Ladder conference farce

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radiojake

radiojake

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Nov 28, 2011
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Early days I know it's only Rnd 2 but already we have a disparity in the conferences

Currently 5th in Grp A, Melbourne would be 1st in Grp B

Every single gp B team lost this weekend

Next weekend sees another 4 cross conference games - we could potentially see a situation where after 3 rounds Gp A have 12 wins while Gp B have 3 wins

AFL love slapping things together with no real thought going into it
 
Carlton were top of the ladder this time last year with a % of 226, so we shouldn't gloss over just how much things can change in a few weeks.

Beyond that, it was obvious somebody would get screwed by this system (I said it would be Melbourne but it could end up being any team) when the league drew it up. With or without conferences, an unequal fixture is always going to create problems, especially in a short season.

However, what's done is done and even if there is a disparity between A and B, we won't really know as of next year because there will only be one cross-conference game per club (this is assuming the 7-round season is here to stay a while longer, which imo is a pretty safe bet).

Essentially we just want the two best teams playing off in the GF. One under-the-radar factor which might have a huge say on that--and I don't think there's been confirmation from the league about it--is how home ground is determined for the semis in the case of, say, A2 having more wins than B1. Whatever their ruling, it seems like there's more shitstorm potential on the horizon.
 

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Conferences work if you have the volume of games to even out scheduling and talent discrepancies. E.g in the nba they play 52 games intra conference and 30 cross conference ( 15 teams in the opposite conference home and away).

To try it for a 10 team comp with a 7 game season seems ill thought out and total madness.

This has probably been done to death but can anyone tell me why they have a 7 game season instead of 9, which would seem to make sense in a 10 team league. To avoid crossing into the men's season? It all seems weird to this extremely casual follower of this comp
 
HG Pennypacker said:
This has probably been done to death but can anyone tell me why they have a 7 game season instead of 9, which would seem to make sense in a 10 team league. To avoid crossing into the men's season? It all seems weird to this extremely casual follower of this comp
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They wanted to give the comp clean air supposedly. Starting the season earlier would have caused a clash with Australian Open (some might say so what?) and they didn't want full AFLW rounds to be held during AFL season.

I can see it would have been a scheduling/broadcasting nightmare. 5 AFLW games over the weekend on top of 8 AFL games.

I think they will have to start the AFLW season earlier and if it clashes with the tennis then so be it. Seems even more likely now that C7 no longer has the tennis rights.
 
Teen Wolf said:
Essentially we just want the two best teams playing off in the GF. One under-the-radar factor which might have a huge say on that--and I don't think there's been confirmation from the league about it--is how home ground is determined for the semis in the case of, say, A2 having more wins than B1. Whatever their ruling, it seems like there's more shitstorm potential on the horizon.
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B1 will definitely host. If A2 wanted a home final, they needed to top their conference.

This is the part that most people don't understand about conferences. Teams aren't directly competing with everyone in the league, you just need to beat the teams in your conference to have a chance to beat the best from the other conference.

As someone already said, it'll be less of a mess next year with more teams.

HG Pennypacker said:
This has probably been done to death but can anyone tell me why they have a 7 game season instead of 9, which would seem to make sense in a 10 team league. To avoid crossing into the men's season? It all seems weird to this extremely casual follower of this comp
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Because they're not expanding to 13 games next year, so expanding to 9 for one season just to drop back to 7 again would also create backlash.

The conference structure is set up with both the 14 team league (and eventual 18 team league) in mind. Beyond that, f*** knows how they'll manage the eventual jump to 17 games though.

Banyo Bloods said:
This is designed to ease people into the conference that WILL happen in the AFL
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It won't happen in the AFL for a variety of reasons. Mostly because it's unworkable with 18 teams and 22 games, and any change to either of those factors would make any 'need' for conferences redundant.
 
Starburns_ said:
This is the part that most people don't understand about conferences. Teams aren't directly competing with everyone in the league, you just need to beat the teams in your conference to have a chance to beat the best from the other conference.
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that would make sense if you were only playing against other teams in your conference - but as it stands there is this weird cross over where you play half the teams from the other conference
 
radiojake said:
that would make sense if you were only playing against other teams in your conference - but as it stands there is this weird cross over where you play half the teams from the other conference
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True, but it's really only a one year issue. The problem isn't so much conferences, more how they've been used this year. It's also easy to forget that the reason there's so many cross-conference games is because everyone lost their s**t over there potentially being less matches this season.

I guess the main idea was that the best teams would still probably win most of their games anyway. So whilst it wasn't the cleanest fixture, at the very least the best 2 teams would be playing finals (and likely not meeting until the GF).
 
Starburns_ said:
B1 will definitely host. If A2 wanted a home final, they needed to top their conference.

This is the part that most people don't understand about conferences. Teams aren't directly competing with everyone in the league, you just need to beat the teams in your conference to have a chance to beat the best from the other conference.
Click to expand...
Sure, and if the As are actually better, they should be capable of going on the road and beating the Bs when it truly counts. Still, if Fremantle go 6-1 in what is considered the tougher conference but end up with an away prelim against a 4-3 Brisbane, Dockers fans will understand the system even less! There will be backlash (three people on twitter) which may impact future decision-making, we know how knee-jerky the league can be. Of course, on the flipside of this hypothetical... the Lions didn't choose their draw, they might've planned differently and performed better were it required of them.

Starburns_ said:
As someone already said, it'll be less of a mess next year with more teams.
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Whoever said that is a smart man. Nevertheless perhaps a Top 4 (out of 7) in each conference would really alleviate any qualms about imbalanced divisions, risk letting a fortunate crap team into the finals once in a while so that an unlucky good team never misses out. Straight-shot structure with no double chances and the season only has to be increased from 9 to 10 weeks (which would have to happen for a Top 3 setup anyway).

Until the AFL want a 4-month season, this seems like the best attainable solution to me.
 
Teen Wolf said:
Sure, and if the As are actually better, they should be capable of going on the road and beating the Bs when it truly counts. Still, if Fremantle go 6-1 in what is considered the tougher conference but end up with an away prelim against a 4-3 Brisbane, Dockers fans will understand the system even less! There will be backlash (three people on twitter) which may impact future decision-making, we know how knee-jerky the league can be. Of course, on the flipside of this hypothetical... the Lions didn't choose their draw, they might've planned differently and performed better were it required of them.


Whoever said that is a smart man. Nevertheless perhaps a Top 4 (out of 7) in each conference would really alleviate any qualms about imbalanced divisions, risk letting a fortunate crap team into the finals once in a while so that an unlucky good team never misses out. Straight-shot structure with no double chances and the season only has to be increased from 9 to 10 weeks (which would have to happen for a Top 3 setup anyway).

Until the AFL want a 4-month season, this seems like the best attainable solution to me.
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Freo fans picked up on this after round 1 when the girls had an unexpected win.

We have a pretty good team this season. It would be a farce to think we miss finals when 4/10 teams make it.

The afl is their eagerness, brought it in a year too soon.
 

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Both conferences well and truly up for grabs, can see this going down to the last round to decide the top two. If it was a combined ladder the season would be over for 5 of the sides already.
 
Teen Wolf said:
Whoever said that is a smart man. Nevertheless perhaps a Top 4 (out of 7) in each conference would really alleviate any qualms about imbalanced divisions, risk letting a fortunate crap team into the finals once in a while so that an unlucky good team never misses out. Straight-shot structure with no double chances and the season only has to be increased from 9 to 10 weeks (which would have to happen for a Top 3 setup anyway).

Until the AFL want a 4-month season, this seems like the best attainable solution to me.
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Reckon top 6, straight knockout with the conference winners getting the week off is the way to go.

With the fixture next year likely to be a 6-1 split on games played in and out of conference, I find it hard to sympsthise with the team that finishes 4th in a conference missing out. Now if the season ever expanded further to perhaps 10 games (before adding 4 teams), then I think something like top 2 of each conference would make it automatically, then the last 2 spots determined by W/L. So you could get 3 from each conference, or 2 from one and 4 from the other.
 
it's only half time in the Brisbane v Melbourne game but at 40 pt margin I'm comfortable to call that a Melbourne win

So we do have a collective 12 wins in Group A, and collective 3 wins in Group B (those three wins being inter-group B matches)

Carlton are going to be topping Group B with a 1-2 86%

Western Bulldogs will be 5th in Group A with 2-1 86%

Adelaide will be 4th with 2-1 141%

If Crows lose to Freo next week, their season is pretty much done, while even the winless Collingwood and GWS are only a game off a semi final birth at this stage
 
And it's not like it's just bad luck, besides Brisbane, all those sides in Conference B have been terrible, and it was also clear North Melbourne were going to be way more competitive than Geelong.
 
radiojake said:
it's only half time in the Brisbane v Melbourne game but at 40 pt margin I'm comfortable to call that a Melbourne win

So we do have a collective 12 wins in Group A, and collective 3 wins in Group B (those three wins being inter-group B matches)

Carlton are going to be topping Group B with a 1-2 86%

Western Bulldogs will be 5th in Group A with 2-1 86%

Adelaide will be 4th with 2-1 141%

If Crows lose to Freo next week, their season is pretty much done, while even the winless Collingwood and GWS are only a game off a semi final birth at this stage
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And how good is that, well done AFL on picking two competitive conferences.
 
I've looked at the remaining AFLW matches for 2019 and if the highest ranked teams (based on the current conference) win their match up, we have a scenario where the 7th ranked team (on the basis of an overall ladder) makes the semi-finals on just three wins.

The AFLW conference ladders based on those results would end as...

A:
Roos 28pts (1st overall)
Freo 24 (2nd)
----
Mel 20 (3rd)
Dogs 16 (probable 4th)
Adel 12 (probable 6th)

B:
Carl 16 (probable 5th)
Geel 12 (probable 7th)
----
Bris 8 (8th)
GWS 4 (9th)
Coll 0 (10th)

The end result would be the following AFLW semi-finals:
Roos (1st overall) v Geel (7th)
Carl (5th) v Freo (2nd) - Yes the 5th placed Blues would host the 2nd placed Dockers despite winning two less games.

Most likely, 2 landslide semis with the Top Two A teams meeting in the Grand Final.

AFLW nightmare scenario... semi final upsets and 5th v 7th in the Grand Final!
 
It's like a race down the straight six at Flemington, and at the 400 the caller observes "...the stand side is well ahead, inside rail not in it..."
 
I'm rapt that this has blown up. The conference system is a joke and like many things in football, was never requested by players or fans.

The AFLW needs some people to stand up to the AFL and tell them that this is the first and last time they will accept being dictated to.

I hope the remaining games continue to further highlight how bad this conference system is.

Can the Bulldogs beat Brisbane this weekend?

Week 4:
B2-Carlton v B1-Geelong
A5-Bulldogs v B3-Brisbane
A4-Adelaide v A2-Fremantle
B5-Collingwood v B4-GWS Giants
A3-Melbourne v A1-Kangaroos
 
Of course the conferences were a terrible terrible idea, but a better system would have been only the top team from each conference advances and then the next best two from either conference, as they do in Super Rugby. Unfortunately we are not dealing with intelligent administrators at the AFL.

AFLW-2019.jpg
 
Pretty amusing.
If you going to use conferences and certainly this was done to prepare for doing it when 4 more teams join it next year, you got to make sure you have a way of making conferences as even as possible. They clearly failed badly this experiment
 
after next weekend, each team in Group A could be on 12 points, and in Group B, only one team on 8 points, the others on 4 or 0.
 
It blows the mind that highly paid sports administrators devised this system! The 2019 AFLW season is a case study in poor administration, but also the fact that conferences are generally a bad idea.

In the NBA there has been a long-running problem with the West being far stronger than the East. This is a structural problem that has resulted in, for the last decade or more, good teams missing out on playoffs in the west, and poor teams scraping in in the east. Take Minnesota for example. If they were in the east (and geographically they practically are) they'd be in 7th and pretty confident of locking in a playoff spot with 15-20 games remaining. However, because they're in the west, they're no chance - 4 games shy with a number of better teams competing for that same spot. This article's from 2014, but the issues remain and season 2018-19 is panning out in the same way.

https://www.sbnation.com/nba/2014/11/24/7274911/nba-conference-record-standings-imbalance

From what I can see, the only argument in favour of conferences is 'the US does them'. This obsession with apeing everything the US does has led indirectly to a number of abominations in recent years, including the 'game day experience', Monday Night Football and AFLX. Would hate to see the rank stupidity of the AFL suits result in the adoption of another US sporting custom for no good reason.
 
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