Is there a track bias this year?

[JohnK]

There are ten Victorian teams and six non-Victorian teams.

If you have been following my stuff over the years, you'll know that I believe that the traveling teams (the non-Victorian teams) have a real advantage in this competition on three fronts:

1. The travelling teams have at least 11 home games where they have the travel advantage over the visitors;

2. The travelling teams become accustomed or acclimatised to travelling every fortnight and have worked out how to overcome its disadvantages. They've become travel-hardened, in a sense.

3. Home finals are a massive advantage for the non-Victorian teams and not such an advantage for the Melbourne-based teams.

Now, looking at the draw, it's an oddity this year that West Coast will play all of its first five rounds against the other five non-Victorian teams.

Port plays four non-Victorian teams in its first five, which is still very high.
Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide play three, which is only a little high.
Fremantle plays two which is closer to par .

With the exception of Fremantle, it seems that the non-Victorian teams have been drawn to beat up themselves as much as possible before they get to the point of playing the Victorian teams.

5AA enjoys the anti-SA conspiracy theories... I'm not sure where this conspiracy, if it exists, would take us... or who it would benefit... but it does seem strangely against the odds that West Coast won't play a Victorian side until the last possible moment – Round Six.

Any one got any big thoughts about this?

 

[SA Tricolours]

I think the "odd" draw this year was done by a computer programme supposedly taking into account the wishes of the AFL and the requests of the clubs.

That may be cause for the "random" anomaly you pointed out.

Just had a look at my stats and came up with an interesting start to the year so far for travelling teams.

Since 2000 (ie over 8 years), the results for the opening two rounds have been a total of 21 wins for non-Vic teams and 13 wins for Vic teams.

Whereas this year, the only two to win interstate are Geelong and Hawthorn.

Early days, so hopefully this doesn't contin ue.

 

[marvin]

It's a quirk, there's no doubt, but I think that it's a long bow to draw to make a conspiracy theory out of it (in terms of competitiveness of the non-Vic teams).

A more likely explanation is that with the new AFL draw system, it's been "tweaked" to try to get as many Victorian team v Victorian team matches going in the first 5-6 rounds for 3 reasons:

• bigger crowds (and revenue) before everyone realises how bad some teams are
• bigger ratings for FTA games in Melbourne (making the 2 big investors happy), and
• more exposure for the poorer Victorian clubs (and their sponsors) on FTA TV in the early going.

If you look at the non-Victorian teams shown on FTA into Melbourne in the 1st 5 rounds, it looks like this:

Round 1 - Port (v Geelong) Sydney (v St Kilda)
Round 2 - Brisbane (v Collingwood)
Round 3 - no non-Victorian team on FTA
Round 4 - Sydney v West Coast
Round 5 - Sydney (v Geelong)

Lots of exposure therefore for the likes of North Melbourne.

As always, it's the $$$ that talks.