All year we’ve been running a simple ratings system of AFL teams using inside-50 differentials and inside-50 efficiency, based on the fact that inside-50s correlate fairly well with success and therefore the assumption that quantity and quality is a key measure of team strength. We’ve written a bit about this in the
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Defenders Get Even Less Respect Than Forwards at the Brownlow Medal
Our post earlier this week looked at the inevitability of Patrick Dangerfield winning the Brownlow Medal. Which, unsurprisingly to most who were paying attention to football in 2016, ended up happening in a landslide. We thought that Dangerfield would get about 34.5 votes, assuming that he picked up an average
Continue reading »It will take until at least 2124 to have every possible VFL/AFL grand final matchup at least once
2016 marks the first time that the Swans and the Bulldogs have ever met in a grand final. This is unsurprising since only rarely have the two sides been up at the same time. Footscray, like other Victorian expansion teams (Hawthorn and North Melbourne) spent decades of their early VFL history near
Continue reading »Forwards Get No Respect At The Brownlow Medal (which Dangerfield will win)
Dangerfield should win the Brownlow We were going to write an extended Brownlow Medal preview, but we struggled to get excited enough to bother. It’s a foregone conclusion that Dangerfield will win, from the view of the betting agencies to that of the fans. We made a super simple model
Continue reading »The HPN Preliminary Final Preview
Greater Western Sydney v Western Bulldogs Whilst the overwhelming narrative in the last week was that the Bulldogs felled the reigning premiers, most in the footy analyst community saw the exit of the premiers coming. We hedged a bit and suggested last week that the battle might be won in
Continue reading »Is there a fairer model for AFL funding distribution?
Earlier this week HPN took a look at AFL club revenues in 2015 to see how much money each AFL club makes. In this post, given the context of the financial equalisation debate, we’re going to look at how AFL club revenues under the equalisation arrangements of some other prominent sporting leagues.
Continue reading »How much money does your club make?
AFL finances can be a bit murky and opaque and are very important to understanding the debate around financial equalisation. Luckily thanks to public annual reports we can roughly chart the financial size and position of each club. Thanks to the sterling work of The_Wookie at Footy Industry and Bigfooty in compiling
Continue reading »HPN’s Week Two AFL Finals Preview
Sydney vs Adelaide This is perhaps the match that we’ve been looking forward to all finals, a battle between the best (relative) attack of the last 18 years and the best (relative) defence of the last 18 years. When they can get the ball forward, the Crows are an absolute
Continue reading »There is more than one way to win a game of #afl football
Note: we were originally going to call this post “there’s more than one way to skin a cat”, but is there? We don’t even know of one way to do so. Why would you skin a cat anyway? Who would do such a thing? At HPN we are firm believers
Continue reading »We are the opposite of Brett Geeves, and we’re glad (A brief history of HPN to date)
It’s not often that you lead an article by saying that you wish that you weren’t a former Australian fast bowler who gets paid to write about football and cricket. It’s strange for us too, so bear with us. On this weeks edition of Bloggers Gone Mad, Nick and Arwon
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