Sunday, June 19, 2016

AFL Power Rankings: Round 13 2016

This is first of three weeks the AFL where one-third the clubs have bye. So to replicate feeling that football supporters during these weeks I removed every third word this paragraph. The paragraph silly? Does feel incomplete? That pretty much we are to feel the next weeks.
 
I initially thought this week that I had fully accounted for the byes in my Excel sheet when I did my assessment of each club’s draw for this season. I groaned when I realised that I hadn’t. This means that instead of copying the formulas for all sixteen clubs, pasting them one cell to the left, updating the far right column for the most recent round, and then patting myself on the back for how quick it all is, I had to repeat this process four times at each part of my spreadsheet. I give a slight cheer when the AFL schedules byes for clubs that are next to each other in alphabetical order; for example, Carlton and Collingwood this week, and Richmond and St. Kilda. The ten minutes extra it takes me to update the sheet when some clubs are not playing is part of why I only update the rankings once during the finals.
 
And then, as thousands of other football followers will know about, there is the havoc that the bye rounds have on my fantasy AFL side. One season, when I was going really well, I spent several hours building a spreadsheet carefully planning my strategy over the bye rounds. Now I basically say bugger it, it’s all too hard, and do the same types of trades I would do any other week. Thankfully in SuperCoach now only your best eighteen players count towards your score, which takes some of the worry away.
 
Anyway I don’t like the bye weeks. Although it does give me an excuse not to watch Richmond play for at least one week.
 
Geelong is the big mover in the rankings this week, rising from sixth to third with their big win over fellow top eight-side the Western Bulldogs. And Essendon is off the bottom of the rankings after a reasonable performance against GWS, with the last spot now going to the Brisbane Lions.
 

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