October 13, 2024
WHAT A DAY!
Week 3 wrap
A Century of the Red & Black
As the Old Xavs take to the green and pleasant lawns of Barkers Road tonight, we're all hoping for an entire season of football.
Naturally, we're also hoping for a successful season.
Before we look at what might happen in 2022, let's take a final look at last year and, indeed, the previous decade.
We've developed a new tool that synchronises power ratings more accurately. We know it's a reasonably precise formula to measure team strength in terms of the past, and we'll be giving it a run this year as a predictor, too.
Let's look at the COVID interrupted and curtailed season that was last year
After the Vic Government closed the books after 14 rounds and just 11 games, the premiership table, with power rating, looked like this:
The VAFA awarded the minor premiership to Old Xavs, a small consolation prize for what might have been.
You'll note that OMs had a higher rating than Uni Blues and that Collegians rated higher than Old Scotch.
But what if they'd played all their games? How might have things have panned out?
We calculated it as below:
You'll see the ratings didn't change but predicated the results.
Xavs would have run the table, with St Kevin's losing just the one at Toorak Park.
We believe Old Brighton would have beaten Caulfield in the 1stsemi, Xavs would have won a tough one against the Kevs. The prelim would have been a 3 point win to the Tricolors, who would then have lost the GF to the Red 'n' Blacks by about three goals.
All supposition, of course. Nobody knows.
Let's look at some other years.
Uni Blues was the best team by a good stretch. Xavs finished second after the home and away despite being ranked behind fourth-finishers SKOB. The preliminary final prediction was a narrow win to the Kevins, but they won by 64 points. Brighton (5th) was ranked higher than Collegians (3rd).
We'll look at the entire decade in our next column, but we should take a look at 2016, Xavs' last premiership season.
All of us remember the narrative around that season. Old Trinity, beaten in the GF in 2015, was red hot, a sure-fire winner.
Well, not according to our ratings. Xavs was the top-rated team, just ahead of Uni Blacks, whom it beat in the 1st semi-final. The Red 'n' Blacks then beat the fifth-rated Uni Blues in the prelim and the THIRD-rated Greens in the Grand Final. The predicted finals' outcomes were very close to the actuals.
De La Salle was highly fancied but missed the four despite its fourth-place rating.
It's worth noting that the Xavs' rating of 25 was meagre compared with top-rated teams of other years. The total competition ratings must balance to a total of ZERO, and Carey's performance delivered a rating of -60. Not surprisingly, they went down.
We will look at other seasons in our next column, though we hope this year's focus will be on the present rather than seasons already in the books.
