of premiership cups than any other team. Even when Sydney edged ahead in terms of raw scores, Hawthorn remained in a historically fertile place, while Sydney were surrounded by white space, where teams often made finals but fell short of premierships.
The Swans' two finals performances, though, have given them a significant kick towards that cluster of cups. They're now in a place where a 2015 premiership wouldn't look out of place - it would sit closer to that main cluster than to the "outlier" premierships of 1994 and 2005. The Hawks no longer have that mantle of being the clearly best-positioned team.
The Hawks' consistency, charting in the same place all year (despite significant disruption), has also been impressive, but again it's become hard to knock the Swans on that score. After restarting their season in Round 5, they rocketed to an excellent position and held that for the second half of the year, before now kicking into a higher gear in the finals. So neither team is betraying any fragility or erratic movement that might suggest their current position is undeserved.
The Hawks are the most attacking team in the league and the Swans the best defensive team, although both are quite balanced compared to the top teams of years gone by. For example, last year we also had a Grand Final between the most attacking and defensive teams, but the Hawks' defence was weaker while the Dockers' attack was weaker.
In a way it feels anti-climactic to have these two face off, because they've been the most likely Grand Finallists for a while now. If Port had made it, it would have made for a more amazing story. But Grand Finals aren't for romance: Grand Finals are for the two best teams of the year to run through each other. And that's what we're getting.
Squiggle tip
The usual squiggle algorithm awards 12pts to the home team against an interstate opponent. This works well during the home & away season, allowing the squiggle to, for example, correctly tip the Hawks to beat Sydney in Melbourne, then lose to Freo away, then beat Geelong at home.
There are two little wrinkles with it, though. The first is about what happens when there's a difference between the nominal home team (the team with "home" status) and the geographic home team (the team in whose state the game is being played). This is one of those games: Sydney, by virtue of finishing 1st on the ladder, is the nominal home team, but Hawthorn is the geographic home team. Historically, in these situations, the nominal home team does better. It seems strange and counter-intuitive, but it's what happens.
Secondly, this algorithm is calibrated to tip home & away matches, not Grand Finals. It doesn't have a particularly good record at tipping Grand Finals.
So although the interactive squiggle predictor is saying Sydney 82 - 91 Hawthorn, this is only after awarding the Hawks' a 12-pt home advantage that there's little statistical evidence that it deserves.
My best Grand Final tipper, as discussed before, is the OFFDEF-75 algorithm. This awards no home ground advantage, and heavily weights recent matches, i.e. finals performances. It has a 9-1 (90%) record at picking Grand Final winners over the last 10 years, and 20-5 (80%) over the last 25 years.
Before last weekend, OFFDEF-75 liked Port Adelaide best, then Sydney, then the Hawks. After the Swans thrashed North Melbourne, they moved ahead of Port - despite the Roos not being considered the toughest of opponents, the final margin was a big one, enough to shift them significantly. This meant that for Port to pull ahead, they had to beat the Hawks by 4 goals, and for the Hawks to pull ahead, they had to absolutely demolish the Power.
Neither happened. A narrow win to Hawthorn left Sydney ahead, and so the OFFDEF-75 Grand Final tip is:
Algorithm details: For anyone interested in more nitty-gritty, here are some notable algorithms and their tips. Overall, 7 are tipping Sydney (by 6-18 pts) and 1 is tipping Hawthorn (by 9).
- OFFDEF-75. My best Grand Final picker. No home advantage. Heavily weights recent games. 25-year GF record: 80%. 10-year GF record: 90%. Tip: Sydney by 10.
- VENUE-81:13. Considers performances at the MCG. 25 years: 76%. 10 years: 80%. Sydney by 6.
- OFFDEF-88:5. 5-pt home advantage to the nominal home team. Some more weight to recent games. 25 years: 80%. 10 years: 70%. Sydney by 11.
- ISTATE-91:12: POWER:88. Heavily weights games against strong opposition. 25 years: 68%. 10 years: 80%. Sydney by 12.
- PILGRIM-91:12. Penalizes teams based on distance travelled between games. 25 years: 72%. 10 years: 60%. Sydney by 8.
- ISTATE-91:12. Core squiggle algorithm, using nominal home ground advantage. 25 years: 60%. 10 years: 50%. Sydney by 18.
- ISTATEV2F-91:12. Core squiggle algorithm, using geographic home ground advantage. 25 years: 56%. 10 years: 60%. Hawthorn by 9.
- HOMER. Tip the home team, i.e. the one that finished higher on the ladder. 25 years: 52%. 10 years: 50%. Sydney.
