2025 Fixture

[Sanctorum]

I haven't seen any stats on how teams that were considered to have been given easy draws finished up over the years, but I suspect it is not often the case that they became premiers.

In this context we should never forget that in 2024 Brisbane Lions lost 5 of their first 7 games, yet finished with a wet sail in 5th spot and went on from there to win the GF decisively!!

[Nick DalSanto Claus]

Let's face it. The AFL doesn't give a fat rat's toss bag about the lesser of the Melbourne clubs. That's us, Norf, the WB and, to a lesser extent, Melbourne, only because their fans are so fickle.

Look at the way the AFL and its media sycophants have responded to Hawthorn's one decent season since 2018. Their 100,000 members to our 60,000 tells part of the story.

If we could just snag that second flag, the membership floodgates would open. Scottie's "Juggernaut" would become reality. Then we do a Hawthorn and sign up every child and pet we can find and artificially boost the numbers.

Once we breach the 100,000, we will be the equal of those so-called power clubs. Surely we are as good, or better than Carlton, Essendon and Hawthorn, based on the performances of the past six years.

[SaintPav]

Very inspiring but totally irrelevant.

Need to use a proportional ratio.

Your raw rankings mask the real magnitude of difference as you are ignoring the base rate.

A 21% deviation from the average is significant.

I would love to do business with you someday.

Lol yeah sure, except we aren't talking about a system with potentially limitless results, we are taking about 18 teams going in to 18 spots.

I would appreciate your report on it if you want to assign each team a difficulty rating and weight for match location and time of day and X, Y and Z to develop a scientifically sound box and whisker plot (or something) to show how far the median difficulty is from the average (I assume that's where you pulled 21% from).

I would also appreciate your version of the draw where every teams arbitrary difficulty rating is balanced within such a narrow band so that no team can really have an issue.

At the end of all that though we will still (according to fox footy) have a better draw than 8 teams and a worse draw than 9 teams, smack in the middle of the comp.

Not moving the goal posts much.

[The_Dud]

Love also how everyone has decided already who the good and bad teams will be next year, why even bother playing the games!

[The_Dud]

Our draw is rated the 8th easiest / 11th hardest.

Seems pretty right considering where we finished this year.

https://www.afl.com.au/news/1255238?fbc ... ZWCJHCwBVA

[SaintPav]

If it’s coming from the AFL it must be legit.

[The_Dud]

If it’s coming from the AFL it must be legit.

Clearly all part of the conspiracy eh!

[SaintPav]

[St Dave]

Very inspiring but totally irrelevant.

Need to use a proportional ratio.

Your raw rankings mask the real magnitude of difference as you are ignoring the base rate.

A 21% deviation from the average is significant.

I would love to do business with you someday.

Lol yeah sure, except we aren't talking about a system with potentially limitless results, we are taking about 18 teams going in to 18 spots.

I would appreciate your report on it if you want to assign each team a difficulty rating and weight for match location and time of day and X, Y and Z to develop a scientifically sound box and whisker plot (or something) to show how far the median difficulty is from the average (I assume that's where you pulled 21% from).

I would also appreciate your version of the draw where every teams arbitrary difficulty rating is balanced within such a narrow band so that no team can really have an issue.

At the end of all that though we will still (according to fox footy) have a better draw than 8 teams and a worse draw than 9 teams, smack in the middle of the comp.

Not moving the goal posts much.

Yeah sorry, when you said proportional ratio (proportional to what?) I assumed you might have been trying to make a valid point about the difference between the median difficulty and the mean difficulty, because that could actually be significantly different in a larger sample size.

When you said 21% I assumed that was backed up by some analysis, not just a number you pulled out of thin air. Thanks for reminding us that a 21% deviation can be significant though I guess.

[samuraisaint]

No doubt that the fixture is compromised with all these annual match ups, and it is frankly ridiculous that we play Collingwood in an away game at Docklands.
It might have been nice to play North Melbourne twice, but then again, one of those times would be in Hobart and we don't always do so well in those games.
Playing Melbourne twice and our away game against them is in Alice Springs should make our chances of beating them better, but we seem to just lose a lot of these types of games. We are in them up to our necks but lack composure and fail to finish. I hope that changes, but Melbourne will have Gawn, Petracca, and Oliver back next season, giving them a clear edge in class and physicality.
I have basically given up on us beating Port or the Crows at this point - Port just seem to do enough when it counts, and we simply fail to prepare for most Crows games except during the pandemic.
We play two teams who are widely tipped to go into premiership or at least top 4 contention next season, in Fremantle and the Dogs, twice. However, conversely, I think if we have true rivals these two teams are it, for mine, so I am not unhappy about it.
And we play Geelong at Geelong where we haven't won since 1998-99. I saw both of those wins too, and lucky I was there because our losing margin since then has been 44 points. In fact, we have only won there four times since 1980.
I am glad we got McRae because it is possible that Ross plays our first draft pick every game like he has with Matteas and Darcy the last couple of seasons as a project player, so experience in the centre will be invaluable.
Love the MCG game against Carlton - I thought they would be our MCG home game match up.
Happy that we play Geelong, Swans, Hawks and Essendon (albeit as the away team) at Docklands, as I think we have a show of beating all of them there, going on recent form.
I'm also happy we don't have to play in Queensland, Tasmania or the SCG next year.

[SaintPav]

Very inspiring but totally irrelevant.

Need to use a proportional ratio.

Your raw rankings mask the real magnitude of difference as you are ignoring the base rate.

A 21% deviation from the average is significant.

I would love to do business with you someday.

Lol yeah sure, except we aren't talking about a system with potentially limitless results, we are taking about 18 teams going in to 18 spots.

I would appreciate your report on it if you want to assign each team a difficulty rating and weight for match location and time of day and X, Y and Z to develop a scientifically sound box and whisker plot (or something) to show how far the median difficulty is from the average (I assume that's where you pulled 21% from).

I would also appreciate your version of the draw where every teams arbitrary difficulty rating is balanced within such a narrow band so that no team can really have an issue.

At the end of all that though we will still (according to fox footy) have a better draw than 8 teams and a worse draw than 9 teams, smack in the middle of the comp.

Not moving the goal posts much.

Yeah sorry, when you said proportional ratio (proportional to what?) I assumed you might have been trying to make a valid point about the difference between the median difficulty and the mean difficulty, because that could actually be significantly different in a larger sample size.

When you said 21% I assumed that was backed up by some analysis, not just a number you pulled out of thin air. Thanks for reminding us that a 21% deviation can be significant though I guess.

There’s no median. I just used a simple ratio which I didn’t think needed explanation but here you go:

Key inputs:

Average/mean position according to St Dave = 9.5
St Kilda's 2024 ladder position = 12

Calculation:

1. Distance from average position:
12 - 9.5 = 2.5 positions harder than average

2. Simple ratio:
2.5/12 × 100 = 21%

Our actual position (12) is 2.5 positions away from the mean position (9.5)

So, we're 21% harder than average - not "about as close to an average draw as you could get."

The core issue remains simple: in an 18-team competition, being 2.5 positions from average means we're 21% harder than average (2.5/12), regardless of any other irrelevant factors and strawman arguments you’re introducing like the impossibility of introducing a “balanced” draw.

Happy to help with other basic mathematical concepts.

[bigcarl]

If it’s coming from the AFL it must be legit.

They should be focussing on their core responsibilities …. integrity of the competition, an equitable fixture and so on. A lot of people are sick of the divisive identity politics posturing.

[1971]

What I would like to see is that we get the so-called easiest draw and we win the premiership. Bugger the rest of the analysis and the competition.

[St Dave]

Yeah sorry, when you said proportional ratio (proportional to what?) I assumed you might have been trying to make a valid point about the difference between the median difficulty and the mean difficulty, because that could actually be significantly different in a larger sample size.

When you said 21% I assumed that was backed up by some analysis, not just a number you pulled out of thin air. Thanks for reminding us that a 21% deviation can be significant though I guess.

There’s no median. I just used a simple ratio which I didn’t think needed explanation but here you go:

Key inputs:

Average/mean position according to St Dave = 9.5
St Kilda's 2024 ladder position = 12

Calculation:

1. Distance from average position:
12 - 9.5 = 2.5 positions harder than average

2. Simple ratio:
2.5/12 × 100 = 21%

Our actual position (12) is 2.5 positions away from the mean position (9.5)

So, we're 21% harder than average - not "about as close to an average draw as you could get."

The core issue remains simple: in an 18-team competition, being 2.5 positions from average means we're 21% harder than average (2.5/12), regardless of any other irrelevant factors and strawman arguments you’re introducing like the impossibility of introducing a “balanced” draw.

Happy to help with other basic mathematical concepts.

Oh no. There is so much wrong with this.

I wouldn't be lecturing on mathematical concepts when you are throwing up whatever that calculation is based on our 2024 finishing position (?) and you don't understand what a median is. Good thing it is easy to remember the median, like a median strip is in the middle of a road, the median value is the middle value.

So in a ranked list, the median value will also be the average, but if that list is ranked based on a value (eg an arbitrary value representing the difficulty of a teams draw, for example the AFL blog on this issue rated Carlton's draw a 62 degree of difficulty or 12th hardest and our draw a 58 or 11th hardest), the median and average of that degree of difficulty value could be different. That's the argument I thought you were making, because that could be interesting. The easy draws are actually so easy, and the hard draws are so bunched up on that rating that the average difficulty is so much lower than our difficulty score, which means or draw would be much harder than "average" that being ranked 10 would suggest.

For some reason though, you are comparing our actual 2024 ladder position to our 2025 draw difficulty ranking? Our 2024 ladder position doesn't have a direct impact to our 2025 draw (it is indirect because it influences the teams we play twice, but doesnt dictate the teams we play twice), so I don't understand why you would do that. Unless your theory is that your finishing position should be inverse to you draw difficulty the next year? So 18th gets the easiest draw, 17th the second easiest etc? So we should have the 7th easiest draw this year? But even that is way off with what you are presenting. You should be realy comparing our 2024 draw difficulty with our eventual 2024 ladder position, that would be actually interesting do see under/over performance.

You say our 2024 finishing position (12) is 2.5 positions worse than the average (2025 draw difficulty ranking?) of 9.5, but then for some reason call this "harder than average"? So our 2024 finishing position was 2.5 spots harder than the average 2025 draw difficulty?

And then you divide 2.5 by our 2024 finishing position (12) to produce a percentage of 21%, but there are 18 teams, so our 2024 finishing position is 2.5 / 18 * 100 = 13.9% worse than the average 2025 draw difficulty? Again, dont know why our 2024 finishing position is relevant when we are discussing the 2025 draw.

To go back to the start, the fox footy ranking I referenced had our draw 10th hardest. The average (and median in these figures) draw difficulty would be 9.5. So a hypothetical team with an average difficulty draw would have a draw easier than 9 other teams and harder than 9 other teams. The difference between our difficulty ranking (10) and an average ranking (9.5) is 0.5 and 0.5 /18 * 100 = 2.8%, so our 2025 draw is 2.8% harder than the average draw difficulty. Pretty close to the average draw difficulty.

If you want to edit your post and just change it to "Sorry I got confused with the 2024 ladder" or something thats cool, I can remove this one too.

[SaintPav]

JFC.

I haven't confused anything.

You're overcomplicating a simple calculation.

The 12 denominator isn't arbitrary - it represents what our draw difficulty SHOULD be based on our 2024 ladder position. When I calculate 2.5/12 = 21%, I'm showing how much harder our draw is relative to what would be fair for a 12th placed team.

Your calculation (2.5/18) misses the point. We're not measuring movement within ladder positions - we're measuring the proportional increase in difficulty from what our baseline draw rating should be.

In an 18-team competition, the median is 9th position, not 9.5. That's the mean. You write "in a ranked list, the median value will also be the average" then immediately give an example about Carlton's draw being 62 and ours 58 then admit they could be different.

If you want to discuss skewed distributions and median difficulty ratings, let's see the actual data for all 18 teams first. Until then, maybe understand basic statistical concepts before giving lectures about them.

[King Max]

I don’t understand this analysis. Are you saying we should be playing teams with an average position of 12?

How would that work for Richmond or Brisbane? If Richmond played North every week they would still have a draw worse than they deserve.

BTW, the median and mean of all the numbers from 1 to 18 is 9.5. The median position of our possible opponents (1-11, 13-18) would be 9 and the mean would be about 9.35.

[St Dave]

JFC.

I haven't confused anything.

You're overcomplicating a simple calculation.

The 12 denominator isn't arbitrary - it represents what our draw difficulty SHOULD be based on our 2024 ladder position. When I calculate 2.5/12 = 21%, I'm showing how much harder our draw is relative to what would be fair for a 12th placed team.

You are absolutley confused. You arn't measuring to our draw difficulty (10th hardest), you are comparing our ladder position last year to an average draw difficulty. At no point does how difficult our draw is in 2025 enter the calculation. It could be the easiest or the hardest and none of your calculation changes.

Your calculation (2.5/18) misses the point. We're not measuring movement within ladder positions - we're measuring the proportional increase in difficulty from what our baseline draw rating should be.

Our position last year has no direct relation with draw difficulty, but to demonstrate for your whacky calculation, are you saying that if we finished first last year (1) for your theory the denominator should also be 1? Sydney finished first last year 1 - 9.5 is -8.5 and dividing that by 1 equals -850%?????? So they have a proportional increase in difficulty from what our baseline draw rating should be of -850%?

In an 18-team competition, the median is 9th position, not 9.5. That's the mean. You write "in a ranked list, the median value will also be the average" then immediately give an example about Carlton's draw being 62 and ours 58 then admit they could be different.

If you want to discuss skewed distributions and median difficulty ratings, let's see the actual data for all 18 teams first. Until then, maybe understand basic statistical concepts before giving lectures about them.

Yikes, median is a quick Google away you know. From here:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/median.asp

Median refers to a metric used in statistics. It's the middle number in a sorted ascending or descending list of numbers and can be more descriptive of the data set than the average. It's the point above and below which 50% of the observed data falls so it represents the midpoint of the data.

If there is an odd amount of numbers, the median value is the number that is in the middle, with the same amount of numbers below and above. If there is an even amount of numbers in the list, the middle pair must be determined, added together, and divided by two to find the median value.

Apparently you need this spelled out but for an even number of teams (18), the median is the middle pair (9 and 10) divided by 2 = 9.5.

Mean is just another word for average and as I said, in a ranked list (which in this case is ranking the easiest 2025 draw 1 and the hardest draw 18) the median value will also be the average, because the numbers are sequential and there are no double ups or skips. Because you need this spelled out the average is (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15+16+17+18)/18 = 9.5

So they are the same. Try for yourself with lower numbers if you like, compare the median and mean of 1, 2 and 3 or even add 4 and get back to us.

You also got confused with the AFLs data that I referenced

(eg an arbitrary value representing the difficulty of easy teams draw, for example the AFL blog on this issue rated Carlton's draw a 62 degree of difficulty or 12th hardest and our draw a 58 or 11th hardest)

For that, the arbitrary value is the degree of difficulty (62 for Carlton, 58 for us) because these ratings could be spread or bunched very randomly. The ranked list is us having the 11th hardest draw and Carlton the 12th hardest. I am glad you recognised that arbitrary numbers like 62 and 58 could lead to the average and median being different though (thats about all you got right), even if you did think they represented a ranked list. If it makes it easier, maybe think of and end of year ladder position (the ranked list) with actual points scored at the end of the year (the arbitratry value).

Im glad I was right in my third paragraph though, you do want an inverse difficulty rating, with the worst team the prior year having the easiest draw, then going up to the best team last year having the hardest draw.

That's interesting in theory, but pretty hard in practice. Eg the 18th team can't play the worst team the next year to make their draw easier because they can't play themselves. That's why the AFL has the 6-6-6 rule, to give the bottom 6 only 1 top 6 double up and 3 bottom 6 double ups, because it is a good way to get close to what you want to see. And even then, ranking difficulty is pretty arbitrary so one persons easiest draw could be 3rd easiest on another list.

You have confused so much though that you are not making sense. You are pulling numbers from wherever that have no relation. Just to demonstrate your nonsense, lets use Richmond for your theory

Key inputs:

Average/mean position according to St Dave = 9.5
St Kilda's Richmonds 2024 ladder position = 12 18

Calculation:

1. Distance from average position:
12 - 9.5 = 2.5
18 - 9.5 = 8.5 positions harder than average

2. Simple ratio:
2.5/12 × 100 = 21%
8.5/12 18 × 100 = 47.2%

Our Richmonds actual position (18) is 8.5 positions away from the mean position (9.5)

So, we're they're 47.2% harder than average

But that all means nothing. How are Richmond 47.2% harder than anything? Should greater than 9.5 make it easier? so they are 47.2% easier than average? But that would make us 21% easier than average?

If you use the 2025 draw rating that gets close to what you might want to see for the whole comp (eg. According to Fox Footy they have the number 1 easiest draw. If you use the draw ranking of 1, they were the worst team and got the easiest draw. Checks out, no need for arbitrary percentages). But for some reason you want to bring other numbers in to it.

[SaintPav]

The 12 denominator represents our baseline (yes, my assumption) - what our draw difficulty SHOULD tbe given our 2024 ladder position which the AFL use as part of their methodolgy in creating the fixture for the following year. The 21% shows how much harder our actual draw is compared to that baseline.

The core point remains: our draw is 21% harder than what a 12th placed team should receive. All your statistical diversions and tricks don't change that simple fact that your original premise about how equitable the fixture was is flawed.​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I haven’t made any other solutions or recommendations about fixturting.

[Yorkeys]

OK, how about, top 8 play each other twice home and away straight up.
Bottom 10 play each other home and away straight up.
Remaining rounds alternate between names drawn from a hat and broadcaster's call.
Previous years final 8 teams can play each other 3 times if broadcaster wants.
Betting firms can veto up to 3 games for a price.

[St Dave]

The 12 denominator represents our baseline (yes, my assumption) - what our draw difficulty SHOULD tbe given our 2024 ladder position which the AFL use as part of their methodolgy in creating the fixture for the following year. The 21% shows how much harder our actual draw is compared to that baseline.

The core point remains: our draw is 21% harder than what a 12th placed team should receive. All your statistical diversions and tricks don't change that simple fact that your original premise about how equitable the fixture was is flawed.​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I haven’t made any other solutions or recommendations about fixturting.

Holy moley, tripling down. You are making me wonder if being deliberately wrong and being called out on it is a fetish or something so I will leave it at this.

If you want an arbitrary baseline of 12 (for whatever flawed logic), you probably want to compare it to the difficulty of our actual draw for 2025, not an average draw difficulty accross the entire league. Just to repeat, compare our actual 2025 draw difficulty to our performance in 2024.

If the numbers you are using are 12 and 9.5, none of those numbers represent our actual draw difficulty in 2025 so at no point does our actual draw difficulty get compared or represented. You are comparing our performance in 2024 (12) to the average of draw difficulty (9.5).

I love you calling pretty basic maths "statistical diversions and tricks" though, really speaks to your understanding of the subject. I look forward to seeing how you refute my original statement which incase you forgot was that the Fox Footy prescribed difficulty rating of 10 is pretty close to a hypothetical average difficulty of 9.5. I really want to see how you prove that 10 is acually a long way from 9.5 using those "statistical diversions and tricks".

I know you said

I would love to do business with you someday.

but I couldn't see why I would with the comprehension you are bringing to the table. I would probably recommend you either finish high school or take a refresher maths course at uni or something before going in to business with anyone. You will only make a fool of yourself (unless thats what you want).

[SaintPav]

The 12 denominator represents our baseline (yes, my assumption) - what our draw difficulty SHOULD tbe given our 2024 ladder position which the AFL use as part of their methodolgy in creating the fixture for the following year. The 21% shows how much harder our actual draw is compared to that baseline.

The core point remains: our draw is 21% harder than what a 12th placed team should receive. All your statistical diversions and tricks don't change that simple fact that your original premise about how equitable the fixture was is flawed.​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I haven’t made any other solutions or recommendations about fixturting.

Holy moley, tripling down. You are making me wonder if being deliberately wrong and being called out on it is a fetish or something so I will leave it at this.

If you want an arbitrary baseline of 12 (for whatever flawed logic), you probably want to compare it to the difficulty of our actual draw for 2025, not an average draw difficulty accross the entire league. Just to repeat, compare our actual 2025 draw difficulty to our performance in 2024.

If the numbers you are using are 12 and 9.5, none of those numbers represent our actual draw difficulty in 2025 so at no point does our actual draw difficulty get compared or represented. You are comparing our performance in 2024 (12) to the average of draw difficulty (9.5).

I love you calling pretty basic maths "statistical diversions and tricks" though, really speaks to your understanding of the subject. I look forward to seeing how you refute my original statement which incase you forgot was that the Fox Footy prescribed difficulty rating of 10 is pretty close to a hypothetical average difficulty of 9.5. I really want to see how you prove that 10 is acually a long way from 9.5 using those "statistical diversions and tricks".

I know you said

I would love to do business with you someday.

but I couldn't see why I would with the comprehension you are bringing to the table. I would probably recommend you either finish high school or take a refresher maths course at uni or something before going in to business with anyone. You will only make a fool of yourself (unless thats what you want).

I have clearly hit a nerve given all your lengthy responses. Fascinating.

The draw difficulty IS directly linked to our 2024 ladder position. The AFL's own fixture rules explicitly group teams based on where they finished.

So comparing our 2024 finish (12th) to draw difficulty isn't "arbitrary" or "flawed logic" - it's literally how the AFL structures the fixture. Maybe understand the actual fixture rules before giving lectures about comprehension?

And speaking of comprehension, you keep citing Fox Footy's rating without even knowing their methodology. For instance, how does their simple methodology control for us having 3 games in Adelaide in the first 5 weeks?

What's formal education got to do with any of this anyway but go the ad hom attack when you encounter a different perspective on an issue.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

[St Dave]

The 12 denominator represents our baseline (yes, my assumption) - what our draw difficulty SHOULD tbe given our 2024 ladder position which the AFL use as part of their methodolgy in creating the fixture for the following year. The 21% shows how much harder our actual draw is compared to that baseline.

The core point remains: our draw is 21% harder than what a 12th placed team should receive. All your statistical diversions and tricks don't change that simple fact that your original premise about how equitable the fixture was is flawed.​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I haven’t made any other solutions or recommendations about fixturting.

Holy moley, tripling down. You are making me wonder if being deliberately wrong and being called out on it is a fetish or something so I will leave it at this.

If you want an arbitrary baseline of 12 (for whatever flawed logic), you probably want to compare it to the difficulty of our actual draw for 2025, not an average draw difficulty accross the entire league. Just to repeat, compare our actual 2025 draw difficulty to our performance in 2024.

If the numbers you are using are 12 and 9.5, none of those numbers represent our actual draw difficulty in 2025 so at no point does our actual draw difficulty get compared or represented. You are comparing our performance in 2024 (12) to the average of draw difficulty (9.5).

I love you calling pretty basic maths "statistical diversions and tricks" though, really speaks to your understanding of the subject. I look forward to seeing how you refute my original statement which incase you forgot was that the Fox Footy prescribed difficulty rating of 10 is pretty close to a hypothetical average difficulty of 9.5. I really want to see how you prove that 10 is acually a long way from 9.5 using those "statistical diversions and tricks".

I know you said

I would love to do business with you someday.

but I couldn't see why I would with the comprehension you are bringing to the table. I would probably recommend you either finish high school or take a refresher maths course at uni or something before going in to business with anyone. You will only make a fool of yourself (unless thats what you want).

I have clearly hit a nerve given all your lengthy responses. Fascinating.

The draw difficulty IS directly linked to our 2024 ladder position. The AFL's own fixture rules explicitly group teams based on where they finished.

So comparing our 2024 finish (12th) to draw difficulty isn't "arbitrary" or "flawed logic" - it's literally how the AFL structures the fixture. Maybe understand the actual fixture rules before giving lectures about comprehension?

And speaking of comprehension, you keep citing Fox Footy's rating without even knowing their methodology. For instance, how does their simple methodology control for us having 3 games in Adelaide in the first 5 weeks?

What's formal education got to do with any of this anyway but go the ad hom attack when you encounter a different perspective on an issue.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Haha, I guess the funny bone is a nerve, I'm not going to feed in to your fetish anymore though, reread it all again maybe?

It does take a while to try to explain year 10 maths to someone who clearly isn't getting it though, so you are right there (for the second time).

[SaintPav]

The 12 denominator represents our baseline (yes, my assumption) - what our draw difficulty SHOULD tbe given our 2024 ladder position which the AFL use as part of their methodolgy in creating the fixture for the following year. The 21% shows how much harder our actual draw is compared to that baseline.

The core point remains: our draw is 21% harder than what a 12th placed team should receive. All your statistical diversions and tricks don't change that simple fact that your original premise about how equitable the fixture was is flawed.​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I haven’t made any other solutions or recommendations about fixturting.

Holy moley, tripling down. You are making me wonder if being deliberately wrong and being called out on it is a fetish or something so I will leave it at this.

If you want an arbitrary baseline of 12 (for whatever flawed logic), you probably want to compare it to the difficulty of our actual draw for 2025, not an average draw difficulty accross the entire league. Just to repeat, compare our actual 2025 draw difficulty to our performance in 2024.

If the numbers you are using are 12 and 9.5, none of those numbers represent our actual draw difficulty in 2025 so at no point does our actual draw difficulty get compared or represented. You are comparing our performance in 2024 (12) to the average of draw difficulty (9.5).

I love you calling pretty basic maths "statistical diversions and tricks" though, really speaks to your understanding of the subject. I look forward to seeing how you refute my original statement which incase you forgot was that the Fox Footy prescribed difficulty rating of 10 is pretty close to a hypothetical average difficulty of 9.5. I really want to see how you prove that 10 is acually a long way from 9.5 using those "statistical diversions and tricks".

I know you said

I would love to do business with you someday.

but I couldn't see why I would with the comprehension you are bringing to the table. I would probably recommend you either finish high school or take a refresher maths course at uni or something before going in to business with anyone. You will only make a fool of yourself (unless thats what you want).

I have clearly hit a nerve given all your lengthy responses. Fascinating.

The draw difficulty IS directly linked to our 2024 ladder position. The AFL's own fixture rules explicitly group teams based on where they finished.

So comparing our 2024 finish (12th) to draw difficulty isn't "arbitrary" or "flawed logic" - it's literally how the AFL structures the fixture. Maybe understand the actual fixture rules before giving lectures about comprehension?

And speaking of comprehension, you keep citing Fox Footy's rating without even knowing their methodology. For instance, how does their simple methodology control for us having 3 games in Adelaide in the first 5 weeks?

What's formal education got to do with any of this anyway but go the ad hom attack when you encounter a different perspective on an issue.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Haha, I guess the funny bone is a nerve, I'm not going to feed in to your fetish anymore though, reread it all again maybe?

It does take a while to try to explain year 10 maths to someone who clearly isn't getting it though, so you are right there (for the second time).

The nerve I hit was your inability to engage with the actual fixture analysis. Instead of addressing:

- Front-loaded interstate travel (3 in first 5 is inequitable)
- The AFL's own stated priorities
- Missing marquee games
- Actual schedule equity as per AFL’s own guiding principles on page 4 of their fixture guide.

https://resources.afl.com.au/afl/docume ... LowRes.pdf

From my own analysis, the fixture meets the AFL’s technical requirements but seems to disadvantage us in subtle ways, particularly around front loaded interstate travel, scheduling and broadcast exposure.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

You've resorted to:

- Comments about high school math
- Dismissive responses
- Personal remarks
- Avoiding the substantive issues

If you want to discuss the actual fixture, I'm happy to. If you just want to make snide comments about perceived education, that says more about your argument than mine.

[St Dave]

The nerve I hit was your inability to engage with the actual fixture analysis. Instead of addressing:

- Front-loaded interstate travel (3 in first 5 is inequitable)
- The AFL's own stated priorities
- Missing marquee games
- Actual schedule equity as per AFL’s own guiding principles on page 4 of their fixture guide.

https://resources.afl.com.au/afl/docume ... LowRes.pdf

From my own analysis, the fixture meets the AFL’s technical requirements but seems to disadvantage us in subtle ways, particularly around front loaded interstate travel, scheduling and broadcast exposure.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

You've resorted to:

- Comments about high school math
- Dismissive responses
- Personal remarks
- Avoiding the substantive issues

If you want to discuss the actual fixture, I'm happy to. If you just want to make snide comments about perceived education, that says more about your argument than mine.

You questioned my intelligence and insinuated you were so superior that you would take advantage of me in a business situation in your first response. And then in your second suggested I could possibly need your help understanding maths.

I only questioned your intelligence after 4 "lengthy responses" (which apparently weren't engaging with your fixture analysis) and you proceeding to triple down on the idea your calculation had anything to do with our 2025 fixture (remind me again which number of 12, 9.5 or 2.5 represented our 2025 fixture again?).

I don't want this to end because you are my favourite type of guy, so sure you are right that you are unable to comprehend any information to the contrary. My 4 "lengthy responses" might as well have been static which I guess explains why you might think that out of all that all I have done is question your intelligence.

Apologies to the rest of the forum for crowding out any other discussion. I can't apologise you you though, you came at me first and I even gave you the opportunity to acknowledge your mistake and back out at the start.

[The_Dud]

So in conclusion, the draw is pretty much spot on for where we finished last season