The AFL pre-season is just TWO WEEKS AWAY!

(Can you tell I'm excited?)

We'll be previewing all eighteen teams during the four week, three game per team preseason, and providing our predictions, rating system, and player information about the 2015 AFL season to come. 

As a starting point, though, here's where we left off last season:

GRAND FINAL: Hawthorn Hawks def. Sydney Swans, 137-74.
Preliminary Finals: Hawthorn def. Port Adelaide Power, 97-94; Sydney def. North Melbourne Kangaroos, 136-65.
Semi-Finals: Port Adelaide def. Fremantle Dockers, 105-83; No. Melbourne def. Geelong Cats, 98-92.
Qualifying Finals (losers played winners of the Elimination finals; winners got a bye into Prelim Finals): Hawthorn def. Geelong, 104-68; Sydney def. Fremantle, 93-69.
Elimination Finals: No. Melbourne def. Essendon Bombers, 93-81; Port Adelaide def. Richmond Tigers, 132-75.

Final Standings for the "home-and-away" season:
                                     W     L     T      % (points scored/points allowed)
Sydney                      17       5     0        142.9
Hawthorn                17       5     0        140.8
Geelong                    17       5     0        113.8
Fremantle                16      6      0        130.4
Port Adelaide         14      8      0        129.9
No. Melbourne      14      8      0        117.0
Essendon                12      9       1         106.3
Richmond                12     10     0         105.8
West Coast               11     11      0         116.9
Adelaide                    11     11      0         114.1
Collingwood            11     11      0          94.1
Gold Coast               10     12      0         93.7
Carlton                       7      14      1          89.7
Western Bulldogs 7      15      0          81.3
Brisbane Lions       7      15      0          69.3
Gr. Wst. Sydney     6      16     0          76.7
Melbourne               4      18     0          68.4
St. Kilda                     4      18     0          60.8

One of the nicest innovations the AFL has that I'm highly in favor of for other leagues concerns their tiebreaking system - the % figure on the right, which is a ratio of points scored to points allowed. (So, if you allowed the same number of points as you scored, your % would be 100.0, meaning you scored 100.0% of the number of points you allowed. If you have 120.0%, that means you score 120 points for every 100 your opponents score - a pretty good indicator that you should be a winning team.) 

You'll notice that even though the top three teams all went 17-5, Sydney and Hawthorn were dominating competition, averaging over 7 points for every 5 their opponents managed. Meanwhile, despite the record, Geelong had only 113.8%, which means they won a lot of "squeakers", got blown out once or twice, and generally had a harder time than their adversaries above them. That put them in the #3 seed, and sure enough, they lost twice and were eliminated, while the other two met in the Grand Final. It's a great way to separate good from lucky, although it's not perfect. But there's absolutely NO complaints about the system that I've ever heard, even when a team's beaten someone above them on the ladder because of percentage.

Looking ahead, sometimes that percentage tells you who's "better" than their record, and in this case, I'm looking at both West Coast and Greater Western Sydney to move up in 2015 because of that. You'd think Geelong would drop, but lots of betters have lost money waiting for that to happen over the years! Richmond and Essendon might be vulnerable, and Collingwood also should be on notice.