Grand Finals: Points Scoring and Margins

How would you characterise the Grand Finals that you've witnessed? As low-scoring, closely fought games; as high-scoring games with regular blow-out finishes; or as something else?

First let's look at the total points scored in Grand Finals relative to the average points scored per game in the season that immediately preceded them.

Apart from a period spanning about the first 25 years of the competition, during which Grand Finals tended to be lower-scoring affairs than the matches that took place leading up to them, Grand Finals have been about as likely to produce more points than the season average as to produce fewer points.

One way to demonstrate this is to group and summarise the Grand Finals and non-Grand Finals by the decade in which they occurred.

There's no real justification then, it seems, in characterising them as dour affairs.

That said, there have been a number of Grand Finals that failed to produce more than 150 points between the two sides - 49 overall, but only 3 of the last 30. The most recent of these was the 2005 Grand Final in which Sydney's 8.10 (58) was just good enough to trump the Eagles' 7.12 (54). Low-scoring, sure, but the sort of game for which the cliche "modern-day classic" was coined.

To find the lowest-scoring Grand Final of all time you'd need to wander back to 1927 when Collingwood 2.13 (25) out-yawned Richmond 1.7 (13). Collingwood, with efficiency in mind, got all of its goal-scoring out of the way by the main break, kicking 2.6 (20) in the first half. Richmond, instead, left something in the tank, going into the main break at 0.4 (4) before unleashing a devastating but ultimately unsuccessful 1.3 (9) scoring flurry in the second half.

That's 23 scoring shots combined, only 3 of them goals, comprising 12 scoring shots in the first half and 11 in the second. You could see that many in an under 10s soccer game most weekends.

Forty-five years later, in 1972, Carlton and Richmond produced the highest-scoring Grand Final so far. In that game, Carlton 28.9 (177) held off a fast-finishing Richmond 22.18 (150), with Richmond kicking 7.3 (45) to Carlton's 3.0 (18) in the final term.

Just a few weeks earlier these same teams had played out an 8.13 (63) to 8.13 (63) draw in their Semi Final. In the replay Richmond prevailed 15.20 (110) to Carlton's 9.15 (69) meaning that, combined, the two Semi Finals they played generated 22 points fewer than did the Grand Final.

From total points we turn to victory margins.

Here too, again save for a period spanning about the first 35 years of the competition during which GFs tended to be closer fought than the average games that had gone before them, Grand Finals have been about as likely to be won by a margin smaller than the season average as to be won by a greater margin.

Of the 10 most recent Grand Finals, 5 have produced margins smaller than the season average and 5 have produced greater margins.

Perhaps a better view of the history of Grand Final margins is produced by looking at the actual margins rather than the margins relative to the season average. This next table looks at the actual margins of victory in Grand Finals summarised by decade.

One feature of this table is the scarcity of close finishes in Grand Finals of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Only 4 of these Grand Finals have produced a victory margin of less than 3 goals. In fact, 19 of the 29 Grand Finals have been won by 5 goals or more.

An interesting way to put this period of generally one-sided Grand Finals into historical perspective is provided by this, the final graphic for today.

They just don't make close Grand Finals like they used to.