It’s really far too late in the season for Team Rating Systems to be rerating too many teams, but the nature of the 2023 season has made that almost a requirement.

On both MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS, only five teams were unmoved, and the moves were as large as eight spots.

The big movers were:

On MoSSBODS

• Western Bulldogs (up 5 to 3rd)

• Carlton (up 2 to 2nd)

• Adelaide (up 2 to 7th)

• Hawthorn (up 2 to 14th)

• Collingwood (down 6 to 9th)

• Melbourne (down 3 to 5th)

• St Kilda (down 2 to 15th)

On MoSHBODS

• Western Bulldogs (up 5 to 3rd)

• Carlton (up 3 to 2nd)

• Port Adelaide (up 2 to 4th)

• Hawthorn (up 3 to 13th)

• Collingwood (down 8 to 9th)

• Melbourne (down 2 to 5th)

The correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Combined Ratings now stands at +0.9949 and, roughly speaking, each team’s Combined MoSHBODS Rating is about 3.59 times its Combined MoSSBODS Rating.

On the Component Ratings, on offence we find MoSSBODS now with a Top 3 of Power, Lions, and Crows, and MoSHBODS with Power, Crows, and Lions, while on defence MoSSBODS now has a Top 3 of Lions, Dogs, and Blues, while MoSHBODS now has it as Blues, Dogs, and Cats.

MoSSBODS now has only eight teams rated as above average on offence, while MoSHBODS has 11 teams so rated. As well, MoSSBODS now has 14 teams rated as above average on defence, while MoSHBODS has 12.

To put the latest MoSSBODS Ratings in some historical context, here are the Ratings of all teams after Round 21 of their respective home-and-away seasons across V/AFL history (noting that, in some seasons, there would not have been 21 home-and-away rounds)

It remains true that no team currently has a Combined Rating in the top 50% of teams that eventually went on to make the Grand Final, and only seven teams are Rated outside the bottom decile for teams that eventually made the Grand Final. St Kilda, should they make the Grand Final, would do so as the lowest-rated team after Round 21 ever to do so.

We can also review the trajectory that each team has followed to arrive at its current Rating.

On MoSSBODS, 9 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (up 1), 3 are rated negatively on both (down 1), 1 is rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (down 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 +0.7, which is down a little this week.

And, finally, to MARS, which re-ranked 10teams this week, but only the Pies (down 3) by more than a single spot.

It now has the Cats in 1st, Dees in 2nd, and Lions in 3rd.

Geelong’s lead over the Dees is just 0.7 Rating Points, and the Dees’ over the Lions just 1.8 Rating Points.

There are now 10 teams rated better-than-average by MARS. with Richmond now on 998.1.

The Rating gap between first and last now stands at about 92 Rating Points, which is down by about 4 Points on last week, while that between first and eighth now stands at just over 16 Rating Points. The gap between first and fourth is only just under 4 Rating Points.

It’s hard to conclude anything other than that this is a far more competitive season than most others and that, consequently, there are no standouts teams.

Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder, we find relatively large differences between the teams’ ladder positions and their rating system ordering for:

HIGHER ON LADDER THAN ON RANKING SYSTEMS: Collingwood, St Kilda and Essendon

LOWER ON LADDER THAN ON RANKING SYSTEMS: Geelong and Adelaide (both to some degree)

MARS this week provides the most outlying rankings at 12, ahead of MoSSBODS on four, and MoSHBODS on three.

MARS’ rankings are particularly different for Collingwood, Carlton, Western Bulldogs, and Geelong.

MoSHBODS and MARS agree about the ranking of five teams, MoSSBODS and MARS about four, and MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS about 12 teams.

Looking finally at the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team we find that Geelong and Collingwoode (5 spots) now have the widest range of rankings, and that there are now nine teams for whom the rankings span a range of more than two spots.

There are also four teams that the Systems unanimously rank the same way: GWS, North Melbourne, Sydney, and West Coast.