MARS History of Grand Finals 2000-2011

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The 2011 Grand Final will, for the first time time since MARS Ratings have been calculated, pit two teams that are each rated over 1,050. 

Across the period 2000-2011 the average Grand Finalist has been rated 1,041.8, with winning Grand Finalists averaging a pre-game rating just over 4 Rating Points higher than this and losing Grand Finalists averaging just over 4 Ratings Points lower.

These and other details appear in the table below, which can be clicked to reveal a larger version. 

Some other features of this table to which I'd draw your attention are that:

 

  • the average MARS Rating difference between competing Grand Finalists is just over 17 Ratings Points. In this year's GF it'll be just under 4 Ratings Points.
  • the team with the higher MARS Rating has won 55% of Grand Finals, the same proportion as that for teams from the higher ladder position in the home-and-away season. Bookmaker favourites have won 64% of Grand Finals, however.
  • the average implicit probability of the winning Grand Finalist has been just 56% (and hence of the losing Grand Finalist has been 44%), while the average favourite has been priced such that its implicit probability has been 61%. The shortest-priced favourite was Essendon, which won priced at $1.19 in 2000, and the longest-priced victor was Hawthorn at $2.65 in 2008 when they toppled the Cats.
  • the 2008 GF also represents the game with the largest MARS Rating deficit between the winner and the loser, and the game with the highest-rated losing Grand Finalist. Hawthorn went into this game over 27 Ratings Points behind the Cats, rated 1,068.0 to the Hawks' 1,040.5.
  • the Swans of 2005 were the lowest-rated Grand Final winners of the past 12 seasons, entering the GF rated just 1,028.8. The lowest-rated team to participate in a Grand Final during the past 12 seasons were Collingwood in 2002, which went into the Grand Final rated at only 1,008.7, a rating typically associated with teams from the lower half of the Finalists. Nonetheless they lost by just 9 points.
  • Collingwood will enter the 2011 GF having played at the MCG 17 times in the past 12 months, the same number of occasions on which it had played at the ground in the 12 months preceding last year's two Grand Finals, and the most Venue Experience that any Grand Finalist has had in the past 12 seasons.