Three weeks of the AFL season are past us and…honestly, we don’t know who is good or bad yet. Are the Suns set for another long year, or is there light in the tunnel? Is Ross Lyon about to be sacked, or is he a genius for the Dockers upset
Continue reading »The Arc/HPN Crossover: Don’t Stress If Your Team Is 0-2
This is a collaboration post between HPN and Matt Cowgill of The Arc/ESPN. Matt is an expert in finding beautiful ways to display footy data, in order to tell compelling stories. And we are HPN. Matt has kindly provided the graphs, and some of the general comments for this piece
Continue reading »Who is your AFL club death-riding this year?
The introduction of future draft pick trades in 2015 has given us, the footballing public/nerds, the wonderful spectacle of clubs quite literally taking bets on each other and then “death-riding” them the following year in the hopes of securing a better pick. In 2016, for example, Collingwood’s struggles resulted in the pick they traded for Adam
Continue reading »Adelaide’s forward line was really, really, really good last week
It’s a bit of a cliché to rely on this early in the footballing year, but we’ve started to run out of superlatives to describe the dominance of the Crows’ all-conquering forward line. Last week, against a formidable Giants side, the Crows struggled for a quarter or so before flicking
Continue reading »What does winning in round 1 mean?
HPN has previously established that the predictive powers of the preseason are minimal at best, but after yet another crazy week of football to open up the season but we thought it’d be useful to look at how telling the first round of results would be in determining the make-up
Continue reading »These Are The Last Days – an article about an article about a podcast
There was a ripple in the online footy world when a hot take appeared on the Herald Sun website about Erin Phillips and her ability to play in the AFL men’s competition. Whilst that may have captured most of the attention, we reckon it’s a fairly mundane point. Unlike other athletes
Continue reading »HPN’s AFLW Grand Final Preview
The first AFLW Grand Final participants have been decided, after a weekend of relatively wacky results. As we outlined last week, Melbourne needed a record-setting win to maximise their chances of making the big game. Whilst the Dees managed the record-breaking 70 points, and a big 54-point win, it wasn’t quite enough to
Continue reading »HPN’s Statistical 2017 AFL Ladder Prediction
This is HPN’s third year of providing predictions on the ladder for the upcoming AFL season. Some things have changed with our methods, but most haven’t. As we explained last year: “Like last season’s prediction, this projection shouldn’t be used as exact gospel on how a team should perform in
Continue reading »AFLW Round 7 Preview and Power Rankings
To start off this week’s column, HPN thought we’d get to the nitty-gritty and step through the scenarios each team has before them to make the grand final: Effectively, it’s all in Adelaide’s hands unless Melbourne do something unprecedented to Fremantle. With that behind us, let’s get to the week’s
Continue reading »AFLW Recap and Round 6 Power Rankings
Regardless of ability, gender, geographical location or audience, the country might have witnessed one of the most compelling weekends of football all year, if not for the past few. All four AFLW games last weekend were decided by a score or less, and most were in the balance up until
Continue reading »