Micro Noises 183: Does bye, bye mean bye-bye?
Just by the by, does bye, bye mean bye-bye?
The pre-finals bye has given footy pundits time to take a deep breath and ponder the meaning of life. (And by life, we mean footy because, after all, what else is there to life other than footy?) And the focus of many has actually been on the bye itself, and whether or not it takes away too much of the hard-earned advantage gained by teams who have finished in the top four.
Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson has come out strongly against the concept, suggesting that if a side from outside the top four salutes this year as the Western Bulldogs did in 2016, future teams will be aiming to finish between fifth and eighth.
Respected journalist Rohan Connolly echoed Clarkson's concerns in a piece on his Footyology website. Both Clarkson and Connolly and, to be fair, every other AFL coach, argue that top four sides who have a pre-finals bye and then win their first final to get another bye (in theory is a reward), are in fact at a disadvantage. They contend that teams playing only one match in three weekends are being hindered, rather than helped, in their premiership quest.
They may well be right. The truth of the matter is, though, that this season will be only the second in which all top eight sides have had a bye before finals action kicks off. That's a sample size of exactly... one.
Now don't get us wrong, we love sample sizes of one. In fact they have been a staple of this column for nigh on a decade (six seasons at australianfootball.com and for three years before that in incarnations in The Age and The Footy Almanac)!
But even we would have to admit that our success strike rate using such sample sizes isn't great (which may not be good for Richmond, given the number of premiership omens we've uncovered for them - sorry Tiger fans).
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So we decided to go back and have a bit of a look at the most recent era in which teams have had the 'double bye'. Granted, it was a long time ago, the period coming to an end in 1990, and Connolly argues that era fails a comparison test with today's because "football ability counted for more and athletic preparation less then in my opinion". Perhaps a valid point. Nevertheless, a look at the 'top five' era, in which the top side earned the first week of the finals off, followed by another rest if they won in the second week, reveals that having two byes led to premiership success far more often than not.
As the table at right shows, 10 of those 19 seasons saw that scenario unfold, and in seven of the 10, the team with two byes ultimately won the flag. We're not quite comparing apples with apples, admittedly, because the match after the second bye in those days was a grand final, and in the current format is a preliminary final. But if Gil McLachlan has his way and the pre-finals bye stays, it will be interesting to see what percentage of teams makes their way through to a grand final after two byes once we have a sample size of something like 10.
Only time will tell. In the meantime, if Port Adelaide, Sydney, Essendon or West Coast win the flag in 2017, or even make it through to the Grand Final, the pressures will mount on the pre-finals bye.
Long live small sample sizes!
Anyway, as we said, we love small sample sizes here at Micro Noises, particularly a sample size of one, and to celebrate that fact, we have some great news for Essendon fans. Our sample of finals series which have been preceded by a bye (that sample size being one) reveals that in all such series, the team finishing seventh has won four consecutive finals to take out the flag.
That's great news for the Bombers. History says the Dons will defeat Sydney this Saturday evening, overcome Richmond a week later, then travel to western Sydney to defeat GWS in a preliminary final (as the Bulldogs did last year) before recording a stirring Grand Final win over Adelaide. You heard it here first folks! Here's how it will pan out:
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Score Wars
The home-and-away season has come to a close but Score Wars carries on into the finals with the winner likely to come from the 80 to 90 range. In fact 80 and 90 are joint leaders, each having been a final score 11 times in the 2017 season. 86 has come up 10 times and 89 has occurred on nine occasions. Six different totals - 103, 97, 96, 88, 82 and 72 have each been seen eight times.
Anagrammatical postcode of the week
A remarkable win by Central District on Saturday saw it advance to the semi finals of the SANFL, to be played this weekend. The Bulldogs' win over Norwood was remarkable for the fact that they spent the entire season outside the top five before just claiming a place in the finals in the final home-and-away round with a narrow win over West Adelaide.
While the win continued a remarkable late run for Centrals, it also carried on a disappointing late season trend for Norwood, which saw the Redlegs fail to register a win in their last four games. Hardly surprising then, that they scored 3, 2, 2 and 3 goals across their four quarters on Saturday, and that 3223 is the postcode of ST LEONARDS, which is, of course, an anagram of A LOSS TREND.
Ridiculous footy anagram of the week
Congratulations to Geelong's general manager of football and former player Steven Hocking, who was appointed to the post of General Manager, Football Operations by the AFL last Thursday. Our understanding is that the league made the decision to elevate Hocking to the THE AFL'S EXECUTIVE TEAM only after careful consideration, making it an appropriate anagram of UM... HE'S FIT - ELEVATE EX-CAT.
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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