2019 season preview: Tigers’ trophy to lose (theRoar)

[one-eyed]

Your 2019 AFL preview

Gordon P Smith
theRoar.com.au
23 Feb 2019

A few grouping observations before we continue: There seem to be five tiers to the meta-prediction averages.

Tier I – The Championship favourites

Even within the tier, Richmond has a clear gap over their three perceived primary challengers – Melbourne and the two grand finalists, Collingwood and West Coast.

Last season’s four preliminary finalists have the obvious advantage of having recent finals success, and without suffering any obvious losses (like Hawthorn did, losing their Brownlow medalist for the year), they deserve that recognition.

History suggests that one of the four will falter terribly and fail to make finals, while a team from below this tier will, at the very least, spend the year among the remaining three and get a double chance at the title this spring.

(And if you can predict which teams those two will be, you’re more of a seer than I am. Did you pick WC/Pies in the fall? Didn’t think so. Neither did I.)

Tier II – The Possible Contenders: Essendon, Adelaide, GWS, Geelong, Hawthorn.
Tier III – O, Ye Of Little Faith: North Melbourne, Brisbane, Port Adelaide.
Tier IV – The Easy-Beats: Fremantle, Bulldogs, Carlton, St Kilda.
Tier V – the Gold Coast Suns.

So, the Win-Loss record is the rounded average for all three simulations, with the average points above or below even listed on the right. (Thus, an average of zero would indicate a ladder percentage of 100.0 per cent, the same number of points scored as allowed.)

Here’s the result:

 Team             Avg Wins    Avg Losses    Avg Plus/Minus
1 Richmond          19.0    3.0    561
2 Melbourne         17.3    4.7    503
3 West Coast        16.7    5.3    422
4 Collingwood       15.3    6.7    377
5 Geelong            15.3    6.7    340
6 Adelaide            14.7    7.3    220
7 Essendon           13.0    9.0    201
8 GWS Giants       11.7    10.3    179
9 Hawthorn          11.3    10.7    94
10 No Melbourne    11.3    10.7    12
11 Brisbane            11.3    10.7    -26
12 Port Adelaide     10.3    11.7    -72
13 Sydney               9.3    12.7    -21
14 Fremantle            6.0    16.0    -386
15 Western BD         5.3    16.7    -418
16 St. Kilda              4.7    17.3    -559
17 Gold Coast          2.7    19.3    -705
18 Carlton               2.7    19.3    -722

So, Richmond should finish much as they did 2018, which makes sense, as they should only get better this year in anticipation for the only part of the season that matters – September.

Top Four
Like y’all, I’ll take Richmond, Collingwood, Melbourne and West Coast, probably in that order, with the healthiest of the bunch in September winning the title. (I still maintain it’s the Tigers’ trophy to lose, but their depth is gone, so if their injury list imitates that of GWS, they’re in trouble.)

Before the season starts, we’ll lay out the ELO-Following Football ratings for 2019, in addition to player predictions and more detailed forecasts for each team.

And I firmly believe that like every other pre-season prediction, mine is off by more than the minimum 30 per cent that ALL predictions err, just like yours is. The fun is in guessing where.

Read the full article here: https://www.theroar.com.au/2019/02/23/your-2019-afl-preview/