The silly season

As the various football codes kick off in the coming weeks, it is an exciting time for football pundits across the country. The person on the train next to you tell you the Tigers are dead certs, while the bloke in the pub swears that the Bulldogs are good things this year. Some lucky people are even paid to espouse their supposedly well researched predictions.

It's obvious who the 2012 premiers are.

So from this quagmire of wet tea leaves, chicken entrails and old sheep bones comes this startling piece of analysis from well-respected AFL journalist Rohan Connolly of The Age in Melbourne.  He’s crunched the numbers, removed the outliers and plotted the bell curve to come up with his prediction for the coming season. I won't tell what he says, you’ll have to find out here, but I’m fascinated by this apparent magic number for ages and games required for premiership success. Especially considering that the 2011 premiers Geelong won the flag with the oldest list for 67 years, while the year before Collingwood prevailed with one of the youngest lists of modern times.

A closer look at the stats seems to suggest (to my un-mathematical eye) there is no real difference between AFL teams in terms of experience and age. With the exception of the two foundation teams, Gold Coast and GWS and a team turning over a large amount of its playing list (the Brisbane Lions) your average player for any team is just over 23 and has played just over 50 games. Not enough to predict your top eight from these stats. You probably couldn’t even order last year’s final standings from them.

This is of course not to say that any other code is exempt from ridiculous predictions. The NRL doesn’t go in for analysis based on numbers (possibly a legacy of too many high hits), but seems to love predictions based on vague, if well meaning, clichés. And if anyone knows what is going on in the A-League these days, they should contact Les for a place on The World Game team.

That all being said, Rohan Connolly may turn out to be completely accurate in his analysis, and I will have egg all over my face. The team he selected probably won’t surprise many AFL fans, and in explanation to non-AFL’ers out there, he picked a pretty good team which most likely would be in contention regardless of it's makeup.

Now who am I you say, to pontificate from upon high, casting aspersions from the relative safety of a blog. Well I’m glad you asked, for I myself am about to join the masses consulting the Ouija boards and performing rain dances to bring my own ill informed predictions, as well as talking points you can use to sound like you know your AFL. These will be appearing on this very blog closer to the start of the AFL season (now how’s that for sizzle and dangle).

*One quick note, if anyone can find any other predictions based on flimsy premises, I’d love to see them.