2025 - Team Ratings After Round 19

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Despite losses for both, the Dogs and the Pies continue to fill the Top 2 spots on both Systems at the end of Round 19 as MoSSBODS leaves untouched its Top 10 teams and MoSHBODS its Top12.

In fact, the only changes this week were GWS taking 11th from Carlton on MoSSBODS, and St Kilda taking 13th from Port Adelaide on MoSHBODS.

Overall, MoSSBODS now has 12 teams rated as above average and MoSHBODS 11, with MoSSBODS just allowing Carlton into the set with a +0.001 Combined Rating.

The correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Combined Ratings still stands at +0.98 and, roughly speaking, each team’s Combined MoSHBODS Rating is about 0.95 times its Combined MoSSBODS Rating.

On the Component Ratings, on offence we find both MoSSBODS now with a Top 3 of Dogs, Cats, and Lions, and MoSHBODS with Dogs, Cats, and Crows. On defence, MoSSBODS still has a Top 3 of Pies, Hawks, and Lions, while MoSHBODS still has Pies, Crows, and Hawks.

MoSSBODS now has 10 teams rated as above average on offence, while MoSHBODS has only 9. MoSSBODS still has 11 teams rated as above average on defence, while MoSHBODS now has 10.

Offensive ratings on MoSSBODS currently span a range of 1.46 standard deviations (which is roughy unchanged) and defensive ratings a range of 1.31 standard deviations (which is also roughly unchanged). Offensive ratings on MoSHBODS span a range of 1.49 standard deviations (which has shrunk) and defensive ratings a range of about 1.25 standard deviations (which has widened).

We can also review the trajectory that each team has followed to arrive at its current MoSHBODS Rating (with thanks to www.footyjumpers.com for the use of their exquisite team guernseys)

On MoSHBODS, 7 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (no change), 6 are rated negatively on both (down 1), two are rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (down 1), and three are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (up 2).

The correlation between the teams’ MoSHBODS offensive and defensive Ratings now stands at +0.79, which is up a fraction on last week.

To put the latest MoSHBODS Ratings in some historical context, here are the Ratings of teams across V/AFL history as at the end of their respective Round 19s.

Just three teams are above the median for the Combined Rating of teams that went on to make their Grand Final: Western Bulldogs, Adelaide, and Collingwood. None of the three is close to the top decile.

And, finally, it’s time to take a look at MARS, which re-ranked seven teams this week, including swapping Adelaide into 1st at the expense of Western Bulldogs and Collingwood and, further down, flipping Fremantle ahead of Gold Coast into 8th, and Carlton ahead of Melbourne into 12th.

Just over 23 Rating Points now separates 1st from 9th now, which roughly equates to a score gap at a neutral venue of about 18 points.

By way of comparison, at the end of Round 19 last season, the gap between 1st and 9th was just over 32 Rating Points, or roughly 26 points. Sydney was at that point ranked 1st with a Rating of 1,037.5, Port Adelaide were 9th on 1,005.3, and West Coast were last on 948.9.

There are still 10 teams rated better-than-average by MARS, after which there’s now a large gap to Port Adelaide’s 992.6.

Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and comparing them with the teams’ competition ladder positions (determined based on percentage of possible competition points collected and then for and against percentage), we find relatively large differences between the teams’ ladder positions and their rating system ordering for:

HIGHER ON LADDER THAN ON RANKING SYSTEMS: None

LOWER ON LADDER THAN ON RANKING SYSTEMS: Western Bulldogs and Melbourne (ignoring MARS)

MoSSBODS and MARS this week provides the most outlying rankings at 8, ahead of MoSHBODS with only 3.

MoSHBODS and MARS agree about the ranking of 8 teams now, MoSSBODS and MARS about only 6, and MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS also about 8.

Looking finally at the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team we find that GWS has been joined by Adelaide and Melbourne in having the widest range of rankings at four spots, but that there are only two other teams (Sydney and Port Adelaide) whose rankings span more than two spots.

There are also now five teams that the Systems unanimously rank: Carlton, Essendon, Geelong, Hawthorn, and West Coast.

Broadly speaking the various Rating Systems generally moved a little further away in terms of their rankings this week (MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS being a slight exception), as shown by the rank correlations below:

  • MARS with MoSSBODS: +0.926 (was +0.94)

  • MARS with MoSHBODS: +0.967 (was +0.988)

  • MoSSBODS with MoSHBODS: +0.967 (was +0.961)