ADELAIDE, Melbourne and Brisbane have been the best sides of season seven despite having arguably the three most difficult fixtures.
The draw for season seven of the NAB AFLW competition is the most complicated yet – 18 clubs at various stages of development, with four newbies coming into the League off less than three months' training, and only 10 home and away rounds.
The fixture was somewhat weighted by the AFL to try to balance out the varying levels of competitiveness of sides.
AFLW FIXTURE Who does your team play in season seven?
It would be unfair, for example, if Adelaide played all four expansion teams while fellow season six finalist Brisbane played none.
But with some expansion teams exceeding expectations and other teams seeing significant player departures over the off-season, there's still a great degree of variability among each team's fixture.
So womens.afl has devised a formula in an attempt to compare clubs' draws.
WHO HAD THE MOST DIFFICULT FIXTURE?
Applying our formula (explained below) to each team's fixture, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane have had the toughest draws this season.
Their home and away fixture includes five, four and five season-six finalists respectively, and only one, one and two expansion teams respectively.
On the other end of the spectrum, mid-tier clubs such as Richmond and Greater Western Sydney have each been fixtured to play three season-six finalists and two expansion sides.
Our full formula, outlined below, involves assigning each club a points rating based on several factors, including their standing last season and the average experience of players lost or gained during the off-season. The higher the number, the stronger the team in season seven.
The values of each team's season seven opponents were then added together, with the highest total value again indicating the toughest fixture. The difficulty of each fixture has been simplified into the ranking below.
In the table above, a big disparity between a club's fixture difficulty and how difficult the team itself is to play indicates a team has had a particularly rough - or easy - trot.
St Kilda, which finished in 13th spot last season - second-last on the ladder - has been allocated 14 points in our formula, landing it as the 13th-most difficult side, yet faced the seventh-most difficult draw this season.
Of course, our metric doesn't account for teams improving within the season, like Geelong, Richmond and West Coast, or those who have slid down the ladder. But by our measurement, it appears the Western Bulldogs have benefited the most from what we have deemed the 12th-most difficult draw, despite their ninth-place finish last season.
THE FORMULA IN DETAIL
Our formula attempts to try to capture the difficulty level of each of the 18 sides, taking into account the following:
- Season six ladder position
- Season six percentage and win-loss result
- Qualifying for finals in season six
- Qualifying for preliminary finals in season six
- Experience lost from season six squad
- Experience gained in season seven squad
- Inactive players for season seven, including those who have not taken to the field (ie Bec Beeson at GWS with concussion)
- Overall experience at the start of season seven
Experienced clubs were ranked on the post-finals ladder position from last season, whereby the top team, Adelaide, was allocated 14 points, and the bottom team, West Coast, was allocated one. Every win a team recorded added another point, while making finals and reaching the preliminary final stage each added another point for sides.
Given last season's fixture was also somewhat lopsided due to the shorter season, percentage was also considered. For every 25-point increment of its percentage, an extra point was allocated to each team. For example, Brisbane finished with 195.1 per cent (after finals) and was therefore allocated seven points, while Geelong – which finished on 80.4 per cent – was allocated three points.
The experience lost and gained was where expansion clubs gained much of their point allocation. Those point allocations were broken down as follows:
The experience of players both lost and gained was averaged out. For example, Geelong lost 15.3 games' worth of experience across 11 players, losing three points in the breakdown. But the Cats gained an average of 32 games by bringing in Mikayla Bowen, Jackie Parry and Shelley Scott, so were allocated six points in the metric, ultimately ending up with a +3 for off-season experience gain/loss.
For the expansion clubs, Essendon was allocated +4 points (average experience of 23.9 games), Hawthorn +5 points (27.8), Port Adelaide +4 points (24.7) and Sydney +3 points (18.8).
Only players with AFLW games under their belt were considered in this metric, so Geelong's recruitment of the yet-to-debut Ingrid Houtsma from Richmond, for example, was not considered.
AFLW INJURY LIST How healthy is your team?
Inactive lists were also taken into account, with 0.1-10 average games lost subtracting one point, 10.1-20 average games lost subtracting two points and 20.1 games or more subtracting three points.
The final metric was the experience of each team's active list on the eve of season seven, with the most experienced list (Melbourne) gaining 18 points, and the least experienced list (Sydney) gaining just one point.
Melbourne, the team our formula deems the strongest, ended with 57 points allocated. Thirteen points were from its season six finishing position, second only behind Adelaide; six points were for the side's post-finals percentage of 167.4. Ten season six wins - finals included - added another 20 points, with another two added for making finals and then reaching the preliminary final weekend. During the off-season the Demons lost an average of 20.2 games worth of experience, subtracting four points, while they also gained an average of 26 games' experience, adding five more points. Three further points were subtracted due to the average games lost via inactive players, and finally 18 points were added as they were the most experienced side coming into season seven.
Geelong, the 10th-hardest team, was allocated 20 points via our formula. Three points were added for season six ladder position and percentage respectively, and another four for the side's two wins. The Cats lost an average of 15.3 games' worth of experience, but gained an average of 32 games, thereby balancing out with another three points added. Inactive players saw two more points subtracted, and to round it out, nine further points were allocated for being the 10th-most experienced active list for season seven.
Meanwhile, expansion side Port Adelaide was viewed as the equal-second weakest side, gaining four points for the addition of experienced players, averaging 24.7 career games, and another three points for being the third-least experienced active list ahead of the season.
