This is the second edition of HPN’s weekly AFL preview. It’s probably better than last week’s piece. Chaos in the first two rounds In the first two rounds we have had the following results: Geelong d Hawthorn GWS d Geelong Melbourne d GWS Essendon d Melbourne Gold Coast d Essendon
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What Did We Learn From Round 1? #AFL
Plus the Lowbrown and a couple of other things. We’re going to do weekly round-ups this year on HPN, and this time we mean it. Honestly. Just trust us. Winners v Losers For the first time in AFL history the nine winners from round 1 travel this week to play
Continue reading »What does the “Collingwood 11” really mean? #AFL
This week there has been a lot of lamentable confusion and conjecture around the reporting of the illicit drug positive test rates among AFL players. HPN has also noticed that there hasn’t necessarily been a lot of fact involved in the scrum of opinion. So what are the facts around
Continue reading »HPN’s Statistical 2016 AFL Ladder Prediction #afl #aflstats
We’ve already run our eye over the 2016 Super Rugby seasons, and the current NRL season, so HPN decided to throw caution to the wind and attempt to predict the 2016 AFL season. Like last season’s prediction, this projection shouldn’t be used as exact gospel on how a team should
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HPN’s Statistical 2016 NRL Ladder Prediction – Or how stats can’t account for off-field incidents #NRL
If you’ve clicked on this article from another website (such as Twitter or Reddit), you will have likely seen the lead image as a thumbnail. Yes, the one with the much maligned Roosters as the eventual minor premiers. No, we aren’t trolling. Even as I type this the odds of
Continue reading »Statistical prediction of the 2016 Super Rugby season #superrugby
Yesterday we took a look at the new structure for Super Rugby in 2016 and noted the fixture imbalances it throws up. We also looked at the 2015 format and noted that there are already fixture imbalances. We calculated a “strength of schedule” measure, which is an indicator of the underlying strength
Continue reading »The new-look Super Rugby – rebalancing an already uneven fixture #superrugby
The expansion of the Super Rugby to include teams from Argentina and Japan is fascinating from both a football business perspective and for the importance of the growth of the game. In this post we’re going to take a look at the structure of the new competition and then use
Continue reading »What predictive power do AFL pre-season results have for the regular season? #NABChallenge
Footy is back! Sort of! Pre-season trial games have started at obscure ovals where cricket isn’t still getting in the way. It’s a time of great hope, when every team’s draftees and fringe players and returning injured players are showing good signs, and fans and pundits try to identify which teams might have good
Continue reading »No, the Perth Wildcats are not about to become the “world’s greatest team” – yet
The Perth Wildcats are not about to become the “world’s greatest team” – yet A little article appeared at the Western Australian recently claiming that the Perth Wildcats are about to break a “world record” for most consecutive seasons making the post-season playoffs or finals. It claims that this record is currently 29
Continue reading »The *other* Essendon 12
34 players who were at Essendon in 2012 have been suspended for a doping offence. On Monday we looked at what the suspensions of Essendon’s remaining 12 players from that group do in terms of Essendon’s expected output in 2016. Today, we’re going to look at another group of 12 Essendon players –
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