Twenty-five weeks boils down to a nine-game exhibition of the best football the 2017 AFL season has had to offer. From minute one, this year’s finals series promises so much, and you just know given how even this season became at the pointy end that it will deliver.

Fresh off a football-free weekend, I’m ready to feast. A tantalisingly poised top eight, with four tricky week-one games, will give way to a rock fight semi-final round and two preliminary finals full of wrinkles and ‘on one hand’ takes.

For a while, the 2017 season was the most even we’d experienced in some time. There were turn ups, a truckload of close games, and very few outings where it felt as though a favourite was assured victory.

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As winter came, parity migrated north. Each of the remaining teams – the Crows, Cats, Tigers, Giants, Swans, Power, Bombers and Eagles – will fancy their chances against their first up opponent. And I don’t mean in a ‘we’ll play to win’ way, I mean in a deep-down, thought out, calculated way.

It starts tomorrow, which means there is a lot of ground to cover today. Let’s start looking back briefly, if only to help frame what comes next.

Searching for Bulldogs

Last year, we had the incredible, historic Western Bulldogs as our centre of focus; one side of the draw faded to the background as we bandwagoned through September.

As we’ve discussed a few times this season, the Dogs’ run was unprecedented for a reason. Looking through the ‘which team can be the Western Bulldogs of 2017’ lens is lazy, and unproductive.

But it is sure to be pervasive – it was all throughout the year, when the winner of a Friday night game that didn’t finish in the top eight was crowned ‘Most Likely To Pull A Bulldogs’ on a near-weekly basis. I’m here to tell you: it isn’t that easy.

The pre-finals bye has eroded the advantage of teams finishing in the top four. We make this judgement based on the expertise and experience of the league’s head coaches, who tell us so on mostly qualitative evidence. When Alastair Clarkson talks, it pays to listen.



Still, it didn’t stop teams resting players in the final round of the year. Last season, the Western Bulldogs held over a few of their players in their Round 23 visit to Fremantle – a win could have seen them rise to fifth from seventh if the two teams above them had lost (they didn’t), but in which a loss would see them stay where they were.

This year, no one could really do that given spots all throughout the eight were on the line and most teams needed a win to advance their respective causes. The only team that was assured its rough seeding was the Adelaide Crows, who held back captain Taylor Walker and key defender Daniel Talia from their Round 23 team. Their opponent, the West Coast Eagles, ultimately made it into the top eight by nine points.

The effects of the bye go beyond potential Round 23 resting, of course. However, it’s too early to judge, and all things considered, the effect is surely slight anyway.

While the Dogs surged from seventh, the preliminary final round otherwise involved teams that finished first, second and fourth. Hawthorn, who finished third and didn’t make the preliminary final round, were the sixth best team in the home-and-away season on Pythagorean wins, and made it into the top four on account of a perfect 5/5 record in close games.

The Dogs had two nice match ups for their chaotic style of play in the first two rounds of the finals. West Coast was soft as warm butter; Hawthorn abdicated the contested midfield part of the game as a survival mechanism. This should have been clear to us in the lead up to finals, but we as a collective allowed ourselves to be caught up in the narratives of redemption (West Coast), nostalgia (Hawthorn) and impossibility (Western Bulldogs).

Once we reach preliminary final round, anything is possible. It took a classic – one of the games of the decade – to separate the Dogs and Giants, and it ultimately came down to an extraordinary, attritional defensive effort in the final minute for the ‘Scrays to get up.

And before you ask, Sydney winning the premiership from sixth would have little to nothing to do with the pre-finals bye, and everything to do with them being the best team in the competition through Round 7 to 23. It would be a spectacular rise, but one rooted months before the calendar turned over to September.



That’s not to say the Dogs were a bad football team that caught fire – any Footscray fan worth their salt will tell you that. They sputtered to the finish line in the home-and-away season, but before that they won 15 games. Finishing ‘just seventh’ on the ladder has strong narrative power, but it skews reality.

Indeed, the Dogs, with their 15 wins and percentage of 115.7 per cent would have, crudely, been a top four team in 2017 (that said, if we contextualise their percentage and opponents, the Dogs are roughly equivalent to this year’s Bombers in Pythagorean wins).

What I’m saying is expecting another ‘Dogs-style’ fairytale run through the finals is expecting too much. But that doesn’t mean the first week of the finals is going to go chalk.

Wrinkles everywhere in Round 1

The first, extended weekend of matches this finals series looks delightful on paper.

First up is the match between the premiership favourite Adelaide Crows and the second premiership favourite GWS Giants. It happens to be the first time the two have played since Round 1, when the Crows smacked the highly pedigreed Giants by 56 points at the same ground tomorrow night’s match will be played on.

Friday night’s qualifying final is a Geelong home game at the ground their opponent, Richmond, has a 9-2 record with those two losses being by two and nine points respectively. However, Geelong holds a strange power over the Tigers at the MCG, having won 23 of 41 all time and the last eight straight at the venue. And the stakes. Oh man. The stakes. We’ll get there in a moment.

Saturday afternoon and evening looms large if only because both of the lower seeds – Essendon and West Coast – performed admirably against their opponents last time out. There are stylistic reasons why this could be the case again, which we’ll cover in some more depth in the respective finals forecasts on game day.

Essendon love to sprint up the guts; the path to goal is a little shorter at the SCG. Their burst from the 20-odd minute mark of the third quarter to halfway through the fourth quarter in their one-point Round 14 loss came about with direct kicking play and daring run through the middle of the ground.



It all came unstuck on account of poor goal kicking and a fluky finish, but still, the roadmap is there.

There’s a reason why the team that doesn’t travel well plays well in Adelaide: West Coast’s intercepting defence works better on grounds where the opposition gets cramped up in attack like at the Adelaide Oval.

The Eagles have the best winning percentage of any team – including Adelaide and Port Adelaide – at Adelaide Oval, albeit their percentage of 105 per cent is hardly flattering. Still, they’ve held on to win three tight ones, all against Port Adelaide.

There are compelling cases to be made for all eight teams this round. Right now, it doesn’t seem like we are set for a typical week one finals showdown where the bottom two seeds drop out of the race and the home qualifying finalists squeeze over the line. The unexpected is abundantly possible – just don’t start calling a shock win a fairytale.

The impossible stakes of Friday night

Adelaide hosting GWS is probably the best match up from a football nerd perspective, but it is impossible to go past the emotional torture set to be inflicted on Friday night as the match up of week one.

Richmond, the team most wrote off as finished, whose coach was gone and best players all set to exit, have finished as high on the AFL ladder as they have in a literal generation (22 years, or 1995).

Their three most recent finals campaigns have all ended on the first weekend. By virtue of finishing in the top four that streak is now broken, unless Richmond find some way of being disqualified or something. Which, hey, we can’t rule out.



The Tigers have instantly emerged as everyone’s bandwagon team. Some are on board the Essendon Express, but they are misguided. The hopes and dreams of Richmond supporters are pinging around the frontal lobes of football fans across the league.

With the Melbourne media set sensing this, the hype is clear and present. Add that Friday night is effectively a home game, with a grand final-like crowd expected.

It’s Richmond, but with the dial turned up to 11.

Whereas the build up for Geelong has been more muted. One could say more calculating and pensive, but one is not close enough to make such observations. What is clear is this year is important for the Cats.

Patrick Dangerfield impossibly backed up his 2016 season with an even better 2017. He averaged 30 disposals and near enough to two freaking goals per game that I’m willing to pay it (38 from 21 is 1.8 goals per game, but still). He was shifted to a more inside role, but was no less effective.

Dangerfield is at his apex, and every game he puts in at this extraordinary level brings him closer to an inevitable return from the stratosphere.

He’s also about to finish what is effectively his 27-year-old season (Dangerfield’s birthday tends to be a week after the season starts) and relies on athleticism and power for his game. His running mate, Joel Selwood, is 29, and for the first time in his career spent meaningful time on the sidelines with injury this year. Harry Taylor is 31, Tom Hawkins is 29.

With the retirements of Tom Lonergan and Andrew Mackie coming at the end of this season, what does quickly emerge is the most influential players at Geelong are their oldest. Football moves fast these days. The Cats aren’t quite staring mortality in the face, but their list is closer to the ever-present precipice than may meet the eye.



Each year is an opportunity to contend; teams cannot afford to waste a double chance, particularly in the new football order where everybody is set to converge on being a year away from finals contention. Geelong fluffed their line last year in allowing the Sydney Swans to murder them in cold blood in their preliminary final. A repeat performance, if it came to that, would be a mortal blow.

Which is where the stakes come in. A win on Friday night guarantees three things.

1. An extra week off and a home (or home-adjacent) final;

2. A non-Victorian opponent in a preliminary final, given the other side of the finals draw contains West Coast, Port Adelaide, GWS and Adelaide; and,

3. Avoiding Sydney until the last possible moment, or all together, should tonight’s winner make it through to the grand final.

Awaiting the loser is:

1. An impending date with the Sydney Swans (or Bombers but work with me here);

2. Travel to Adelaide or Western Sydney for a preliminary final; and,

3. A likely return leg against the team that beat them on the ground they beat them on in the grand final.

I know which path I am taking. The hype is real, and the stakes are realer. Last year’s Friday night MCG qualifying final was awesome; I am certain tomorrow night will be even better.

Can the Crows make good on the league’s longest build?

Adelaide has been slowly, steadily building to this looming crescendo. The Crows have been premiership favourites for much of the season, a burden they have carried like Atlas – no big deal. As I’ll show a bit later, the Crows have almost welcomed the idea of being the leader of the pack.

2017 marks the Crows’ third straight finals campaign. Excluding the spike to 17 wins in 2012 – which was preceded by two losing seasons and followed by an 11-11 year – Adelaide has been building to this since a 14-win season in 2009. In that time, Adelaide has confirmed its front office staff are the best at identifying, drafting and developing talent in the competition.



Consider this. Over the past decade, the following players have all passed through Adelaide only to find themselves being traded to other clubs, often against what the Crows would have liked to have done: Kurt Tippett, Bernie Vince, Patrick Dangerfield, Phil Davis, Jack Gunston, Jarryd Lyons and Matthew Wright (rookie).

In addition to Wright, the Crows identified Rory Laird, Ed Curnow, Ricky Henderson, Kyle Hartigan and Charlie Cameron – all of whom will play at least 100 games in the league, and in the case of Laird and Cameron playing them at an All Australian level.

The Crows have also unearthed Hugh Greenwood and Alex Keath from basketball and cricket respectively, both of whom are set to play meaningful roles for them throughout this finals series. Adelaide also nabbed their captain Taylor Walker using the now-defunct NSW regional scholarship program.

There is almost no doubt Adelaide are the best at identifying league talent in the competition.

Adelaide’s evolution to the gun-slinging, heavy pressure, high scoring football machine we watch today has been formed over many years, and three coaches: Brenton Sanderson, the late Phil Walsh and current coach Don Pyke.

In Sanderson’s days, speed was the number one objective. Walsh bought a structural edge and a focus on winning the ball on the deck. Pyke has bought it all together by refining the team’s slingshotting nature, building on Walsh’s principles with his own twist.

It has been a long journey. Adelaide last won the last game of the year in 1998 – the second longest active streak of this year’s finalists (Richmond is a clear first). There have been false starts and finals campaigns, which have never yielded more than one win in a single season.



Win two this year, as they should, and the Crows will likely find themselves in their first grand final since their last flag.

Form lines and full health

To get there, Adelaide must first pass through the GWS Giants in the first game of the series. With both sides looking as fit as they have all year – the Crows have two season-ending injuries to the Giants’ three, and the rest of their injury lists are ‘test’ status – it is sure to be an epic.

Adelaide beat down GWS in their Round 1 fixture. The Crows swarmed and pressured their way through GWS’ finely tuned efficient football machine, and the Giants had no answers. GWS laid just 44 tackles per 50 minutes of Adelaide possession – a pitiful mark.

Pressure hasn’t been the Giants’ jam all season. Instead, they’ve attempted to beat their opponents over the head when the ball is in dispute, and swarm back when they don’t win it to set up rebound opportunities. It is high stakes football that goes a little against the pressure-first grain that many clubs preach in 2017. There’s a wrinkle, which we’ll get to tomorrow.

However, it’s not Round 1 anymore, and the sleeping Giants are certainly awake. GWS’ greatest selection quandary is who to station in their right forward pocket. Otherwise, they’re good to go.

Interestingly though, the Giants haven’t bought with them the same kind of form line they did to last year’s finals series. GWS won four and drew one of their final eight games, and lost to two of their fellow double chance winners (Richmond and Geelong). The Giants had a tough run home, but even if we adjust for that they’ve still only been the fifth-best performed team in the final eight games of the season.

The clear one-two in my Simple Rating System over the past eight weeks is Adelaide and Sydney, with SRS scores of +40.3 and +36.2 respectively. These numbers mean each team has been on average 40.3 and 36.2 points better than their opposition, accounting for the strength of said opposition over that period.



Geelong is about ten points back in third, and Port Adelaide ten points back again in fourth. Then it’s the Giants and Richmond, before we dip to ninth to find West Coast (+4.7) and all the way down to 11th for Essendon (-0.7).

That matters a little, but not as much as player availability as far as I’m concerned. And bye week be praised, the Crows and Giants aren’t the only teams with near-pristine health.

Essendon will keep us all in suspense as to the availability of Orazio Fantasia, Cale Hooker and Michael Hurley, but that’s all surely part of the hashtag comeback story. Geelong are a little more challenged, but no more than they have been all year. Besides, Joel Selwood and his piano wire have been ruled certain starters.

Port Adelaide lost Jack Hombsch this week, but he had been in and out of the Power’s side all year. Sydney could have one name on their injury list come Thursday evening – 2016 draftee Darcy Cameron.

Meanwhile, West Coast have five season-ending injuries, to mostly fringe players (albeit Sam Butler would be handy this weekend). Then there is Nic Naitanui, who is listed with an optimistic “late 2017” return date. Guys, it’s literally as late as 2017 is going to get. It seems Naitanui won’t be picked this week, but should West Coast advance, well, you aren’t guaranteed a shot at a preliminary final every year.

Shake it off

West Coast could get an opportunity to test the availability of their superstar. Why? Because Port Adelaide is the biggest flat track bully the game has ever seen – or at least the biggest we’ve seen in 2017.

Of the remaining teams, Port Adelaide has the best unadjusted margin against teams who didn’t qualify for finals in 2017 (+51 points per game). The next best is Sydney, with a net margin of +33 points against the weaker teams based on ladder position.

In stark contrast, the power goes out when Port play their peers: in games against teams who made the top eight, Port Adelaide has a net margin of -19 points per game – more than three times the next largest net margin (-6 points per game) of those teams still in the hunt.



When we plot the league, Port Adelaide stick out like a terrible rendition of an INXS track.

Sadly for Port Adelaide, none of the teams it has beaten up on this season are left. All that’s left are the teams it has struggled against.

One side that seems to care little for on-paper pedigree is the Adelaide Crows, who are just as strong against the top eight (+31 points per game) as they are against the bottom ten (+28 points per game). Indeed, you could say Adelaide prefer a challenge.

Those macro numbers don’t mean a whole heap when we get down to the nitty gritty of individual match-ups, but they are telling. Port Adelaide has a chance to get their campaign started against what is inarguably the weakest of the top eight – albeit on a ground that their opponent enjoys.

It also happens to be the team constantly berated for being flat track bullies. Finals time is the best time of year.

Who likes what?

This time of year, the football analysts across the league will be filtering through all manner of information and vision to try and get an idea of what their opponent may throw at them in the weekend’s game.

It’s the moment where tacticians can shine, and when analytically-minded football fans annoy the hell out of their friends who just want to watch the game.



One particular feature analysts will be looking at is the basic game style of their opponents. We can get some idea of this using the league’s box score-style statistics, if we tweak them a little to look under the hood.

As a way to build to the climax of this column, here are the eight teams on five key stylistic indicators developed using basic counting statistics. It should give an indication of which teams like to play more inside, outside, fast-paced, controlling, pressure or precision football.

Team K/H FM T/50m CL +/- TOP (+/-) Adelaide 1.22 74.5 73.5 +1.7 +3.5 Essendon 1.24 92.1 62.4 -1.9 -0.8 Geelong 1.06 73.2 77.0 -0.2 +2.7 GWS 1.26 78.0 69.7 +7.8 +2.8 Port Adelaide 1.37 81.2 70.3 +0.6 +2.1 Richmond 1.32 71.9 69.3 -1.1 +0.4 Sydney 1.29 78.0 69.9 +0.5 +0.3 West Coast 1.29 86.1 63.0 -2.6 +0.0

K/H: Kick to handball ratio (higher number = more kicks per handball)

FM: Field marks (higher number = more marks outside 50)

T/50m: Tackles per 50 minutes of opposition possession (higher number = more pressure)

CL (+/-): Clearance differential (higher number = more clearance wins)

TOP (+/-): Time in possession differential (minutes, higher number = more time in possession versus opponent)

What we see is significant stylistic divergences. GWS win the ball at stoppages better than anyone else in the game. Essendon love to kick the ball and have their teammates mark. Adelaide control the ball using pressure. Geelong have a strong bias towards handballing. West Coast are a strongly outside-oriented team. Sydney do a bit of everything. Richmond love to kick, but it’s not about controlling the pace of play; it’s about chaos. Port Adelaide love to kick it even more.

They’re little things, but help us to unpack what could unfold from here on out.

So, who wins?

If 2016’s finals series and the 2017 home-and-away season have taught us anything, it is to expect crazy things to happen on a football field.

When we layer up this existing assumption with the maelstrom of finals, the form lines and personnel of every team left in it, the little match-up wrinkles and the history that is on the line for many teams, how can anyone rationally predict this year’s premiers with any confidence?



On home-and-away record, and given the advantages at play, the Adelaide Crows are deserved favourites. That the Giants are second on the line speaks to the respect afforded to the team everyone thought was a sure thing coming into the year despite their incredibly rough ride.

Sydney are a wildcard in every sense, but have to overcome the team that has pushed them further than any other not coached by Alastair Clarkson to get a sniff.

These are your market fancies. The best of the rest are clearly Richmond and Geelong, although, as we’ve discussed, one is set to be mortally wounded come 10:30 on Friday evening. The weight of history versus the burden of expectation.

All of Port Adelaide, Essendon and West Coast have shown us they are capable of mixing it with the heavyweights of the competition, albeit to varying degrees. Each faces a difficult challenge to advance to the penultimate round of the year, within which, as we know, anything is possible.

Who wins? I have an inkling this year’s two qualifying final victors will be in the box seat.

But who wins those? Your guess is as good as mine.