Micro Noises 67 - What if?
Three and a half lives of the Cats
The home and away season is done and dusted and the 18 ladder positions decided. Few could argue that the teams didn't deserve to finish where they did, but the fact is that things could have been very different with one small change in a small percentage of this season's games. Of the 198 AFL home-and-away games played in 2014, 24 ended with a margin of six points or less, including the draw between Carlton and Essendon last Saturday. In the case of the 23 games won, how different would things be now if the losing side in each had kicked just one extra goal? Here's a look at how the ladder would have ended up:
W | L | D | PTS | |
SYDNEY | 17 | 5 | 0 | 68 |
HAWTHORN | 16 | 6 | 0 | 64 |
FREMANTLE | 16 | 6 | 0 | 64 |
PORT ADELAIDE | 15 | 6 | 1 | 62 |
NORTH MELBOURNE | 15 | 7 | 0 | 60 |
GEELONG | 13 | 8 | 1 | 54 |
ADELAIDE | 13 | 9 | 0 | 52 |
RICHMOND | 13 | 9 | 0 | 52 |
ESSENDON | 12 | 9 | 1 | 50 |
WEST COAST | 12 | 10 | 0 | 48 |
COLLINGWOOD | 11 | 10 | 1 | 46 |
GOLD COAST | 10 | 12 | 0 | 40 |
CARLTON | 7 | 13 | 2 | 32 |
WESTERN BULLDOGS | 5 | 15 | 2 | 24 |
GWS | 5 | 16 | 1 | 22 |
BRISBANE | 5 | 17 | 0 | 20 |
ST KILDA | 5 | 17 | 0 | 20 |
MELBOURNE | 3 | 18 | 1 | 14 |
The Swans would still have finished on top of the ladder in this scenario, but instead of hosting Fremantle in the first week of the finals, they would have been meeting Port Adelaide, which would have secured the double chance. The Dockers would have been travelling Melbourne to take on the Hawks, while the big loser would have been Geelong. The Cats would have finished with three and a half fewer wins and would be meeting Adelaide in an Elimination Final. North Melbourne would be playing Richmond in the other cut-throat final, while Essendon would have missed the eight by half a game. At the other end of the table, St Kilda would have avoided the wooden spoon, with the number one draft pick going to the Demons.
The draw-ful truth about September
The tied match between Carlton and Essendon last Sunday was the 12th VFL/AFL draw to have occurred in September. Of the 152 draws recorded since 1897, May has witnessed the most, with 30. 28 each have occurred in April and June, 26 in August and 25 in July. Three have been recorded in March, while the only ever October drawn match was the 1948 Grand Final.
The last draw to have occurred in September was the 2010 Grand Final, when a bouncing ball that could have given St Kilda victory just eluded Stephen Milne. To find a September draw that wasn't a final, we have to go way back to 1923, when Carlton and Collingwood finished at 10.12.72 apiece on the first of the month.
Score Wars
Hawthorn scoring 14.10 and Adelaide 13.16 in round 22 has catapulted 94 into a share of the Score Wars lead. With just nine finals to be played (or 10 if the Grand Final's a draw - we can only hope!), it's now come up 10 times in 2014, as have 76 and 79. One behind those are 81, 87 and 91. This competition is anyone's to win folks! Technically, even a score that hasn't come up in 2014, like 112, could still win. It could come up in all nine finals, including a 112-112 drawn Grand Final victory, making it level on 10 with the other leading scores and then snatch victory as one of the scores in the Grand Final replay!
The Marginal Medal
An exciting finish looms to this competition. The most common margins after round 21 were 7 points and 8 points, each having come up seven times, but a North win against Adelaide on Saturday afternoon in round 23 took 7 to the lead. Not to be outdone, 8 was Collingwood's winning margin that night, and then Fremantle's winning buffer in round 23. So it's 8, having come up nine times, leading 7, which has come up eight times. Make sense? Good, because we nearly confused ourselves there. Equal third, having come up seven times each, are 3 and 23.
1 versus 100
It's been a very sad year for the one-point margin. It's come up only once in 2014, while Port's win over Carlton in round 22 was the seventh game with a margin of 100 or more. But there are nine games left folks, and if eight of those are decided by the narrowest margins, we won't just have an incredibly exciting finals series, we'll have 1 beating 100+!
Potscode of the week
There aren't many fans who don't enjoy the way Geelong plays its footy. The Cats are always willing to take the game on, with the chance of scoring always worth the risk. To celebrate this attitude in last Saturday's game against Brisbane, they kicked 2, 4, 7 and 4 behinds in their four quarters. And as we all know, 2474 is the postcode of The Risk.
Ridiculous footy anagram of the week
Congratulations to Brisbane's Lewis Taylor, who deservedly won the AFL's 2014 Rising Star Award this week, pipping Bulldog Marcus Bontempelli by one vote. But we can't help but wonder if he knew he would win, and perhaps let a few people in on the fact. We can't be certain of course, but the fact remains that THE BRISBANE LIONS' LEWIS TAYLOR is an anagram of BOY LETS ON: HE WILL BE A RISIN' STAR.
Micro Noises is Andrew Gigacz's regular, quirky look at all things footy. The name Micro Noises is an anagram of Enrico Misso, who played one game for St Kilda in 1985. He remains the only Enrico and the only Misso to have played footy at the highest level.
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