We open this week’s rating post with perhaps the most significant change to the HPN ratings in the last month, and one we have slowly been tracking. North Melbourne, after opening the season on a 9-match undefeated streak, have sunk down to 9th in the ratings and face a not-significant
Continue reading »Round 17 – close games are still basically random
Given the AFL’s insistence on scheduling Thursday night games, Round 17 has already begun with Hawthorn pipping Sydney in yet another close win (and a fourth last-moments defeat for the Swans). A bit of a narrative has emerged from that game regarding Hawthorn as a “clutch” team and we want
Continue reading »Round 16 Ratings: The 2016 Season Is Tighter Than Any In The Last Decade
Sorry for the clickbait headline, but through 16 rounds this statement is more fact than mere hot take. According to the HPN ratings system, applied historically back to 1998, this top four is the tightest since at least 2003. Our ratings are expressed as in-season relativities, telling us how far
Continue reading »Round 16 preview – A look at Buddycentrism
This week we’re going to take a look at the question of how reliant teams have been on particular goal kickers. The specific spur for this is the talk of Sydney being overly Franklin-centric but the question is worth looking at more broadly – how much heavy lifting do each
Continue reading »Round 15 – The Going Gets Tough
As the season keeps on keeping on, and the bye rounds hit the rear view mirror, stability is slowly taking its course (as we mentioned last week). Only one change in the positions this week, with Collingwood leapfrogging Richmond after recording the most uninspiring of wins over Carlton. Richmond likely
Continue reading »Round 15 – What’s up with crowd numbers?
Earlier this week, Rohan Connolly wrote a piece about the state of AFL attendances centred around Collingwood getting their lowest crowds since 1940. His overarching thesis is that recent AFL experimentation with the fixture, specifically in 2014, has disillusioned the MCG-going public, and has caused crowds to be more fickle, and thus
Continue reading »Round 14 AFL ratings – the normalising
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
Continue reading »Continuity without change (and a round 14 preview)
Continuity is always key A common football truism is that a stable team does better than a chaotic one. But does this hold true when looking at actual results? HPN has looked at the number of players that missed less than two players across the last three years (2014 to
Continue reading »A Way-Too-Early 2017 AFL National Women’s League Power Ranking
On first glance using what’s available, we think a power ranking for the NWL should look something like this:
1 – Fremantle
2 – Brisbane
3/4 – Melbourne/Bulldogs
5/6 – Collingwood/ Carlton
7/8 – GWS/Adelaide
Continue reading »Post round 13 team ratings – just because you don’t play doesn’t mean the ratings stay the same
Geelong are once again on top of our team ratings thanks to a strong performance over the Bulldogs. Also contributing was a pretty poor effort by GWS against a very spirited Essendon. That game may have denied us the sort of hilarious record-breaking scores we were predicting last week, but instead it
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