Our Draw vs The Premiers

[craigus]

Now i'm not one looking for excuses - it's merely an observation and one that's perhaps is worth discussing

I've been listening to pundits discussing our remaining games for 2017 (saying that we have a pretty tough remainder of the fixture) and wondered were our draw has stacked up against the premiers as of ladder position to the end of last round.

If the ladder is broken down into 1-6 (1) 7-12 (2) 13-18 (3) as per the way the fixture is decided on the previous year, then we get some pretty interesting results.

We've drawn 9 teams in 1-6 ladder positions RICH-GEE-GWS-MELB-PORT-ADE-PORT-GEE-MEL
Compared to Bulldogs 7 teams in 1-6 ladder positions GWS-RICH-GEE-MEL-ADE-GWS-PORT

Middle tier we draw the same amount 7 teams each

Bottom tier 13-18 Bulldogs draw 8 teams from this part of draw compared to our 6

I know that it's likely to change as the season wears on, just interesting to see that as the draw sits at present we have drawn tougher teams to play than the premiers from last season...

 

[Cousin of Daicos]

We tend to play better against the better sides generally (Port excluded for some reason) so I'm fine with it.

 

[jackcass]

I personally like the 1-6, 7-12, 13-18 ladder breakdown for determining those teams you are drawn to play twice. You'll always get the teams that either plummet or those that have a meteoric rise but that's fine. Our issue is the plethora of requests the AFL has to assuage in terms of teams wanting home games against us and the leagues need to manage the block-buster draw. These things will always skew our draw. Upside is that you have to be good enough to beat these sides if you want to play finals so we get more practice than most.

 

[Collingwood pro]

We've struggled lately against the more mid-level teams eg Saints, Port and Melbourne. Unfortunately, while these teams didn't make the finals last year, this year they look like they have a chance, and at a minimum they've been the teams more likely to rise than necessarily fall eg Hawks and North. What this means is while top teams from last year are more likely to face the weakened Swans and Hawthorn at death's door (Admittedly Swans are still a decent team but not as good) because they were good last year, we've been more likely to play these rising mid teams around us who are either slightly better than us or at the lowest breakeven which has currently really hurt our chances because they've moved towards the 4-10 on the ladder. While the one team that we play twice who were exceptionally s**t last year are the dons a team that for external reasons were bad rather than them just being a horrible team (maybe previously horribly run). Which you could say we've got somewhat unlucky with our draw. Then in saying that we aren't a particularly consistent team and really should be able to win as we've shown we can compete.

 

[HenrikLundqvist]

Now i'm not one looking for excuses - it's merely an observation and one that's perhaps is worth discussing

I've been listening to pundits discussing our remaining games for 2017 (saying that we have a pretty tough remainder of the fixture) and wondered were our draw has stacked up against the premiers as of ladder position to the end of last round.

If the ladder is broken down into 1-6 (1) 7-12 (2) 13-18 (3) as per the way the fixture is decided on the previous year, then we get some pretty interesting results.

We've drawn 9 teams in 1-6 ladder positions RICH-GEE-GWS-MELB-PORT-ADE-PORT-GEE-MEL
Compared to Bulldogs 7 teams in 1-6 ladder positions GWS-RICH-GEE-MEL-ADE-GWS-PORT

Middle tier we draw the same amount 7 teams each

Bottom tier 13-18 Bulldogs draw 8 teams from this part of draw compared to our 6

I know that it's likely to change as the season wears on, just interesting to see that as the draw sits at present we have drawn tougher teams to play than the premiers from last season...

Yeah how dare the AFL not create the current year's fixture based on the following year's round 14 ladder.

 

[craigus]

Yeah how dare the AFL not create the current year's fixture based on the following year's round 14 ladder.

Their your words not mine! Merely a discussion that our draw stacks up as pretty difficult on 'current' evidence compared to last years premiers