Fremantle continues to do enough to snare the four competition points but not improve its scoring statistics sufficiently to bring them into line with their enviable winning percentage. Based on those scoring statistics they should now be in 3rd place on the competition ladder, behind Hawthorn and West Coast, according to MoS' Win Production Function. Perhaps most striking about Fremantle's performance is that they've generated fewer Scoring Shots per game than 10 other teams. What's saved them is that they've allowed their opponents to generate so few Scoring Shots themselves - on this metric, Fremantle is ranked 1st.

Defensive abilities generally continue to be an excellent predictor of competition ladder position, the rank correlation between the teams' ordering on Opponent Scoring Shot creation and ladder position now standing at +0.91, the only team ranked significantly differently being the Roos, who are 12th on the metric but 6th on the ladder.

The corresponding correlation between Own Scoring Shot generation and ladder position stands now at just +0.79, though this figure is significantly reduced by the discrepancy discussed earlier for Fremantle.

Some other rank correlations are:

• Ladder position with Own Conversion Rate: +0.54
• Ladder position with Opponent Conversion Rate: +0.55
• Ladder position with Expected Wins using the Win Production Function: +0.95
• Ladder position with Quarter 1 performance: +0.64
• Ladder position with Quarter 2 performance: +0.76
• Ladder position with Quarter 3 performance: +0.75
• Ladder position with Quarter 4 performance: +0.75

I'll leave you with one final statistic: Hawthorn has won 89% of 3rd Quarters this season and has, in aggregate, almost doubled its opponents' scores in these Quarters.