For many teams, playing them at home represents a different challenge to playing them away, so any complete assessment of a team's schedule requires that we account for any HGA. To estimate the HGA that teams enjoy at the ground - or, in some cases, grounds - where they play the majority of their home games I calculated the average under- or over-performance of every team when playing at a home ground, relative to the quality of the opposition it was facing at the time. So, for example, if the Hawks, Rated 1,020 faced the Cats, Rated 1,015 and won by 8 points, that would be a 3 point over-achievement by the Hawks since the difference in Ratings alone would suggest a 5-point victory was to be expected.

I looked at all games played since 2010 and rounded my estimates of HGA to the nearest half goal, setting HGA to zero whenever the actual average came out negative. Five teams are assessed as enjoying no significant HGA at any of their most-common home grounds: Carlton, Collingwood, GWS, Melbourne, and the Western Bulldogs. Every other team enjoys at least a half-goal advantage at one of their home grounds. Port Adelaide has the largest HGA of 4 goals when playing at the Adelaide Oval though that estimate carries a large standard error as it's based on relatively few games. Geelong's 3.5-goal HGA at Kardinia Park is the largest advantage for any team at a venue with a longer history. Most teams have HGAs in the 0.5- to 2-goal range.

Empirical evidence suggests that teams enjoy an additional fillip when they face a team that has had to travel interstate to meet them when they have not. I estimated the value of this to be about 6 points, and this advantage is in addition to the HGA.

To assess the quality of a team's opponents in a particular game then, we take the opponent's base Rating and adjust it for any HGA or Interstate advantage that the opponent might enjoy by virtue of the venue at which the game is to be played. So if Sydney were to face Hawthorn at the SCG, Sydney's base Rating of 1,015.2 would be boosted by 18 points, 12 for the HGA and 6 for the Interstate Advantage.

By performing calculations of this sort for every game in the 2015 Draw we can arrive at a strength of schedule figure for every team.

STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE