Finals Week 1 AFL Preview - Qualifying & Elimination Finals

Last Week           6/9           Season Total      127/207

As I said last week, the season has ended for 10 teams.  Normally, my team is still in it, and I take pleasure in asking people why they are looking at Trades already when the footy is still on?  I know, it’s childish and passive aggressive but pleasure is still there.  But now, I’ve spent the last week looking at trade information and am not even aware which games are on this week, so I feel like I have a very large portion of egg in the vicinity of my face.

Speaking of food, we’ve had 25 courses of degustation delights and with a week off, it feels a bit like a palate cleanser before a more substantial part of the main meal.  The 25 courses have ranged from your standard spring rolls and arancini balls to incredible delicacies served on ornate spoons that come from exotic locations and probably made from endangered things.  Occasionally we had cabanossi sticks dressed up as a charcuterie board, but we usually pass over them.  If 25 weeks of hors d’oeuvres didn’t excite you, perhaps the entrée will brighten your month.  And I can’t believe it starts on Thursday!  With all of these interesting trade discussions, it really snuck up on me.  I’m torn…the footy season, which is remarkably still going, or the soap opera that is Christian Petracca!?

Port Adelaide vs Geelong            Adelaide Oval   Thursday Night

This is a real problem for Port Adelaide.  Finishing second is good and all that but you’d have to be a bit worried.  The issue I’m speaking of is that after a 79-point pizzling at home at the hands of Brisbane in Round 16, Hinkley was booed out of the stadium by his own fans who, if they had a Capitol building nearby, would all be in gaol for insurrection (while Hinkley remarkably ran for office again).  Why is this an issue?  They pretty-much won every game from then on.  Now the fans have been rewarded for that action and expectations have been set that the only way to get a desirable result is to be disrespectful and punitive in their attitudes towards the team.  God help them if they go out in straight sets! 

Geelong on the other hand cruised into the finals.  They’ve only played one top eight team in the last 7 rounds, and they lost that one.  In fact, they haven’t beaten a top 8 side since round 8.  There are some potential alarm bells in that statistic.  For another fun statistic to depress the Geelong supporters, they’ve played Port Adelaide twice in finals at Adelaide Oval and lost both of them.  I’ve consulted Mediums during the week, but they keep banging on about Mars and Venus going retrograde in the next few months.  It doesn’t sound like useful advice so I’m thinking, rather than consulting a Medium, I need to consult a Large.  They give to me straight…Port Adelaide by 28 points.

Footscray vs Hawthorn                 MCG                      Friday Night

This one is potentially the match of the first week.  If it really was an entrée, it wouldn’t be Gazpacho.  But that’s also being unfair to both the other matches and tomatoes, which are so versatile.  Some interesting facts for Footscray are that the only matches they’ve lost in the last 10 weeks have both been at Adelaide Oval, which is exactly where this game is NOT being played.  But it is being played at the MCG, which they haven’t played at since Round 10.  They did win that, but it was against Richmond.

Hawthorn of course, play at the MCG more often.  Five times more often in fact (in the last 10 weeks) and you’d think they’d be better suited to it than Footscray.  In the run home, Hawthorn have played 3 top 8 sides in the last 10 matches, but importantly have played the bottom 3 sides 4 times in the last 10 matches.  You could say they had a soft run in, and a soft run might expose a soft underbelly in the pressure-cooker of a final.  On the other hand, Footscray have played 5 of the top 8 sides in the last 10 matches and only lost one of those whilst playing North Melbourne twice in the last 10.

The last time, these two teams squared off in a final was during Footscrays 2016 Premiership year.  I remember the game too as I was in Boston at the time, learning about Genetic algorithms in Optimisation and Stochastic Gradients.  It sounds hard, and it is, which is why the company sent me there to learn it.  However, I just used it to help build my statistical leviathan so I could get footy tipping spectacularly wrong in the future.  Glad to see it really paid off.  They also sent me to Monte Carlo to learn Monte Carlo Simulations, but instead I learned how to drive a Koenigsegg…or was it a Zonda?

None of this helps tip this one though, and it also doesn’t help me get a job in the future if prospective employers read this as a reference.  I think the soft underbelly is a thing.  While Hawthorn has been one of the better pressure sides of the season, it goes up a level here and Footscray will get it done.  Footscray by 12 points.

Sydney vs GWS                                                SCG                        Saturday Afternoon

This also could be match of the week (covering my butt in case the other match is a fizzer).  Sydney have been the team of the week for the better part of the season, but as we saw last week, GWS got no favours from the fixture and still landed in the top 4.  The AFL analysis TV segments that I keep deriding, actually showed a real hum-dinger the other week and it was this.  In the first part of the season when the umpires waited until teams set up to do a ball up, Sydney had time to structure up and as a consequence, being so well drilled, they won most of those games.  In the latter part of the season when ball ups were happening faster, Sydney didn’t have time to structure up and they started losing.  I thought that was an insightful piece of work and tells a lot about this match.  The pressure and intensity that will be experienced in this final will be of a high level.  GWS have the cattle and the ability to bring that level from start to finish and will be well hardened to execute when it matters.

On the whole, Sydney have had the best of GWS, winning 5 of the last 6 encounters between the two.  But when it comes to finals, GWS has won all three of them.  The game is at the SCG which favours Sydney heavily, but GWS has a reasonable record there (5-7).  Of special interest though, and perhaps a left-field stat, is that the 3:20PM timeslot has posed more of a challenge for Sydney in recent times than their usual 1:45 PM or 7:40 PM slot.  And the 3:20PM timeslot is usually a Sunday thing, not a Saturday thing at all.  Could this throw the minor premiers off kilter?  I’m still on GWS to go all the way this year, but I think they’ll have to go the long way around.  Sydney by 3 points.

Brisbane vs Carlton                         Gabba                   Saturday Night

Last, but by no means least, is the match between Carlton and the Lions who cruised into the finals after meeting only 2 of the top 8 sides in the last 10 rounds and losing one of those.  Carlton limped into the finals when others refused to take the spot.  The only other meeting between these two was in Round 1 when Carlton came back from 8 goals down.  It was the speed that they did it which was impressive, closing that gap in about half a quarter (an eighth, for those doing the maths at home).

Carlton had a much harder run into finals, playing 5 of the top 8 teams in the last 10 rounds, but they only had one win in amongst those 5 matches.  But then it’s tough to win with one arm tied behind your back (their injuries), but if the remaining arm is Crippa then you do stand a chance.  I’d like to think this match hinges a lot on who Carlton get back, but even then, their record at The Gabba, and therefore against Brisbane, is pretty deplorable and it’s tough to see anything other than a quick exit for Carlton.  Brisbane by 33 points.