A little quieter on the MoS Team Rating Systems this week, especially near the top where we now find both Systems agreeing on a Top 3 of Collingwood, GWS and Geelong.

The Lions and Dogs were the big climbers on MoSSBODS, up 4 and 3 places respectively, while St Kilda and West Coast were the big fallers, both down 3 places. On MoSHBODS, the Lions were the only team to climb more than 2 places and no team fell more than 2 spots.

All the week’s moves have left the Systems now differing in their rankings of all but the Dogs and Eagles by no more than 2 places. The Dogs are 11th on MoSSBODS and 14th on MoSHBODS, while the Eagles are 14th on MoSSBODS and 9th on MoSHBODS.

Seven teams now have a positive Combined Rating on both Systems, and they are the same seven teams on both.

Turning next to the component ratings of the two MoS Systems we find that GWS remains ranked 1st on offence by both MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS, while on defence Collingwood is now 1st on both Systems.

On MoSSBODS, 6 teams are rated positively on offence and defence, 7 are rated negatively on both, 3 are rated positively on offence but negatively on defence, and 2 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence. MoSHBODS has exactly the same counts and teams in each category.

Echoing this agreement, looking across all 18 teams we find that:

• on offence, no team is ranked more than 3 spots differently by the two Systems.

• on defence, no team is ranked more than 3 spots differently by the two Systems.

We can, once again, place the teams’ current offensive and defensive ratings in an historical context by comparing them with those of teams from the past at the same point in their respective seasons (ie after six rounds of the home-and-away season).

Teams shown as red points are teams that eventually finished premiers, and those shown in orange finished as runners up.

Five teams now have a Combined Rating at or above the median for all previous Grand Finalists at this point in the season: Collingwood, GWS, Geelong, Richmond and Port Adelaide. Essendon is the only other team with a Combined Rating above the lowest decile for all previous Grand Finalists, reflecting the fact that there is quite a gap opening up in the MoSSBODS Combined Ratings.

The following animation shows the path that each team has followed, at the end of each round, to get to its current rating, and clearly shows the emerging gap this week.

ChiPS and MARS are now in agreement about the Top 4 teams and their ordering, putting the Cats in 1st, Pies in 2nd, Tigers in 3rd, and Giants in 4th. (They also agree about the Bottom 4 teams and their ordering, but that feels a bit less significant.)

ChiPS moved Adelaide and the Brisbane Lions up 3 places each, and dropped Melbourne by the same amount, while MARS elevated no-one by more than 2 places, and slipped West Coast down 4 spots.

That’s left the two of them disagreeing about the ranking of only Melbourne by more than 2 places. ChiPS has Melbourne in 14th while MARS has them in 10th.

Looking across the rankings of all four Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder, we find that:

• Sydney, alone now, have the widest range of rankings. They’re 10th on ChiPS and 17th on MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS.

• West Coast have the next-widest range of rankings. They’re 8th on MARS but 14th on MoSSBODS.

• The Western Bulldogs have the next-widest range of rankings, from 11th on MoSSBODS to 16th on ChiPS and MARS.

• No other team is ranked more than four places differently across the four Systems. North Melbourne and Gold Coast are now ranked identically by all four Systems, and six other teams’ rankings cover only two values.

We now see fairly large positive differences between ladder position and Rating System rankings (ie red dots, where Rating System ranking is much lower than ladder position) for the Saints, Dockers, Lions, and Suns, and large negative differences (ie green dots) for the Tigers, Dons and Dees.