The period of observation for the 2019 award is 2015-2019. Every game in every sport in Australasia that conducts an ongoing home/away or equivalent competition that included Australian and New Zealand teams has been analysed subject to the competition meeting specific criteria. More than 8,000 individual match results are in the dataset.
To be considered for the Best Team award a team must have played in each of the last 5 seasons. For each team in the competition, their win/loss record is looked at season by season, along with their position within the competition. More recent years are weighted more highly, as is the win-loss record, over the position.
For each of these measures, a Z-Score is created to show the relative raw performance within competitions and to enable comparison across all the competitions.
An adjustment is applied to reflect the stability of the competition over the last 10 years, This places the raw performance output in context - stable competitions being harder to perform well consistently because of the impact that player trading cycles have on competitiveness.
Eligible teams, of which there are 138 are then ranked on their adjusted Z-Scores, to provide the definitive list of Australasia’s Best Sporting Teams over the period. The website contains the Top 25 overall, Top 3 by sport and Top 3 by state/country.
To be the best team in a sport over a prolonged period requires dedication, endurance, excellence and cohesion. To be the best overall, is a step beyond.