Pies tumble, Dees soar in updated midfield rankings

Prior to the 2017 season, official AFL stats provider Champion Data ranked Collingwood's midfield as the best in the competition, closely followed by Greater Western Sydney, Western Bulldogs and Richmond. But that has now changed.

At the other end of the table, sat Melbourne in 18th.

This didn't go down overly well with Dees fans, but now after 16 rounds, they will be much more please with where their team sits in the updated order.

Melbourne's onball brigade has jumped up by 27 per cent – the largest improvement in the competition this year – to be the equal fourth (59%) of all midfields in the game.

Ahead of Simon Goodwin's team sit Sydney (76%), Port Adelaide (64%) and the Bulldogs (64%).

"We are not into projections, we were just giving the facts at that time in the publication," Champion Data's Glenn Luff said on SEN's Pure Footy in relation to the Magpies lofty pre-season ranking.

Luff said that Collingwood's midfield struggles – especially in the last month - has seen them tumble down the table.

"Collingwood have gone from first to 10th (52%)," he said.

"Their contested footy until four weeks ago had been pretty good. Their output and their dattwmage of their midfielders has fall away.

"Someone like Steele Sidebottom, it was maximum damage in the past, but now his damage isnt as much. (Scott) Pendlebury is still elite – but his ratings have gone down a little bit. (Adam) Treloar is above average for a midfielder, Taylor Adams is average."

Reigning premiers, the Bulldogs remain in the top couple, but have faced their fair share of stuggles so far in 2017.

"They are the hardest team to classify their players. All their midfielders are what we call mid-forwards, because they all rotate throughout the forward line and midfield," Luff explained.

"Everyone will criticise 'The Bont' (Marcus Bontempelli), he's down on last year, but he's coming from a fairly high standard. Mitch Wallis has been very good since hes come back. And then you've got Libba (Tom Liberatore), (Luke) Dahlhaus, Caleb Daniel, (Jack) Macrae, (Lachie) Hunter.

At the beginning of the year, Luff said that 18 Bulldogs players were rated as 'elite' by Champion Data, but after 15 matches that number has dropped to 12.