Round 19, 2014 Penny
Technical Analysis prior to R19, 2014
By Penny Dredfell
Added 29 Jul 2014
While fundamental analysis (used by most media tipsters) takes into account the ability of the two competing teams, the home ground advantage, injuries, team changes etc, technical analysis looks for trends and patterns which explain the otherwise inexplicable.
Reviewing last week (R18B): last week’s technical analysis may have helped steer you to select two upsets in Brisbane and Adelaide; hopefully, you benefited from it.
Our attentions now turn to round 19. Here we have a series of matches where teams who had the bye last week play those who had the bye two weeks ago. In 2012 and 2013, the general trend in these cases was for teams coming off the bye to underperform expectations. But this year, the reverse was true IFF we ignore the Giants absolute shocker against Richmond. Removing this result (which is done because it said more about the Giants state of mind than predicting a reliable trend), teams coming off the bye midyear outperformed in 4 out of 6 cases and on average 9 points above expectations.
This is not a huge number – and the sample size is small. But it may well reflect a combination of teams getting their bye strategies “right” and players more than ever needing a break.
If this is correct, then the teams to benefit this weekend (who had the R18B bye and their opponents had the R18A bye) are: Essendon (vs Swans), Giants (vs Richmond again in 2014), Saints (vs Suns), Dees (vs Lions), Dogs (vs Hawks) and Port (vs Pies). This is not greatly significant in some of these games, but this trend gives me a greater confidence than otherwise in tipping the Dees and Port (who are both narrow favourites).
Flying in the face of this trend to a degree are teams who have a shocker first up after the bye (>=30 points worse than expected). These teams tend to excel in the second week – averaging 26 points above expectations (or 19 above if we again exclude the 2014 Richmond / Giants game). This pattern fits the Suns (who were -67 first up from their bye last week). They play the Saints – who performed above ALL expectations two weeks ago. In doing so, they broke an 11 game losing streak.
Both these pieces of information would point to the Suns outperforming expectations. Had this match been played in R17, the Suns would have been huge favourites. As it is now, the bizarre R18 results mean that they are narrower favourites (in the order of 20 points). The tip is for the Suns to exceed expectations – even if only for a week.
The danger in all this is their injury list – which is a bit long for comfort. But it is not much longer than that of the Saints. Some say that the Suns have had a long year and are totally gone. While there is an element of truth in this, they still have a shot or two to fire. Mark down the Suns as certs this weekend – and feel mildly confident about tipping the Dees and Port.