How important will percentage be this year?

[Thunder Shaker]

How important will percentage be this year? Very. It may decide who gets home finals and who plays finals.

I put the following into the ladder predictor:
Round 22
Richmond d Essendon by 30
Lions d Port Adelaide by 30
St Kilda d GWS Giants by 60
Sydney d Hawthorn by 12
West Coast d Collingwood by 1
Carlton d Gold Coast by 60
Geelong d Bulldogs by 60
North Melbourne d Fremantle by 12
Adelaide d Melbourne by 60

Round 23
Hawthorn d West Coast by 30
Adelaide d Gold Coast by 60
Geelong d Sydney by 12 (we don't need to win this game if we defeat Hawthorn and it makes the permutations interesting)
North Melbourne d GWS Giants by 60
Fremantle d Melbourne by 60
Collingwood d Essendon by 60
Carlton d St Kilda by 12
Richmond d Port Adelaide by 30
Lions d Bulldogs by 12

The end result shows the following:
* Collingwood a game a head of West Coast but percentages almost the same 0.1%
* Geelong ahead of North Melbourne by 0.8%, same number of wins (Geelong 6th to claim home final)
* Carlton ahead of Fremantle by 2.1%, same number of wins (Carlton make finals).

If Fremantle defeat Melbourne by 100 points instead of 60, Fremantle make the finals instead of Carlton by 0.3%.
If North Melbourne defeat GWS by 100 points instead of 60, North Melbourne get the home final by 1.3%.
If West Coast defeat Hawthorn, they can claim third.

There's so many permutations. Every score is crucial for several sides in the last two rounds. I wouldn't be surprised if percentages need to be taken to two decimal places to decide the finals sides and in what order.

[SimonH]

As it turns out, it's only going to be important down the lower end of the 8 where it's likely to matter.

Up the top end, the differences between the clubs' percentages are largely just too great. Adelaide's 6% gap on Collingwood in theory isn't uncatchable, but Adelaide's last 2 games are so much easier than the Woods', that it's impossible to see Collingwood catching it. With regard to West Coast v Collingwood, for % to matter any two sides have to finish on the same number of wins. They can't finish on the same number of wins unless West Coast win this weekend (leaving aside draws), which in turn will broaden the gap between their percentages beyond the 5% gap West Coast now enjoy. Even with how dire Essendon are, that's very likely to be a bridge too far on a final week when both sides need to win (or both lose), for % to matter.

Whereas down in the 5th-11th positions, it's very very easy to construct scenarios where 2 sides will be separated by percentage, and quite possibly a small amount of percentage. No doubt that Carlton's hammering of Essendon was almost worth two wins to them, in terms of well and truly dealing them into the game of getting ahead of some crucial competitors on %. North vs Geelong as to who comes 6th/7th doesn't matter as all Geelong 'home' finals are played in Melb anyway. The only real roughie that I can possibly see coming true, is if WCE just beat one of Hawks/Collingwood and get soundly beaten by the other one, North are so red-hot that they could hammer Freo at home and absolutely annihilate GWS, thereby making up a % gap on WCE of 10% and grabbing 5th spot.