[Part of my writing for The ROAR, Australian sports magazine.}
As part of my own scoring system, I’ve
been tallying every possible prediction I can find for the upcoming season in
two categories: player of the year and, of course, final finishing order of the
eighteen teams in 2017. While by definition there shouldn’t be any surprises
here if you’ve been paying attention to The Roar over the last few weeks (although
I’ve been gathering from many more sources than here), it’s
instructive to see how the
overall "crowd-sourced" sentiment falls, if only so we can all laugh
together in September at how near-sighted we were.
In all, I found twenty-four sources
for ladder orders (there were
tons more available – we all like people to know what we think, but count how
many own up to it at the end of September). The ones that came
from a magazine’s editorial staff I weighted more heavily, as more than one
person’s opinion was involved. My scoring method was simple: one point for
first down to eighteen for the wooden spoon, so low scores are better than
high.
The stratification was almost
unanimous, except for an occasional fan-made order: the top three, second
three, and third three were virtually always the same teams in some order. The
bottom team was close to unanimous, and the trio above them was fairly regular
as well. There was some mixture from slots ten through seventeen, depending on
how voters thought the Dons would pull together, and how Freo and Gold Coast
would be able to recover from injury-plagued seasons a year ago.
The Top Three is forecast to be GWS (27 points),
Western (54 points), and Sydney (56 points). The Giants were first on more than
half the ballots this season – I’ve analyzed all this in a previous piece and
won’t repeat it here, but suffice it to say that I wholeheartedly agree. The
consensus has a Swan-Bulldog battle for second. (Any chance the powers-that-be would move the Grand Final to the
Olympic Stadium were a Giants-Swans GF to unfold? Too many logistics involved,
but wouldn’t that cause an uproar?)
The Second Three is expected to be Adelaide (95
points), Geelong (109), and West Coast (118). All three teams have about equal
support for fourth (and occasionally third), but the difference in totals
indicates the folks who see that particular team dropping significantly. The
Eagles, for example, were left out of finals altogether by a couple of
tipsters, which while possible isn’t the way I’d bet. (For the record, those are my top six as
well.)
The Third Three, by definition, are the teams
fighting for those last two finals spots, and judging by the consensus, very
few believe in the rule of “at least two teams move into/out of finals each
year”, because Hawthorn is a strong seventh (139 points) with St Kilda (172)
and Melbourne (188) well behind. (I
have SK, Demons, and Hawks as seven through nine.). The
Kangaroos are the obvious team to drop, given their finish last year and
immediate house cleaning, but the only other teams chosen to drop out of
the eight even occasionally were the Hawks. (Two tipsters dropped the Eagles;
one dropped the Crows, one the Cats.)
We tend to resist change as a species. Nobody saw Fremantle in advance dropping
to sixteenth, of course, but even as they fell to three, four, five losses, it
was still difficult to imagine them not making finals. Now, very few people
can bring themselves to predict them returning to finals this season. The same is true
for all teams – except for the Kangaroos and Bombers, who made wholesale
changes from 2016 to 2017, no team is predicted to move more than about three
places. History suggests otherwise.
The bottom nine was a bit of a
jumble, but the total scores bear out the typical predictions:
10. Collingwood (232
points) – and yet only two of 24 ladders had the Pies in finals.
11. Port Adelaide (234)
– had the most consistent placements, usually in 9th to 12th.
12. Fremantle (244) –
wild swings from last year’s 16th up to a single fifth place vote.
13. Essendon (245) –
literally all over the place, except for top three and last.
14. Richmond (259) –
Everybody is essentially predicting a coaching change in Tigerland.
15. North Melbourne
(281) – Another wild one: the ‘Roos got finals votes and spoon votes.
16. Gold Coast (292) –
without injuries, many placed the Suns up around 11th or 12th.
17. Carlton (320) –
very few have confidence in the youth of the Blues.
18. Brisbane (356) – Even
my twin eleven-year old daughters looked at my spreadsheet and said, “Wow, poor
Brisbane!” Yeah, but there’s nowhere to go but up. If Chris Fagan can keep them
off the bottom rung, he will have done his job this year.
As for
the player of the year predictions, there are more sources than you’d think.
While The Roar and afl.com.au both put out a Top 50, there are
easily a dozen Top Tens out there to compare. This time, the higher score is
better in my tally, because I inverted the lists and weighted according to the
same standards as the ladder forecasts.
Patrick Dangerfield
starts the year in the top spot, as nobody seems to want to dethrone the
current king until they see evidence on the field. (I have him first as well.)
The Geelong superstar sits at 33 points, easily clear of all competition
to start the season.
Second
place is Fremantle’s Nat
Fyfe coming off an injury-shortened season and showing very
positive signs in the JLT of returning to champion’s form. The gap between
second and first represents the uncertainty that he’ll be the freak of nature
he was before his injury – watching Gary Ablett struggle on the east coast, or
remembering Chris Judd’s injury about ten years ago, can do that to a viewer.
In
third there’s a tie between a trio of players: two Swans, Lance Franklin and Josh P Kennedy, and a surprising Magpie, Scott Pendlebury. Pendlebury’s
consistency and fantasy value add up to 28 points, as do Kennedy’s growing
prowess and Franklin’s ability to dominate a game completely when called upon.
Following
the top five, at 27 points, comes another trio of studs: Western’s
superstar-on-the-rise and Chris Hemsworth’s idol, Marcus Bontempelli,
Sydney’s stud midfielder Luke
Parker, and the Geelong star who eased straight into a
two-man wrecking crew without blinking, Joel Selwood. Many felt guilty for placing “the Bont”
so high after just 63 games, but implied they’d feel stupider leaving him out.
As you
go down the list below that solid top eight, you see nine names in the next
tier that you could easily see making their own case for a Brownlow given the
right turn of events this year: Adelaide’s Rory Sloane (25 points), the “too-old” Gary Ablett, Jr. and the
“too-young” Tom Lynch
(23 points each) at Gold Coast, the bearded Samson Max Gawn at Melbourne
(23 points), Robbie Gray
(22 points) at Port Adelaide, the front/back duo at Richmond of Dustin Martin and Alex Rance (25 and 22 points), the
under-appreciated Swan Dan
Hannebury(24 points), and even the “potential savior” of
the Eagles, Sam Mitchell,
at 22 points.
Who
will win this year’s Brownlow Medal? Will it be one of those seventeen men, or
someone we haven’t thought about yet? Will the premiership indeed travel to
Sydney this spring? We all have opinions, but the joy is in the discovery.
Whatever your rooting interest, whichever team makes your blood boil, make a
point to appreciate the talent of some of the world’s greatest athletes in the
game that shows off athletic talent more than any other in the world.
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