Australasia's Best Sporting Team

There is a continuous debate in the pubs, clubs and lounge-rooms of Australia and New Zealand as to whether great historic teams could have survived in today’s competitions, or about which football code is the best of all.

Australasia’s Best Sporting Team was designed to bring an analytical approach to answering some of these questions, and in doing so aims to start a new conversation about greatness. The aim is to reward success, whilst unearthing some hidden gems and most importantly, helping those in need.

This concept appealed to Platinum given the body of work we have done with GAIN LINE on our own team cohesion

In 2018, Platinum Asset Management, in conjunction with GAIN LINE Analytics, conducted a huge statistical analysis of 14 sports over 25 years and determined that the Crusaders rugby team, based in Christchurch, New Zealand were Australasia’s Best Sporting Team over that period.

Starting in 2019, Platinum will present an annual award to the team that is currently at the top of its game, achieving the best outcome over the most recent rolling 5-year period. The basic principles are the same, but reflect excellence over shorter, yet still meaningful, period. The goal continues to be to help those in need, whilst recognising success.

The annual award recognises the evolving sporting landscape, the emergence of new competitions, and the rise of women’s sport. During 2019, Platinum was pleased to be involved in the FPA’s Women in Wealth initiative, presenting Giants Netball superstars, Caitlin Bassett (Australian captain) and Jo Harten (England) to advisers around Australia.

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.

As part of the Australasia’s Best Sporting Team and the team cohesion work between Platinum Asset Management and GAIN LINE Analytics, Platinum will award A$10,000 to this year’s winning team to donate to a worthwhile cause of their choice.

$10,000 Grant

The club has elected to pass the donation to the Leukaemia Foundation via head coach Craig Bellamy and winger Sandor Earl’s participation in the World's Greatest Shave to fund vital research to help more people survive blood cancers, while improving their quality of life.