Just six teams remained in the same spot on MoSSBODS this week, and only four on MoSHBODS, which left them agreeing about which teams should be in 1st, 4th, 8th, and 15th through 18th.

Altogether, there were three multiple-spot movers on MoSSBODS, including Richmond up 4 spots into 12th and Gold Coast down 3 spots into 13th, and six multiple-spot movers on MoSHBODS, including Brisbane Lions up 3 spots into 2nd, and Sydney down 3 spots into 6th.

Despite the differences in team ordering, the correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Combined Ratings remains very high, and now stands at +0.9837.

To provide some historical context to the teams’ current Ratings, the chart below shows the Ratings of selected teams from V/AFL history after five rounds of their respective seasons.

Melbourne continues to be quite highly rated in historical terms, and is still, narrowly, in the top decile of ultimate Grand Finalists. Geelong remains the only other team rated higher at this point in the season than 50% of the teams in history that subsequently made the Grand Final - it too, only just so.

The animation below maps the path that each 2022 team has followed to reach its current Rating.

On the Component Ratings, on offence, we find MoSSBODS now with a Top 3 of Dees, Lions, and Cats, and MoSHBODS with Lions, Dees, and Cats. On defence, we find MoSSBODS still with a Top 3 of Dees, Dockers, and Cats, and MoSHBODS now with Dees, Dockers, and Saints.

On MoSSBODS, 6 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (no change), 6 are rated negatively on both (down 2), one is rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (up 1), and 5 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (up 1). The correlation between the teams’ MoSSBODS offensive and defensive Ratings now stands at +0.793.

And, finally, to MARS, which re-ranked only six teams this week, leaving the Top 4 and Bottom 3 unchanged.

Interestingly, of the six now highest-Rated teams, four of them shed Rating Points in Round 7.

MARS continues to agree with the MoS twins about Melbourne being the top-ranked side, but is also maintaining a much higher ranking for the Swans (3rd vs 6th or 7th), and a much lower ranking for Fremantle (8th vs 3rd or 5th).

Amongst the six teams that did move, only two of them - GWS (up 2) and Hawthorn (down 2) - moved by more than a single spot.

Nine teams are now rated as better-than-average by MARS, and four more are Rated higher than 993.

The Rating gap between first and last currently stands at 62.5 Rating Points, which is up 2.5 Rating Points compared to last week, and about 5.5 Rating Points higher than it was at the same time last season when Richmond’s 1020.5 Rating topped the table, and North Melbourne’s 963.6 tailed it.

Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder, we still find relatively large differences for a number of teams, the largest being for Carlton, where the teams’ ladder positions are well above their System Rankings, and for Port Adelaide (and, to a lesser extent, Geelong), where the teams’ ladder positions are well below their System Rankings.

MARS, to a lesser extent than is normal for the third week running, provides the most outlying rankings of the three Systems, it having the outright most-extreme ranking for nine of the teams.

MoSSBODS, has the most-extreme ranking for seven teams, and MoSHBODS has it for five teams. This is the most unaligned I’ve seen the Systems’ team rankings in quite some time.

On that note, if we consider the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team, we find that Richmond (7 spots) has the widest range of rankings, but there are also eight more teams with ranges from 3 to 6 spots. Only for North Melbourne, Melbourne, and West Coast, do the three Systems have the same ranking.