Buckley’s expectation meter for Brisbane, Hawthorn, Fremantle, Adelaide, Collingwood and Essendon
Nathan Buckley has assessed his expectation meter for all 18 AFL clubs.
Prior to the 2022 season, Buckley forecast the amount of wins each club would have and what his expectations would be of them.
Now he has decided whether they have met, exceeded or failed expectations.
In the first of a three-part series, he will take a look at six clubs starting from the middle of the ladder and working our way out.
See Buckley’s expectation meter from SEN’s Whateley for Brisbane, Hawthorn, Fremantle, Adelaide, Collingwood and Essendon below.
BUCKLEY’S EXPECTATION METER FOR CARLTON, ST KILDA, BULLDOGS, PORT, RICHMOND AND GOLD COAST
(15-7, 6th) - Met expectations
“15 wins is about as little as they were going to win.
“I’ve got them as meeting expectations in that regard, but I reckon they’re the ones that have crept into meeting expectations by the barest.
“Defensively they’ve really dropped off. Their back six is normally so solid and it just seems to be a little flimsy at the moment. They’re still scoring heavily but it’s opening up coming back the other way.
“Whether that’s the pressure at ground level in the forward line, whether it’s their mids’ work rate up and back, they’re just not on-song at the moment.
“It will be really interesting to see how that game (against Richmond) goes.”
(8-14, 13th) - Met expectations
“I had them as little as six wins and as many as 12.
“They really surprised me. Eight is about the middle of that, so they met expectations for me.
“Early in the season I thought they were performing far better than I expected them to.
“I think they’ve got a really wide and deep group of players who are going to come through and build experience and shared experience together, which is really interesting.
“Jai Newcombe was a revelation. Sam Mitchell has coached these guys through the VFL, he’s got 6-8 of them coming through at the same time.
“They’ve built really well. Their best looked really good, their back-half ball movement to scoring was really effective early. That got worked out a little bit.
“I loved their energy throughout the whole year. They never really put up the white flag and that was a positive step to meeting expectations.”
(15-6-1, 5th) - Exceeded expectations
“They exceeded expectations.
“I thought they were brilliant in the first half of the year. Their defensive profile was as good as any. They were so hard to move the ball against, so hard to get the ball inside 50 against, let alone score against.
“That’s flipped and it nearly flipped on its head. They’re a very different side towards the end of the year than they were at the beginning.
“They’ve got some personnel problems heading into finals.
“I thought they’d win as little as 10 and as many as 14 and to be in a 15-win season definitely exceeded my expectations.”
(8-14, 14th) - Met expectations
“They met expectations for me. I had them as little as five wins and as many as 10.
“They had a couple of close losses early in the season, but they just maintained the rage.
“It was a disappointing way to finish the year against Port Adelaide.
“They introduced some young players that continued to bring energy. Their DNA really is around work rate and pressure.
“When you see two players like Sam Berry and Rory Laird go through the midfield and they’re having 12-15 tackles per game. I thought they brought that relatively consistently.
“Taylor Walker had a standout year, Darcy Fogarty came on late which is a real positive for them.
“I had them at the top end of getting expectations.”
(16-6, 4th) - Exceeded expectations
“I had them as one of my biggest swing teams, the biggest gap between what I thought would be their worst and best seasons could be.
“I had Collingwood as little as eight wins and as many as 15. So they’ve exceeded even my best expectations of them.
“That was around getting a really solid and consistent run with senior leadership and with young players coming up and playing cameos. We’ve seen that and more.
“Their capacity to win close games. You’ve got to give credit to the football program to be able to free the players up offensively. There’s no doubt that that forward ball movement, the chaos theory of just taking forward yards, it makes them really hard to pressure.
“They’ve had a real game plan shift from the previous regime.
“The real strength is their capacity to defend. The pressure on the ball with intercept markers in layers behind the ball is the thing that has set up that quick offence and their defence is as strong as any.
“To win 16 games definitely exceeded my expectations.”
(7-15, 15th) - Failed expectations
“I had them as little as 11 wins and as many as 14.
“I thought they’d be solid in that block so to only win seven games is unders.
“They had a really tough draw. They played Melbourne, Geelong and Brisbane in the first three weeks.
“They were 0-3 and they didn’t actually look likely in any of those games. Then they had a narrow win against Adelaide, then they played Freo who beat them at Marvel.
“That’s when the wheels started getting shaky because they thought here’s a game we expected to win but didn’t win. They didn’t recover from that.
“They didn’t recover from their own expectations, in my opinion, internally or externally.
“Despite finding form for five or six weeks when they had nothing to lose and nothing to gain, they just were unable to find a consistent DNA to leverage off.
“Therefore they were well and truly under expectations.”
