Let's move to football for a change...

...Briefly in American, but then we'll dive into the upcoming Australian seasons, which start for both men and women in February.

Against the Vegas odds, the NFC's top-seeded Philadelphia Eagles have made it to Super Bowl LII (or 52, for you non-Roman speakers!) to face the AFC's top seed, the defending champion New England Patriots. Vegas, of course, once again favors the Pats, this time by six at the opening.

ELO-Following Football lists the game as a four-point Patriots victory, and personally I would take the Eagles if you're going to get anything much more than six points. Here's why: in all of the previous New England/Belechick Super Bowls, win OR lose, the game has always ended within one score: 

XXXVI	Feb. 3, 2002	Superdome (New Orleans)	New England 20, St. Louis 17
XXXVIII	Feb. 1, 2004	Reliant Stadium (Houston)	New England 32, Carolina 29
XXXIX	Feb. 6, 2005	Alltel Stadium (Jacksonville, Fla.)	New England 24, Philadelphia 21
XLII	Feb. 3, 2008	University of Phoenix Stadium (Glendale, Ariz.)	New York Giants 17, New England 14
XLVI	Feb. 5, 2012	Lucas Oil Stadium (Indianapolis)	New York Giants 21, New England Patriots 17
XLIX	Feb. 1, 2015	University of Phoenix Stadium (Glendale, Ariz.)	New England Patriots 28, Seattle Seahawks 24
LI	Feb. 5, 2017	NRG Stadium (Houston)	New England Patriots 34, Atlanta Falcons 28

So I'd take the Patriots in a range of three to seven points: if it gets as close as three, bet the Pats, and if it gets as wide as seven, bet the Eagles. 

As for Australian footy, the women start their second season of "big time" AFLW game, in the heat of the late south Australian summer. Last year, the Adelaide Crows won the title by defeating the minor premiers, the Brisbane Lions. This season, the same eight teams will battle in Feb/Mar for the second title, and as one Crows supporter puts it, "We always win our titles in twos!". (The last men's premierships were back to back in 1997-1998.)

In fact, I have Adelaide winning both the men's AND women's titles this season. Here are my projections for a possible order (keeping in mind that Richmond went from 13th last year to a title last year, so anything is possible!)...

AFL Men: Adelaide                       AFLWomen: Adelaide
                       Geelong                                                     Melbourne
                       Port Adelaide                                            Western BD
                       Sydney                                                       Brisbane
                       Melbourne                                                GWS
                       Richmond                                                 Carlton
                       GWS                                                           Fremantle
                       Essendon                                                   Collingwood
                  Collingwood
                  Hawthorn
                  St. Kilda
                  Fremantle
                  Brisbane
                  West Coast
                  Western BD
                  North Melbourne
                  Carlton
                  Gold Coast

Basically, on the women's side, I don't see a reason for Adelaide to fall back, although Melbourne's good enough to overtake them and it wouldn't astound me. Brisbane's loss of Tayla Harris will be a big problem for them, and I don't see them going unbeaten again. The '17 Western Bulldogs had the critical metric indicator of huge growth next year (an abnormally high scoring percentage), so I see great things ahead this year for them, and the GWS Giants have picked up some good off-season recruits and should improve significantly. I just don't see enough growth from the rest to merit predicting anything spectacular from any of them; Carlton is the best of the lot, though. 

For the men, I have many more metrics to go off of, and they all call for Adelaide to be the best of the bunch this year. Port and Geelong are close but don't have the close-knit experience together that the Crows do. Sydney's forecast hopes that the last part of the season is really them; Melbourne's hopes their last part of the season really isn't. GWS keeps losing talent, and it won't surprise me to see them take a step back; it wouldn't astound me to see them make prelim finals, either. As for the number eight-slash-sacrificial lamb spot, I've chosen Essendon on the basis of not just metrics but the gut feeling that they've got that "something" that allows them to win the close ones at the end - and I don't see that from Collingwood (who could very well simply win their last five to close to ninth once they're no longer eligible for finals) or Hawthorn or the Saints. 

As for the rest? Fremantle could very well put it together and make finals - I actually would be less surprised to see them make finals than the three teams right above them. Brisbane will be what Gold Coast was in 2014 or the Giants in 2015 - that young team starting to put it together. How quickly they do is what'll determine their final position, but I'd be surprised to see them go #18 to #8 in one year. West Coast and the Bulldogs are fading fast; North needs another year to put it together, and Gold Coast isn't showing any signs of ever putting it together. Carlton's the enigma - they feel like they're losing ground, not gaining it, and the metrics all agree. But it looks from the outside like something's brewing in blue, and even though I'm no CFC fan, I would love to be wrong with this pick.

AFL roster analysis

[Originally published in The Roar]

      Now that the trading period and draft is over, we can start to get a feel for what the 2018 rosters will look like for each of the 18 AFL teams looking to play through to the end of September this coming year. 

     If you've read my work here before, you'll remember that I'm a maths geek and like to spend my free time crunching numbers looking for trends and predicting future performance. My track record, using my "ELO-Following Football" rating system for teams and players (and now for male and female!) has proven to be more accurate than the odds-makers and the vast majority of pundits out there. (Not by much, mind you! But more than a trivial amount!) I'm not comfortable saying "use these forecasts for gambling purposes", but you do you, y'know?

     So, trying to project what each club will have to work with next year will give us a head start on projecting what they'll accomplish in league in the fall and winter. There are two numbers to share with you in pursuit of this goal.

     One is the "Following Football" rating from last September, the year-end resultant of the on-field production using the ELO method (a zero-sum calculation where you compare expectation to result and add to the rating of the team which outperformed expectation the same amount you subtract from the rating of their opponent). As we do every season, we normalized those numbers towards the mean to address the normal tendencies during the season to spread apart; in the AFL, we find that a 20% reduction figure is about right.

     The other is new to readers of The Roar: we've taken the top 29 players on each team's projected roster (nine forwards, nine midfielders, nine backs, and two ruckman) and assigned them a point value based on their projected points for the coming season, using the previous three seasons where applicable. We've been very conservative with changes - if they were, say, the one-hundredth rated player overall last season, then (barring injury, trade, moving positions or other mitigating factors) they're probably valued as about that right now. Young players will probably improve a bit; old players will probably fade a bit. You get the idea. (Incidentally, this would be easy for you to do with fantasy values - although those values aren't quite as functional for this purpose as the ELO numbers are, because they're designed for a slightly different purpose. But I won't swear they're not as good; I've just found that this seems to work better.)

     Why 29 players, when they only field 22? By the time they reach the bye, most teams have used about that many bodies on the field. If they're fortunate, they won't have to dig any deeper - if they're GWS last year, they'll be hip deep in unused guernseys. Besides that, beyond those top 29 it becomes tougher to forecast who will come out of the feeder league bushes and show improvement enough to be given a shot. 

     So, without ado, here are those numbers (written as [total roster projected points, current team rating]):

Adelaide (3409, 74.0)

Geelong (3250, 63.3)

GWS (3143, 60.3)

Melbourne (3126, 50.1)

Port Adelaide (3124, 62.2)

Sydney (3046, 75.0)

Richmond (2959, 77.6)

Essendon (2885, 46.8)

Hawthorn (2680, 50.5)

Fremantle (2621, 24.5)

West Coast (2615, 50.3)

Collingwood (2598, 51.4)

Brisbane (2546, 27.4)

St. Kilda (2408, 50.1)

Western BD (2108, 45.7)

No. Melbourne (2062, 38.9)

Carlton (2002, 35.2)

Gold Coast (2002, 16.2)

     Some things stand out, and while it may belabor the obvious in some cases, we'll point them out anyway.

     Teams that seem to have stronger rosters than their record or rating would tell us from last year? The most prominent teams are Melbourne, up in fourth on the roster point list when they didn't make finals last year, and Fremantle, which was free-falling to the bottom at the end of the year. Their roster number indicates a .500 season or so, resting 11th overall and just ahead of the co-tenants, West Coast. Brisbane's off the bottom of the table as well, but that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone watching this young team last season!

     Which teams are surprisingly thin on talent? The names in 15th and 16th are notable: St. Kilda is at the bottom end of the middle pack, at 2408 (the average here turns out to be right around 2700, for comparison). But the Doggies look to be in trouble this year, having only the same amount of talent as the three teams deemed to have the "least talented roster" by these numbers. the Roos and the Blues, with Dew's Crews right there too. (Too's.)

     Is Western really that strapped for meritorious players? Well, with the Bont not having pulled into that highest echelon (yet) as many expected, the culling of a few veteran players, and some weaknesses disguised by a joy-filled run to the flag in 2016 that the 2017 exposed, the answer is yes. Here's the list of the five highest valued players on their list (according to our numbers) in alphabetical order: Bontempelli, Dalhaus, Hunter, Johannisen, and Macrae. All good players - but how does that stack up against almost any random AFL team? You do the comparison.  

     To fill to the 29th player, we have to include back-and-forth players like Josh Dunkley, Josh Schache, Lukas Webb, and rookie draft pick Aaron Naughton, who may be wonderful but isn't likely to be their number one option this early. While most teams have this kind of issue at the bottom (else why are those players not starting?), it speaks to the fact that the Bulldogs' roster doesn't have the kind of strength at either end that strikes fear in the hearts of other teams. 

     It was also surprising to see our two highest rated teams, Sydney and Richmond, in sixth and seventh in terms of overall roster strength. Neither team should be overly concerned about that unless there's a tidal wave of injuries that overwhelms either of them this season: doing a quick simulation that combines the current team ratings (for round one) and the roster projected team point numbers (affecting each team's rating gradually up to the bye), Sydney is still one of three teams projected to reach round 15 at 12-1 (the others are Adelaide and Geelong), and Richmond should be somewhere near 10-3 at that point as well. (Those projections assume form holds in every game, which 1/3 of the time it doesn't in the AFL! We used to include that in our forecasts, but discovered it's fruitless to be guessing when fate will blow on the dice!)

     Those projections, by the way, don't reveal anything interesting that the two numbers above don't already show. Adelaide has a great roster number and a great rating, so guess what? They're likely to win most of their games! Gold Coast has just the opposite? Guess what? It's hard to find wins for them on this schedule - although I have faith that Stewart Dew can pull them up at least a little bit.

     Which brings us to our most important intangible: coaching. What effect will Dew have on the Suns? Will an invigorated Nathan Buckley show more flair with the Magpies? In general, what effect does a year make on anything related to a team? I'm convinced that the biggest difference with Richmond in 2017, especially late in the season, was not Prestia or any other new person involved, but rather just the year of growth and experience and "settling in together" of the major players for the Tigers - a year of maturation for Dustin Martin into the prohibitive favorite and winner of the Brownlow, the coordination of the front line and the back line both with time and experience together, and so forth. I'll lay odds they didn't realize what they had until they started to win some games they didn't expect to win!

      So all of this number crunching is much ado about nothing? 

      Not really. It gives us an idea what we're supposed to be looking for this season - who might have sudden surges from their farm system mid-season. It might tell us who's working with duct tape and bailing wire to hold the team together until they can bring some youth into the fight down the road. In Brisbane's case, and perhaps Adelaide's as well, it confirms what we've been thinking about their growth as up-and-coming teams. And, frankly, it's just fun to play with. Why else would we invest so much time in "fantasy football" and tipping contests when there's no serious merit to either? Because we like it! It gives us some tangible way to "be involved" in footy, even when it's a full level removed from the "real thing".

      In a sense, this is our "cos-play". If we have Paddy Dangerfield on our fantasy team, we can watch the game from his perspective, living and figuratively dying with his every possession. If we've clicked the box next to Collingwood's name, we become invested in their performance that week in a way that we wouldn't have been before - even without money riding on the outcome, our pride alone will keep us attached. 

     So take it seriously, but no more seriously than you take the game itself. And in the end, footy IS just a game.

     [NOTE: the author was later taken out, placed in a potato sack and beaten with cricket bats for his blasphemy.]

They're strong and they're bold - Richmond wins AFL Grand Final!

(originally published in The Roar - Sept 30 2017)

The parallels have been beaten to a yellow and black pulp already: the underdog but hot Melbourne-based club, coming in against the dominant minor premiers, breaking a decades-long drought and bringing ecstasy to a starving fan base.

But this wasn’t Doggies Redux. It wasn’t Footscray Lite.

It was the graduation of the Tiger defense to legendary status.

At “Following Football”, I don’t usually get into game-plan details as much as I do number crunching. And there are certainly numbers to crunch, with the most blatant being the season-low 60 points and eight goals (three of those in garbage time) that this defense held the vaunted Crows scoring machine to in the biggest game in Adelaide’s 21st century history.

But as much as it pains a maths major to type this, Richmond’s Grand Final victory wasn’t about numbers. And despite the beauty of the storyline, and the magnificence of his play, RIchmond’s title game wasn’t won on the back of Demigod Dustin. Nor was it a ratification of the DIon Prestia recruitment. And although he was the media star of the post-game party, on stage with the Killers and first through the banner, it wasn’t about Jack Riewoldt winning the title that eluded his cousin.

It was about that back line.

As great as a Brownlow-Norm Smith double is for Dustin Martin’s resume, the two men who held that game when Adelaide was still a threat were the All-Australian captain Alex Rance and the underrated, recently-maligned Bachar Houli. Nick Vlastuin was all over the field throughout the contest, Dylan Grimes and David Astbury were locked in, and Nathan Broad found thirteen disposals on his stat line by game’s end. The entire back six deserves their kudos.

But it was Houli who seemed to be involved in every important possession, especially early when the game was in doubt, and Rance who served as the magic eraser for every Adelade assault. I was personally astounded that four of the five voters for the Norm Smith medal failed to even name Rance on their ballots. While the symbolism of rewarding Dustin Martin not just for his play Saturday but for a season where he was best-on-ground in fully half of his games is enticing, his scoring plays in the second half felt inevitable once the Rance-led defense had taken the air out of the highest-scoring offense in the league.

This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Tiger followers this year: in 25 games, Richmond held their opponents to 81 points or fewer 22 times. Of the three outliers, one was round 1 v. Carlton, who managed to reach the league’s season average of 89 in a 43-point loss to the Tigers. The other two were the two “failures” in Richmond’s season: the demolitions by Adelaide in Round 6 (a battle of 5-0 teams which mirrored the GF in that Richmond lost a nine-point lead at quarter and was routed by 76) and St. Kilda in Round 16 (a “one-off” where the Saints annihilated Richmond 14 goals to one in the first half and lost by “only” 67).

Thus the defense allowed 238 points in those two games alone (139/game), and in the other 23, they allowed just 68.4 per game (1573 points total), including just 55.7 per finals game. During the season (counting the two “failures”, of course) Richmond was third in points allowed, just slightly behind Sydney and Port Adelaide (one point per game behind Port, two behind the Swans). But when it counted most, the Tigers’ defense was strong and bold.

In most sports, when the championship is on the line, the old adage is that a great defense will beat a great offense. Turns out that was true on the grounds of the MCG Saturday.

For Adelaide and Richmond, the season began together as well, just over seven months ago, just six km to the west in Etihad Stadium on February 24, in their very first pre-season game. Richmond won that one too, 92-73, and like Saturday’s tilt Adelaide started with the lead before the TIgers started to pull away in the second half. Josh Caddy’s first game for the Tigers produced a goal, which he duplicated in the first period against the minor premiers. Dion Prestia and Curtly Hampton had impressive debuts for their respective clubs, and Rory Laird starred in midfield while his star running mate Sloane was waiting to return from an eye socket injury. (And Richmond won that game in the yellow guernseys, too.)

My notes from that game are filled with glowing reviews of both teams, and encouraging signs for the season still to come for each club. But nowhere in my notes, nor I’ll wager in anyone else’s who covered the game, does it say “A preview of this September’s Grand Final”. Shows how much we know! (Want to try to pick next year’s finalists yet? Apparently, anyone in this year’s top 13 is a reasonable possibility…)

To put a bow on the season, let’s take a look at the final 2017 ELO-Following Football ratings for all eighteen teams. Thanks to three dominating finals victories, plus five of six strong wins following the St. Kilda debacle which dropped them to a “definition-of-average” rating of 50.0, Richmond ends the season with a rating of 84.7 after an 18-7 record overall. Here are the entirety of the ratings (with records):

First, there are the three best teams this season:

>Richmond (18-7) - 84.7

>Sydney (15-9) - 81.3

>Adelaide (17-7-1) - 80.0

Then, there’s a gap to the next three teams:

>Geelong (16-8-1) - 66.6

>Port Adelaide (14-9) - 65.2

>GWS (15-8-2) - 63.5

And then, another gap to the marginal contenders:

>Collingwood (9-12-1) - 51.7

>Hawthorn (10-11-1) - 50.6

>West Coast (13-11) - 50.4

>Melbourne and St Kilda (ironically, both 11-11...) ...and both 50.1

>Essendon (12-11) - 46.0

>Western BD (11-11) - 44.6

And finally, there are the non-contenders…

>North Melbourne (6-16) - 36.1

>Carlton (6-16) - 31.5

>Brisbane (5-17) - 21.7

>Fremantle (8-14) - 18.1

>Gold Coast (6-16) - 7.8

The teams which dropped down in the ratings the most this year were two of the favorites, the Giants (down 12.5 points from the start of the season) and the Bulldogs (down 25). The big risers were Brisbane (up 12.2 this year, more than doubling their start value), Essendon (up 23.9), and not surprisingly, the team that went from 13th place last year to the Grand Final this season, up a staggering 50.7 points since March, almost 15 in September, and 6.5 of those from the last game alone.

So Richmond’s victory wasn’t a fluke - they built towards it throughout the season, more than the finals-hot Bulldogs ever did in 2016. Congratulations to the yellow and black, worthy champions of this Australian Football League season.