No solid spots in the middle of the AFL pyramid

THE 2024 AFL season has been a nightmare for footy tippers and pundits alike, let alone the teams who are out there playing the actual game.

There have been hot streaks immediately followed by cold streaks, and vice versa, teams win games they’re expected to lose and lose games they are expected to win.

The sheer number of goals scored by everyone means percentages are high, so unless your team’s winning almost all the time, or losing almost all the time, its ladder position is all over the place from week to week.

This has been compounded by the AFL’s Opening Round (depicted on the Flourish chart below as Round 1) experiment this year, which gave half the eight of the league’s 18 teams a one-game head start, and the resulting byes to those teams over the following weeks meant the ladder didn’t accurately reflect the competition’s form (in the sense that everyone had played or not played the same amount of games) until after Round 15.

And that’s all without even mentioning how compromised the AFL fixture is to begin with, with its focus on maximising ratings over teams playing the same number of games against each other.

With the exceptions of Brisbane, who keep winning and is comfortably sitting in second, and Richmond, who keep losing and is rightfully last, every team has at least one win and one loss in its past five games.

Sydney has lost four of its past five games but is still sitting a game a half clear on top, perhaps proving the value of the horseracing adage “Get out in front and stay there”.

But it’s Essendon that most clearly demonstrates the slippery nature of the middle of the 2024 AFL ladder, which is more like the Pyramid from the TV series Gladiators, with participants climbing up and falling down all over the place.

Sitting in 13^th spot after Opening Round (which it didn’t play in), the Bombers jumped to 7^th after Round 2 but fell to 11^th after Round 3.

After being on the verge of solidifying a top-four spot three weeks ago, the Bombers are 10th ahead of a must-win clash with red-hot Fremantle (four wins from its past five games) this Sunday, August 4.

Essendon were 8-1-3 and destined to play finals for the first time since 2021 – including three weeks in 2^nd spot – but have since won just two of their past eight games, with losses including a 53-point walloping against the 14th-placed Saints last weekend.

Elsewhere on the pyramid, the Pies tumbled down in July (like the song of the same name by The Coodabeen Champions) and are no chance to defend its 2023 premiership, Geelong won its first seven then lost five of its next six, and Hawthorn lost its first five, as you might expect of a rebuilding team, but has only had three losses since then.

With four weeks to go, what’s the final eight going to look like at the end of Round 24? You tell me.

– WITH AAP