Update: South of the Equator

It's five rounds into the home-and-away season for the AFL, and the North Melbourne Kangaroos are the sole remaining undefeated team on the ladder. Friday night (4 am Friday morning, Idaho time), they have to face the second place Western Bulldogs, on their mutual home grounds at Etihad Stadium (the only covered, artificial turf stadium in the league), where the Doggies can run like mad and usually race past their opponents (my wager is that there's going to be zero loss-less teams in three days). Should be as great a game as last Friday night's classic, where Hawthorn won their third straight three-point victory, 112-109 over the Adelaide Crows in a thriller.

Right now, it looks like there are seven teams who are (barring disaster) going to be the definitive favorites to make the eight-team finals: the four named above, plus the Sydney Swans, West Coast Eagles, and the Geelong Cats. The eighth spot, were I a betting man, will come down to a race between the two newest clubs, the Gold Coast Suns and the Greater Western Sydney (GWS) Giants, neither of whom have ever made finals. (And GWS looks much more likely, with the injuries Gold Coast is piling up again after last year's injury debacle!) That would be an AMAZING finals month of September! The tenth possibility, surprisingly, is Melbourne's Demons, who haven't sniffed playoffs in a decade, but are 3-2 and looking strong - not as strong as the above teams, but...you know, it's possible. Their rating gain of 12.6 ELO points is second in the competition, behind only GWS's ridiculous 23.4.

On the other end of the scale, in a phenomenal turn, the only winless team in the AFL is last year's top seeded team, the Fremantle Dockers, with essentially the same personnel. Now, they're starting to rack up some ailing players as well, but that's not the excuse for losing five straight, including a four point loss Sunday to the other (previously) winless team, the Carlton Blues, who were expected to be poor this year in a rebuilding effort. The five teams who have fallen on hard times this season are Fremantle (0-5), Essendon (1-4 - expected, having lost 12 top players in the WADA drug ruling), Collingwood (2-3, with wins over Essendon this weekend and a lucky win by 2 over a weak team), Richmond (1-4) and Port Adelaide (2-3), two teams expected to play finals but who play each other this weekend to see which one's falling faster...