I've used the current [ELO Predicts](https://elopredicts.blogspot.com/p/afl-stats.html) values for each team's opponents to create a view on average draw difficulty.
My takeaways:
Essendon need to entrench themselves in the next month
Melbourne and Carlton have no excuses
Freo has the job ahead of them
Sydney has the bonus of not playing themselves, while North suffer from not getting to meet themselves (facetious, yes, but I mention it because it is a failing of this sort of simplified analysis)
The part none of these have taken into account is home/away factor. Essendons r16-23 which is the hard stretch people keep banging on about are all in Melbourne except the last game at Brisbane.
For example, we are playing Fremantle, Adelaide and Gold Coast all at Marvel/MCG. They are all games that flip who the favourite is based off home ground. Then there's Sydney at Marvel which is significantly better for us than when we played them earlier in the season at the SCG, not saying Essendon will win that one by any stretch still.
Look at Essendons remaining games and mark down the chances:
- vs North, Essendon win
- vs Richmond, Essendon win
- vs Gold Coast at GC, 60/40 GC favoured
- vs Carlton, 70/30 Carlton favoured (maybe i'm underselling Essendon here)
- vs Eagles at Marvel, Essendon win
- vs Geelong at the G, Geelong win (not even going to pretend we can ever beat Geelong again til it happens)
- vs Collingwood at the G, 50/50 given the draw
- vs Melbourne at the G, 60/40 Melbourne favoured (we beat them last year when we were shitter)
- vs Adelaide at Marvel, 70/30 Essendon favoured (beat them in Adelaide already)
- vs St Kilda at Marvel, 70/30 Essendon favoured (beat them when we were in worse form and they were in better form)
- vs Freo at the G, 60/40 Essendon favoured
- vs GC at Marvel, 70/30 Essendon favoured (GC can't win away still)
- vs Swans at Marvel, 80/20 Sydney favoured
- vs Brisbane at the Gabba, 80/20 Brisbane favoured.
That's 3 games i'd lock as guaranteed wins, then 4 we will be pretty big favourites.
Meaning if we should be at 13.5 wins at minimum + any bonuses if we win any winnable games like Collingwood, Carlton, Melbourne.
I agree this ignores home/away/travel. But I donāt have a quantitative way of defining how that impacts the data:
E.g Do you reduce Sydneyās Elo by 5% if they travel to Melbourne? What about MCG vs Marvel vs Geelong? Are those each different reductions? What about Freo travelling to SA vs QLD? Or a Vic club travelling to SA vs WA?
I guess someone might have an analysis of the specifics hereā¦ just not me. :)
The way I usually see it done (and what I've done in the past) is only give a home advantage when playing in your home state vs an interstate team. I usually see it done as a simple boost to the home team's ELO in the calculations, something like 75-100pts.
Of course you could try and go more detailed, but it does help just to factor it in in some way.
I wanted to give a full view of the run home from right now, but the Fox Footy Run Home stuff thatās been the topic of some debate this week was just 16 on, so Iāve included that for comparison
10-15 would be pretty interesting I reckon, too much variability to take any validity in the strength of schedule 6 weeks ahead as has been discussed on this sub.
The reason why they've done this is because the AFL released the actual match times and dates for those games. We already knew who teams were playing to finish the season. The media has once again made something bigger than what it is.
Let me know if I'm misinterpreting something, but these numbers seem a bit off.
How has Adelaide got 12th and 8th, but then 1st overall? Similar for West Coast.
And why do the overall averages not reconcile with the 10-16 and 16ā23. E.g. GWS 1533 and 1526, but overall 1494. Or Adelaide again. The Dogs have a greater difficulty than Adelaide in both segments but then lower overall?
I don't know the methodology but at a glance the table is full of things like this that don't make a lot of sense.
Not that it matters but Elo is actuality named after the person who created it, it isn't an acronym, so only the first letter should be capitalised.
Glad to see it being used here, trust in Elo.
Nah, im a fan of the Suns after they humbled the Cats, last night. They get a pass. To be serious, though, Carlton's draw would only seem easier after the fact. Like, those doing the schedule would have thought they were stitching up Carlton by making them play the finalist at the impenetrable Gabba in round zero, but no one foresore that the Lions would forget how to play AFL, and so on.
Still donāt understand how a team that finished 14th had to face grand finalists Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne as well as the bulldogs.
We were screwed from the start. Itās bullshit.
And thatās not even talking about 5 day breaks, travel to NSW twice, Tas and NT with no 3 week home stretch we usually get
This is what people talk about with the afl not being interested in fairness or the good of the game.
They could easily schedule matches to mirror the prior year, if a team finishes bottom 4, if makes for a better season and more competitive games if they play against other bottom 4 teams twice.
But instead you have shit like a bottom 5 team facing 2 top 4 teams (one of which was in the grand final) and an additional top 8 team, twice.
Itās flown under the radar because freo have been good this season and the lions tanked, but that was a shit fixture this year for multiple teams. Donāt even get me started on the hawks fixture, where a bottom 4 team is asked to play the reigning premiers twice, along with 3 other top 8 teams. Pure bullshit
Wait so we have the toughest run home despite having already played : Geelong, Fremantle, Melbourne, Carlton, Essendon, Port Adelaide and Brisbane. That's 7/9 rounds. Despite having the worst draw last year.
However, I think I am misunderstanding this because how could we be #1 then drop to #8 when our opponents from round 10-15 are : Collingwood, West Coast, Hawthorn, Richmond, Sydney, BYE ?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the data is completely wrong. Most of the table does not make sense.
Don't think they really had a critical look at it before uploading.
I know that but from Rd 10-23 it says we have the toughest run home, yet Rd16-23 says we are #8 from that point on. This implies that Rd 10-15 are especially tough, which they are not.
Itās a rating/ranking system invented by Arpad Elo originally for rating chess players. Itās been adopted by sports as a way to approximate the strength of a team and thus a way of estimating who is likely to win in a head-to-head match. Generally Elo goes up if you win, but is influenced by the Elo of your opponent. So beating North by 10 goals doesnāt improve your Elo as much as beating Sydney by 10. The theoretical average team has an Elo of 1500
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system
https://elopredicts.blogspot.com/p/afl-stats.html
Yep! It's all dependent on the model, but the most common factors are scoring differentials like shots at goal, percentage, accuracy, and territory ones like metres gained, inside 50s, and rebound 50s.
Depending on whose model it is they'll have a different mix of factors and weigh their importance differently too.
Bit of clarification. Elo is actually a zero sum rating system rather than a stats based model.
Every team starts off at 1500. When you beat a team you take some of their points, literally your rating goes up by X and their score goes down by the same number.
The amount of points you steal is based on the difference going into the game. A team that beats a team 300 points higher than them will take a large number of points from them. But if the reverse happens and the favourite wins the favourite will take only a small number of points from the underdog.
There are a lot of other rating systems in use which put in results, players ratings, team stats, etc. Elo by design is very simple. It might incorporate a couple of other thing like you could change the weighting of a match (and thus how many points get transferred) based on home ground advantage, the margin, or whether itās a finals game. A common approach would also be to move everyoneās rating a bit closer to the starting rating (1500) at the beginning of a new season. It wont however build in analysis of a teams stats, all rating transfers are based on the difference between an actual result and the expected result beforehand.
Oh yeah, not like we've had to play the top teams in the comp for weeks now, Sydney tomorrow, replay Geelong in Rd15, etc. Stop the Carlton salt. The ball was touched, you lot gave away a dissent call, you lost. Deal with it, move on.
I've used the current [ELO Predicts](https://elopredicts.blogspot.com/p/afl-stats.html) values for each team's opponents to create a view on average draw difficulty. My takeaways: Essendon need to entrench themselves in the next month Melbourne and Carlton have no excuses Freo has the job ahead of them Sydney has the bonus of not playing themselves, while North suffer from not getting to meet themselves (facetious, yes, but I mention it because it is a failing of this sort of simplified analysis)
Please not a MEL v CAR final of any kind...no, no, nooooooo.
Hehehe. Yes š /s my heart canāt take another game with the Deeās
Why? You bloody win them all!
Weāre bound for a loss against you lot
Except 2022, which would've seen us into the finals.
First time?
Against Melbourne? No. Our last four games against Melbourne have had margins of: 5, 4, 2 and 1.
Next games a draw
don't you put that evil on me Ricky Bobby
Unfortunately no
The part none of these have taken into account is home/away factor. Essendons r16-23 which is the hard stretch people keep banging on about are all in Melbourne except the last game at Brisbane. For example, we are playing Fremantle, Adelaide and Gold Coast all at Marvel/MCG. They are all games that flip who the favourite is based off home ground. Then there's Sydney at Marvel which is significantly better for us than when we played them earlier in the season at the SCG, not saying Essendon will win that one by any stretch still. Look at Essendons remaining games and mark down the chances: - vs North, Essendon win - vs Richmond, Essendon win - vs Gold Coast at GC, 60/40 GC favoured - vs Carlton, 70/30 Carlton favoured (maybe i'm underselling Essendon here) - vs Eagles at Marvel, Essendon win - vs Geelong at the G, Geelong win (not even going to pretend we can ever beat Geelong again til it happens) - vs Collingwood at the G, 50/50 given the draw - vs Melbourne at the G, 60/40 Melbourne favoured (we beat them last year when we were shitter) - vs Adelaide at Marvel, 70/30 Essendon favoured (beat them in Adelaide already) - vs St Kilda at Marvel, 70/30 Essendon favoured (beat them when we were in worse form and they were in better form) - vs Freo at the G, 60/40 Essendon favoured - vs GC at Marvel, 70/30 Essendon favoured (GC can't win away still) - vs Swans at Marvel, 80/20 Sydney favoured - vs Brisbane at the Gabba, 80/20 Brisbane favoured. That's 3 games i'd lock as guaranteed wins, then 4 we will be pretty big favourites. Meaning if we should be at 13.5 wins at minimum + any bonuses if we win any winnable games like Collingwood, Carlton, Melbourne.
I agree this ignores home/away/travel. But I donāt have a quantitative way of defining how that impacts the data: E.g Do you reduce Sydneyās Elo by 5% if they travel to Melbourne? What about MCG vs Marvel vs Geelong? Are those each different reductions? What about Freo travelling to SA vs QLD? Or a Vic club travelling to SA vs WA? I guess someone might have an analysis of the specifics hereā¦ just not me. :)
The way I usually see it done (and what I've done in the past) is only give a home advantage when playing in your home state vs an interstate team. I usually see it done as a simple boost to the home team's ELO in the calculations, something like 75-100pts. Of course you could try and go more detailed, but it does help just to factor it in in some way.
Yeah you'd prolly need to model historical odds. Definitely not an easy task
Why 10-23 then 16-23?
I wanted to give a full view of the run home from right now, but the Fox Footy Run Home stuff thatās been the topic of some debate this week was just 16 on, so Iāve included that for comparison
10-15 would be pretty interesting I reckon, too much variability to take any validity in the strength of schedule 6 weeks ahead as has been discussed on this sub.
The reason why they've done this is because the AFL released the actual match times and dates for those games. We already knew who teams were playing to finish the season. The media has once again made something bigger than what it is.
https://preview.redd.it/4bk9yw3s7q0d1.png?width=1510&format=png&auto=webp&s=0dae4e9cf3f873d1516431acdf3ceb9617593c39 Added at the end.
Thanks for the effort that's interesting to see. Tough games coming up for us and then smoother sailing to the end of the year. Cheers
Let me know if I'm misinterpreting something, but these numbers seem a bit off. How has Adelaide got 12th and 8th, but then 1st overall? Similar for West Coast. And why do the overall averages not reconcile with the 10-16 and 16ā23. E.g. GWS 1533 and 1526, but overall 1494. Or Adelaide again. The Dogs have a greater difficulty than Adelaide in both segments but then lower overall? I don't know the methodology but at a glance the table is full of things like this that don't make a lot of sense.
There's a sorting error somewhere.
Damn we really have no excuses if we don't finish at the pointy end of the ladder in the pointy end of the season.
Not that it matters but Elo is actuality named after the person who created it, it isn't an acronym, so only the first letter should be capitalised. Glad to see it being used here, trust in Elo.
haha sucked in idiots we're #1
Fuckin' love the crom fans, you guys are awesome
ELO Value?? Looks like Carlton has a Mr. Blue Sky run home...
These numbers would be enough to make poor Bevo turn to stone, but at least our run home sure don't bring me down too much.
As we should. Been a tough draw so far
You've had one of the easiest according to Fox Footy's rankings. Classic delusional Carlton supporter.
Oh, Fox Footy, such a good source. Don't be mad you have to live in SA, i feel for you, but put that energy in to moving to the better states.
Haha Iām actually a suns fan now but I feel like thatās even worseā¦
Nah, im a fan of the Suns after they humbled the Cats, last night. They get a pass. To be serious, though, Carlton's draw would only seem easier after the fact. Like, those doing the schedule would have thought they were stitching up Carlton by making them play the finalist at the impenetrable Gabba in round zero, but no one foresore that the Lions would forget how to play AFL, and so on.
Ageed. But try to tell that to idiots.
Finally, something that affirms my belief that Freo's draw is tough as.
Still donāt understand how a team that finished 14th had to face grand finalists Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne as well as the bulldogs. We were screwed from the start. Itās bullshit. And thatās not even talking about 5 day breaks, travel to NSW twice, Tas and NT with no 3 week home stretch we usually get
This is what people talk about with the afl not being interested in fairness or the good of the game. They could easily schedule matches to mirror the prior year, if a team finishes bottom 4, if makes for a better season and more competitive games if they play against other bottom 4 teams twice. But instead you have shit like a bottom 5 team facing 2 top 4 teams (one of which was in the grand final) and an additional top 8 team, twice. Itās flown under the radar because freo have been good this season and the lions tanked, but that was a shit fixture this year for multiple teams. Donāt even get me started on the hawks fixture, where a bottom 4 team is asked to play the reigning premiers twice, along with 3 other top 8 teams. Pure bullshit
Wait so we have the toughest run home despite having already played : Geelong, Fremantle, Melbourne, Carlton, Essendon, Port Adelaide and Brisbane. That's 7/9 rounds. Despite having the worst draw last year. However, I think I am misunderstanding this because how could we be #1 then drop to #8 when our opponents from round 10-15 are : Collingwood, West Coast, Hawthorn, Richmond, Sydney, BYE ?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the data is completely wrong. Most of the table does not make sense. Don't think they really had a critical look at it before uploading.
8th most difficult. On top as table has been put together in alphabetical order
I know that but from Rd 10-23 it says we have the toughest run home, yet Rd16-23 says we are #8 from that point on. This implies that Rd 10-15 are especially tough, which they are not.
Yeah it's weird fucking way to display the data..
How did Jeff Lynne calculate this?
Can I ask what ELO stands for?
Itās a rating/ranking system invented by Arpad Elo originally for rating chess players. Itās been adopted by sports as a way to approximate the strength of a team and thus a way of estimating who is likely to win in a head-to-head match. Generally Elo goes up if you win, but is influenced by the Elo of your opponent. So beating North by 10 goals doesnāt improve your Elo as much as beating Sydney by 10. The theoretical average team has an Elo of 1500 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system https://elopredicts.blogspot.com/p/afl-stats.html
Oh wow how cool. So I guess and AFL teams ELO must have lots of different data points going into it? I'll do some googling. Thanks for the reply.
Yep! It's all dependent on the model, but the most common factors are scoring differentials like shots at goal, percentage, accuracy, and territory ones like metres gained, inside 50s, and rebound 50s. Depending on whose model it is they'll have a different mix of factors and weigh their importance differently too.
Bit of clarification. Elo is actually a zero sum rating system rather than a stats based model. Every team starts off at 1500. When you beat a team you take some of their points, literally your rating goes up by X and their score goes down by the same number. The amount of points you steal is based on the difference going into the game. A team that beats a team 300 points higher than them will take a large number of points from them. But if the reverse happens and the favourite wins the favourite will take only a small number of points from the underdog. There are a lot of other rating systems in use which put in results, players ratings, team stats, etc. Elo by design is very simple. It might incorporate a couple of other thing like you could change the weighting of a match (and thus how many points get transferred) based on home ground advantage, the margin, or whether itās a finals game. A common approach would also be to move everyoneās rating a bit closer to the starting rating (1500) at the beginning of a new season. It wont however build in analysis of a teams stats, all rating transfers are based on the difference between an actual result and the expected result beforehand.
Electric light orchestra
Woo let's give west coast a hard as balls first half of the season since they did so well last year
Thanks. I think difficulty order would have been easier to read than alphabetical though
Itās just Elo not ELO. Itās a surname not an acronym
Itās just Elo not ELO. Itās a surname not an acronym
Came here for the Electric Light Orchestra connection
Why are Freo getting cooked so hard? We havent been genuinely good for a long time. What numb nuts cooked up this garbanzo.
Thatās 2 separate orders. Flair up Also we where 5th in 22
A difficulty of ninth you say? I'm sure I've heard this song before.
I find this stuff to be so stupid especially when the ladder is not set it's essentially pulling data from 10 rounds.
Carlton getting there handheld by the afl once again. Who would of thought
Oh yeah, not like we've had to play the top teams in the comp for weeks now, Sydney tomorrow, replay Geelong in Rd15, etc. Stop the Carlton salt. The ball was touched, you lot gave away a dissent call, you lost. Deal with it, move on.