In the interest of some of the discussion above, I wondered whether you could do an actual statistical analysis of whether bottoming out helps get premierships in the modern era.
So I looked at the wooden spooners from 2000 to 2018, and the premiers from 2004 to 2022. I figured I'd use a 4 year offset as it would be unlikely that a draft pick will impact premiership chances much in the first 4 years. E.g, it didn't seem reasonable that North's last two wooden spoons had any impact on their premiership chances in the last 22 years.
I chose this century as it seemed as good a data set as any.
This will include, for example, the years we bottomed to collect for our premiership, and the years Geelong didn't for theirs.
The following is a list of all the teams, their number of wooden spoons (2000-2018), then their number of premierships (2004-2022).
Adelaide 0 0
Brisbane 1 0
Carlton 5 0
Collingwood 0 1
Essendon 1 0
Fremantle 1 0
Geelong 0 4
Gold Coast 2 0
GWS 2 0
Hawthorn 0 4
Melbourne 2 1
North 0 0
Port 0 1
Richmond 2 3
St Kilda 2 0
Sydney 0 2
West Coast 1 2
Doggies 1 1
Looking at a simple correlation coefficient calculation between the two data sets, there is a small non significant negative association between winning spoons and winning premierships (r=-. 334). I.e. There is no real correlation, and if there is, it's a bad one. Since 2000, winning spoons is not associated with getting premierships within 4 to 22 years after it.
This is not to say there's not flaws with that. You could potentially look at a larger offset. Maybe it takes 5-10 years for draft picks to come on
E.g. Spoons from 1995 to 2010 and flags from 2005 to 2020. Which I did too (removing GWS and GC obviously).
Adelaide 0 0
Brisbane 3 0
Carlton 3 0
Collingwood 1 1
Essendon 0 0
Fremantle 1 0
Geelong 0 3
Hawthorn 0 4
Melbourne 3 0
North 0 0
Port 0 0
Richmond 2 3
St Kilda 1 0
Sydney 0 2
West Coast 1 2
Doggies 1 1
This gives the same result.
Looking at a simple correlation coefficient calculation between the two data sets, there is a small non significant negative association between winning spoons and winning premierships (r=-. 313). I.e. There is no real correlation, and if there is, it's a bad one.
You could, I guess, expand this out to look at finish bottom 4, or 5, and finishing top 4, but at what point are you not making a point anymore?
To me, bottoming out means going to the footy sucks. And it's not associated with premierships. So... Why?
Amazing work Coburger