This round the only movement in the overall rankings was Collingwood jumping Fremantle. The nature of rating entire seasons is that movement tends to settle down towards the end of the year with weight of information already collected. By round 23, the expected movements should be small as the week will contribute just 4.5% of the total sample.
After round 11 we took a look at recent form, especially line-by-line form, over shorter periods of time. Starting after the byes, we plan to look more closely at these shorter periods to identify trends that will be slower to show up in the overall ratings tables.
Geelong’s loss to St Kilda and Adelaide’s defeat of North Melbourne also saw rating movements this week. In particular, Geelong’s midfield score took a hit after St Kilda, a team rated for the season as below average in the area, beat them on inside-50s.
Finally, a look at the state of opponent adjustment. By this stage of the year most teams’ set of opponents starts to look pretty similar so the adjustments start to become similarly small. While much is written about the inequality of the AFL draw, HPN has found that the AFL has a pretty fair draw. We still see the Crows and Giants as having had relatively hard schedules so far, but the difference is now quite small. At the other end, Richmond and Melbourne look like they’ve had relatively easy runs – relative being the operative word here.
