Axis of Bob

The counter to that is that if you don't want feedback on your comments then start a blog. This is an online community. If you choose to engage with the community then you will have to accept that you will receive feedback from the community. This is one such item of feedback. Because blogs are boring.

McLean is a tall forward, not a ruck. Since he was dropped back to Sydney's VFL team he's amassed 23 hitouts in 8 games - that's fewer than 3 per game. He's been decent up forward in the VFL, with 18 goals from 8 games. Weideman has kicked 14 goals in 6 games and JVR has kicked 28 in 13 games. My point here is that we need to evaluate these players properly. We tend to look at other teams' players and imagine their very best once they join the Dees. There's a lot of overrating of opposition players that goes on just because we don't see very much of them.

Hayden McLean: 197cm, 23 years old, 10 goals, 35 hitouts, 8 games. Sam Weideman: 195cm, 25 years old, 13 goals, 29 hitouts, 10 games.

Not having a good ruck division is fine ..... if you set up your team to not rely on good rucks. But we have Max Gawn, one of the best rucks in recent memory. We have set up a game around his ability to win contests and help others win contests. So we have set up a team around his ability to dominate the ball in the air where other teams cannot. It's one of our great advantages as a team. A lot of great rucks haven't won flags because their teams haven't been good enough to exploit their skills in a way that wins flags. We don't. We rely on Max's ability to win big contests when we're out of options, which allows us to play defensively. Our game needs good rucks and the FD seem to be doubling down on that. Max is the best ruckman in the game. He has won a flag.

I'm just going to quote myself because I'm a terrible person .... These transformations in teams have been really interesting but there is a value in zigging when the others are zagging. This works for a couple of reasons but a lot of it has to do with the idea that everyone is setting themselves up to win against the prevailing style. This also leaves some quality players for a different style as being very undervalued. In the NBA, there are a lot of players who are excellent finals players because they are able to hit the 'low value' mid range 2 pointers. The analytics say that this is bad basketball but the opposition defence is entirely geared around preventing 3 pointers and shots at the basket, so a good mid-range shooter can find the seams in the defence to beat them in a game they're not set up to play. The same with baseball, where big hitting pull hitters are able to lay down low risk bunts to get on base because the defence is playing so deep and shifting. In the AFL, Hawthorn found low cost kickers when the game was being dominated by the scrappers of Sydney, who actually found value in scrappers during the Brisbane/West Coast/Port midfield skill period. Richmond got value in role players when everyone was searching for the high skill players of the Hawthorn era. Now everyone is going to be looking for dominant contested midfielders from our era, so there will be value to be had elsewhere. That's just a thought bubble, I think! 😄

It's good to see this sort on analysis as it's sorely missing in AFL coverage. The first question is ..... what do you do with that information? And the second is .... how does the probability change when the opposition knows what you are trying to do? Baseball and basketball have, as binman says, undergone a transformation in how the game is played due to analytics. Baseball was all about base hits and sacrifice bunts ('small-ball'), whilst Michael Jordan feasted on a steady diet of mid-range two pointers. Now baseball is about the three true outcomes (strikeouts, walks and home runs) whilst basketball is about three pointers and shots at the rim. But the difference between these games and footy is that they both have distinct, predictable and repeatable phases of play that can be measured specifically. In baseball, a pitcher starts the play by pitching a ball to a waiting batter so you can measure the outcomes based on that. In basketball the ball is (almost always) given to a player deep in their defensive half and the team must score against a waiting defence, so you can measure an outcome from there. Footy is different. The ground is so big and there are so many ways to play the game, most of which is based on physical contests. You can measure the contests won/lost, but not all contests are equal. A contested mark next to the boundary in defence is far less valuable than that same mark taken in your attacking goalsquare. Or a centre clearance won by running the ball forward is far more valuable than one where you shuffle it back and dump it forward. A contest you win 1 vs 3 is far more valuable than one you win 3 vs 1. A contest won in the centre with a player free in the goalsquare is more valuable than one where there's nobody else to kick to. So what do we do with the information? We try to kick more scores! But is winning a function of valuing scoring shots over goal kicking, or is increased scoring shots a function of a more holistic dominance of a football team over their opponents? I think the limitation of those stats is that they are really crude measures. And that's totally reasonable because we don't have much information to go on and it's ridiculously difficult to quantify what creates wins in a sport where not all numbers mean the same thing. You can set up your team to win a statistical category but that doesn't have the same impact on the result as a lot of other sports.

I was too harsh in this post and I can see a role for him if we get him. It just needs some planets to align before it's possible. The contract is a huge one. It would also require Grundy to change his play a bit to fit in with our style. He probably wouldn't be allowed/encouraged to play the same way as he has at Collingwood. He's a massive body who could play well into his 30s as a sort of premium Jarrod Witts. He gives a great contest in the ruck and competes long and hard. Gawn is a better player and we need Gawn around as long as humanly possible. Grundy would be great at soaking up those minutes allowing Gawn to play as a tall marking forward for a number of years, with shorter ruck stints. Grundy would need to play more as a conventional, wrestling, down the line ruckman, transitioning away from the 'extra midielder' role he's played historically. He can do it because he's huge, but he's always tended towards the easy ball around the ground rather than being happy to just compete for the long ball. He's not a great contested mark for his size but we would only really require him to stand under the ball, compete and halve those contests. Grundy would be playing first ruck, with Max giving him a chop out. The contract would need to be sorted out (!!!!!!!) and he'd need to 100% buy in to what we need him to do but anything that keeps Gawn around for longer is extremely tempting.

Grundy is a box filler. He doesn't win the important possessions that you need a ruck to win for your team to be successful. He's a hard worker who you can plug into the ruck all day and get an honest contest, but he's the smallest 203cm 108kg player that you could ever see. More important than that, though, is that his contract makes him completely untradable to a contender. Hard pass.

That's genuinely funny. Everything about it is so incredibly embarrassing. All the other articles on the page actually make the whole thing even better .... WAFL oval conditions, Rory Lobb yawning, 1 year extension for peripheral veteran ..... and even managed to get their contractually obliged mention of Naitanui into the paper. Chef's kiss. 😘

It amazes me how someone could have such high conviction for something based on almost no information. The information we have on Brayshaw's contract is: It is over a term of 6 years. ............. How can anyone have such strong opinions based off such little information? Is that the level of evidence needed for you to be convinced that all of these (proven) competent football people are actually idiots? Is that the level of evidence you have for your other strongly held opinions too?

Freo has one tall forward on its primary list under the age of 29 ..... Jye Amiss. Freo probably aren't going to trade that player away.

Jackson's is currently 20 years old. Blicavs didn't even debut until he was 22 years old. He's the only player in the top 39 players for hitouts in 2022 who is younger than 22. The only player who has more hitouts who is younger than 23 is Bailey Williams, who has pretty much rucked solo whilst Naitanui has been out.

Daisy is an intelligent, thoughtful and insightful football student and is excellent at communicating that insight. She is the best special comments person in the game and one of the few reasons to listen to the commentary at all. But Daisy won’t appeal to everyone because a lot of people are not interested in being taught about the complexities of the game. In fact some people actively dislike being taught about the game. Maybe they feel like they know enough already, or the complexity is beyond their grasp, or maybe they just want to switch their brains off and watch two team smash the suitcases out of each other. Each to their own but Daisy is clearly the best at communicating the complexities of the game, which is exactly what a special comments person is theoretically supposed to do.

Kemp is someone who looks really good when you see the highlights but has a few holes in his game that don't show up there ... and they're pretty important ones. He's a great size and a nice, smooth mover with some toe. But he doesn't win his own football, which is a massive problem for a league footballer. Without fixing that he'll never become the 193cm midfielder that people were wishing for but rather just a marginal third defender who needs to improve his defence and kicking. For mine (and it's just my opinion) he's a player that reads like a champion except for pretty much the only non-negotiable of a good AFL footballer.

Freo traded their second round pick, but still have their first rounder.

And West Coast had a window of 2 years (2005-2006) despite their extraordinary midfield. They went out in straight sets in 2007 and imploded to second last in 2008 .... 2 years after winning a flag with a 28 year old Cousins, 27 year old Fletcher and Wirrpanda, 25 year old Cox, Glass and Embley, and 23 year Judd and Kerr. Incredible.

Good pick up. Interesting though that that Collingwood team really only a 3 year window (2010 -2012) to win a flag before they kind of imploded. Really interesting was their list profile when they won the flag: 0 players 30+ years old, 1x 29yo (B Johnson), 2x 28yo (Jolly, L Brown), 2x 27yo (Maxwell, Didak), 2x 26yo (Ball, Swan), 0x 25yo, 1x 24yo (H Shaw) 5x 23yo 4x 22yo 2x 21yo 2x 20yo 1x 19yo By 2013, only Leigh Brown had retired. They effectively fell out of their premiership window with a list that probably got better, with Pendlebury, Thomas, Beams, Sidebottom and Wellingham moving into their early primes, adding Grundy, and Swan still being top 3 in the Brownlow. They squandered a dynasty through their terrible culture.

Yep. Grundy is on a massive deal until the end of 2027, which is still 5 more years after this year. It's the worst contract in the AFL (outside the expansion teams) and is severely limiting what Collingwood can do in terms of building their list. As you say, if we were to hypothetically take that on (which is still silly from list management anyway, but still.....) then Collingwood would need to make the contract more reasonable for us by paying significant money, which takes away from the benefit from them doing the deal in the first place. A deal more akin to Will Brodie's Freo deal would be more reasonable for a team. In that deal (not including steak knives) Freo received Will Brodie plus an end of first round pick in exchange for a future second round pick (about pick 25 ish). In other words, Gold Coast paid Freo to take Will Brodie's contract. This is probably the first NBA style salary dump that I can recall in the AFL.

You can .... like your Carlton example from 40 years ago where success was largely determined by your zone and how much you were able to play your players. It was also a period where the quality of individuals was far more important than the cohesion of a team. As for the last 25 years, you could probably only really point to the 2006 West Coast team, who won a flag (although it could be argued that they vastly underperformed based on their talent - Cox, Judd, Cousins, Kerr etc - and it being a soft period in the competition between Brisbane and Geelong/Hawthorn teams).

Best case: He becomes a manageable issue internally and makes us marginally better because we somehow find a way to integrate someone of his style into our existing team by replacing a player (Fritsch, Jordon, ????) who is currently doing that at a reasonably high level. This takes us from competing for a flag with a decent chance of winning it ...... to also competing for a flag with marginally better chances of winning. Worst case: He can be managed and turns our club into a circus, taking human resources away from the other players as well as salary cap resources, and we are no longer competing for a premiership. This takes us from competing for a flag with a decent chance of winning it ...... to not competing for a flag. I just don't understand why you'd take that bet. The outcomes are so asymmetric.

The first step is asking the question: "How often do you score from a kick out?" The answer is "hardly ever". As a result why would you take risks from the kick out when the rewards are so tiny? So you kick it to a defensive part of the ground where you have more resources to win the next contest ... from where you may actually be able to score. It's all about winning the next contest, so if you are predictable then you can have the resources to win that contest whilst the opposition has to spread theirs it over the whole ground. It may look boring but I really enjoy winning.

If you want to be clever about it, you could probably remove Jeremy Cameron as a key forward because he's basically a tall flanker. He's not even in the top 50 for contested marks in the league, behind such behemoths as Callum Wilkie. We play Joel Smith on him. Most importantly, he can do that because Tom Hawkins exists, who is able to do the big man work whilst Cameron plays as a medium. Curnow is a bit different, but is greatly benefited from getting the second defender after Harry McKay. That allows Curnow to be one on one a lot more because McKay is doing the pack work. It's the same with Riewoldt and Lynch, or Membrey and King, or Fritsch and Brown. Whatever the case, the most functional forward lines tend to be built around a really tall forward who can create opportunities from the long kick forward (to the wing or inside 50) because defences are so good at forcing long kicks to outnumbered forwards. That's the role JVR is probably going to do but like TMac, he's going going to have to fight very hard to impact as a shorter key forward in that role. The style of the game is what's trending the requirement for taller key forwards, rather than vice-versa. Just in the same way that the 'switch everything' style of NBA defence has made wings and tall, long guards (like Giddey) more valuable.

Deedubs' point isn't wrong, you've just misinterpreted it. If you're talking about key forwards then it's disingenuous to include small or medium forwards in that number too (like Charlie Cameron and Bayley Fritsch). The top 10 key forwards goalkickers (plus ties) are: J Cameron (196cm), C Curnow (192cm), Hawkins (198cm), Naughton (195cm), Lynch (199cm), M King (202cm), Wright (203cm), T Marshall (198cm), Franklin (199cm), Chol (200cm), H McKay (204cm), M Lewis (198cm). That's an average height of 198.7cm and a median of 198.5cm. Only one of them is a smaller key forward (Curnow) who is also the most mobile one. The other interesting thing there is that the top 2 goal kickers are 2 of the 3 smallest on the list (Cameron and Curnow) and play the least like the big key forwards we would be asking Van Rooyen to play like. But what those two do have do have is a second key forward who fits the definition of the taller key forward (Hawkins and McKay) that can do the heavy pack work whilst they play as a second tall. There is a definite trend towards very tall key forwards because the role of those forwards has changed. They are now asked to be able to halve contests whilst being outnumbered without being able to jump at the ball. This is different from the Neitz era where he was afforded leading space and played a lot one on one. Tall key forwards play better than smaller ones against zone defences, which Neitz (and Ablett, Dunstall and Lockett) never had to play against. Van Rooyen is a big boy who competes hard and attacks the ball, but he's going to have to work hard to play above his height against zone defences. That's not to say that he won't be able to do it, but he may be more Brody Mihocek than Max King.

Nothing wrong with his talent. Has all the the talent to be a really good player. He probably will be one. However AFL football is really hard.... a lot harder than schoolboy or junior footy. To be a really good player you need to work really, really hard and make sacrifices to achieve success in a league where the talent gap is a lot smaller than you're used to in juniors. Some players are able to make the transition from juniors to AFL quickly because it comes naturally to them (like Viney), whilst others struggle to do so after being drafted (like Max). Some of those players then slowly learn how to make the step up, others learn enough to get by .... and some of them never make the leap.

My point was that, even in an emergency, Bradtke still wouldn't be the answer to any of those questions. His VFL form also reinforces that delisting him was not a mistake. Of course we will have to look at additional ruck depth for next year.