Just 0.9 Scoring Shots and two points separate 1st from 4th on the two MoS Team Rating Leaderboards as we enter the Finals, and only just over six Scoring Shots and just under 20 points separates the highest from the lowest-rated finalist.

By way of contrast, going into the 2019 Finals, on MoSSBODS 1st and 4th were separated by 1.6 Scoring Shots, and 1st and 8th by over seven Scoring Shots, while on MoSHBODS the equivalent gaps were 9 points and just over 23 points.

In short, this year’s finalists are most closely-rated than last year’s, although that might be partly attributable to the truncated home-and-away season.

Anyway, as things stand, MoSSBODS has a Top 3 of Port Adelaide, Richmond, and then Brisbane Lions, while MoSHBODS has a Top 3 of Richmond, Port Adelaide, and then Geelong.

Overall, seven teams were re-ranked by MoSSBODS, and seven by MoSHBODS, three by multiple spots on MoSSBODS, and four by multiple spots on MoSHBODS. The correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Combined Ratings now stands at +0.9949.

Based on the similarity of Combined Rating, you could form the following rough groups based on the latest results:

Top Tier (span 2.5 Scoring Shots / 11.6 Points): Port Adelaide, Richmond, Brisbane Lions, Geelong, Collingwood and Western Bulldogs.

Middle Tier (span 2.7 Scoring Shots / 11.7 Points): St Kilda, Melbourne, Carlton, West Coast, and GWS.

Bottom Tier (span 5.3 Scoring Shots / 17.9 Points): Hawthorn, Sydney, Gold Coast, Fremantle, Essendon, Adelaide, and North Melbourne.

On the Component Ratings, on offence we find MoSSBODS now with a Top 3 of Lions, Power, and Dogs, and MoSHBODS still with a Top 3 of Lions, Cats, and Dogs. On defence, MoSSBODS now has a Top 3 of Pies, Tigers, and Power, and MoSHBODS has the same ordering.

On MoSSBODS, 6 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (up 1), 5 are rated negatively on both (no change), none are rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (no change), and 7 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (down 1). The correlation between the teams’ MoSSBODS offensive and defensive Ratings now stands at +0.601, which is down a little compared to last week.

We can get some historical context about the 2020 Finalists by comparing their Ratings with those of other Finalists since 2000, which we do in the charts below.

In the first pair of charts we look at the individual team ratings, and colour teams based on by where they bowed out of the race.

(You can click on them to access larger versions)

The most striking feature of these charts is the relative lack of offensive ability of any of the Finalists, especially Collingwood and West Coast, who finished the home-and-away season ranked 12th and 10th on Scoring Shots Generated per game.

That feature is even more emphasised if we plot the average rating of the Finalists for each of the years 2000 to 2020.

Here we can see that the 2020 crop of Finalists is ranked 2nd- or 3rd-last offensively (but 3rd-best defensively).

And, finally, to MARS, which re-ranked eight teams this week, but again left the Top 7 unchanged.

The Top 4 teams, who are separated by just under 11 Rating Points are also the top 4 on the ladder, and the Top 8 teams, who are separated by just over 26 Rating Points are also the finalists. In 2019 the top 4 on the ladder were separated by just over 18 Rating Points on MARS, and the finalists were separated by just over 35 Rating Points.

So, MARS agrees that this year’s finalists are more-evenly matched than last year’s.

This week, the only teams moving by more than a single ladder position were GWS (down 2 to 10th), and Carlton (down 2 to 14th).

Nine teams remain rated as better-than-average by MARS, though the Dees only barely.

Forming rough team groups, as we did for the MoS twins, we might get:

Top Tier (span 14.9 Rating Points): Geelong, Richmond, Port Adelaide, Brisbane Lions, and West Coast

Middle Tier (span 13.4 Rating Points): Collingwood, Western Bulldogs, St Kilda, Melbourne, and GWS.

Bottom Tier (span 22.8 Rating Points): Fremantle, Sydney, Hawthorn, Carlton, Essendon, Gold Coast, North Melbourne, and Adelaide.

Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder, we find the highest difference, still, for West Coast, who are ranked no higher than 9th by either of the MoS twins.

In fact, the Eagles, along with the Swans, are the only teams ranked more than three places differently from their ladder ordering by any of the Rating Systems.

MARS continues to provide the most outlying rankings of the three Systems, it having the outright most-extreme ranking for 13 of the teams, with West Coast and Carlton the most notable examples.

By comparison, MoSSBODS has the outright most-extreme ranking for 10 teams, and MoSHBODS for just two.

Lastly, if we consider the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team, we find that Carlton and West Coast (5 spots each) have the widest range of rankings, while 14 teams have rankings than differ by no more than 2 spots.

No team is currently ranked the same by all three Systems.