AFL 2023: Which teams fit the Champion Data premiership profile

According to key Champion Data stats, only four teams fit the ultimate premiership profile – and Collingwood isn’t one of them. So, who is? See the revealing numbers.

Beware the unbridled Blues.

Yes, it’s real.

Key statistics from the past six weeks indicate that Carlton– unlike ladder-leader and premiership favourite Collingwood, which has fallen away – is displaying the ultimate premiership profile as the finals series looms large.

Champion Data’s Core Four formula, which evaluates a team’s performance both with and without the ball, has analysed every team’s status throughout the season, with a focus on form over the past six weeks.

Over recent years, the eventual premier has ranked in the top six teams in the competition in three of four key elements in securing the flag – work with the ball, without the ball, at clearance and post-clearance.

Champion Data considers work without the ball the top priority.

And for Carlton, which sits inside the game’s top four in all core flag criteria, the past six weeks are a clear indication that things are tracking positively for Michael Voss’s Blues in a marked difference to when alarm bells were ringing at Ikon Park earlier this year.

The chain to score percentage has been boosted by an in-form Charlie Curnow and the likes of Jack Martin skirting in front of goal, while skipper Patrick Cripps’ return to clearance beast has reached a crescendo over the past month with his clearance numbers at a season-high.

After a mid-season dip in clearance numbers, Cripps’ stoppage work has delivered just under 10 clearances per game in the past four weeks.

The Blues have the most promising premiership profile of any team. Picture: Getty Images

The only other teams to currently fulfil the ideal premiership ratio of being situated inside the game’s top six teams in three of the four categories are Brisbane, Geelong and St Kilda.

In the first six rounds, the Blues were among the worst teams in the competition for points from clearance differential, sitting 15th.

They’re now first.

Across all four categories, the Blues sit atop the game in a stark warning to rivals.

“If they were fourth (on the ladder), we’d be stamping them,” Fox Footy analyst David King said on Wednesday on Pure Footy.

“They’re going to challenge and go against history.”

King’s Pure Footy counterpart, Champion Data analyst Daniel Hoyne, highlighted the similarities between Geelong’s pre-finals – and eventually pre-premiership – profile of last season, and that of Carlton’s over the last six weeks.

“(In) five of the last seven finals series a team from outside the top four has made it to at least a prelim … they’re going to comfortably make a prelim, and I think they cans go through to a grand final, absolutely,” Hoyne said. “It’s stunning what they’ve been able to do.”

Charlie Curnow is leading the Blues’ charge towards September. Picture: Getty Images

On current standings a top-four finish may be more than two games out of reach, but timing can be everything. King said that while the season may end “just one or two weeks short” for the Blues to push for a double-chance, it might not matter.

“You’re going to have to win it from outside the four, but this profile says they can beat anyone,” he said.

But for the Magpies, the core four could spell disaster.

As coach Craig McRae grapples with how to navigate the absence of star Nick Daicos for at least the next six weeks due to a knee injury, the Magpies have fallen away from first in the competition under the core four formula to be 10th for post-clearance work and ninth for what they deliver without the ball and at clearances.

“We’ve got to get to work on what we are, and not recapture it, but just remind ourselves – re-establish our brand,” McRae said on Wednesday morning.