Axis of Bob

Given how wonderful and brave Freo were, I was shocked to see that they had conceded the highest score ever in the AFLW. Maybe that's just because they were a cellar dweller playing at a hostile interstate ground. So brave

All the short hit ups look so easy, but that's because Harris is automatic as a long one on one target, so teams drop off to protect it. Harris has been an incredible structural addition this year.

We're dominating but this is excellent football.

Liam Jurrah. Some of the most fun I've ever had watching football.

When there are many players around the footy it is really difficult to score, especially if both teams are committed to defending. In the GF, this was the case for 3 quarters of football. We didn't start scoring in the third quarter because we started playing attacking football, we ground 3 tough goals that quarter (the Harmes pass to Fritsch from a wing stoppage, the Brayshaw mark after we turned over the Daniel kick, and the Petracca boundary goal). These weren't kamikaze attacking plays but rather just good tough goals from contests or turnovers. The reason we scored so heavily that quarter was because we kicked 4 more goals directly from centre bounces, which is the only time where there is space all over the field to attack. Then, in the last quarter, only one team was committed to defending (us) whilst the other was chasing some quick goals from behind .... that's why it became a bloodbath. Our style smothered teams and this allowed our best players to win us games. I'd say that any attempt to be more attacking this year will be more focused on making our forward line function better than it will be on sacrificing our ability to defend.

Redrafting isn't the answer. The AFLW has expanded too quickly which has impacted the quality of the teams. It wasn't a problem that couldn't be foreseen. It's like Cricket Australia killing the successful Big Bash by getting too greedy too quickly. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. They're just going to have to grit their teeth and wait for the next decade until it sorts itself out.

Every time a new term for an high level player or skill is coined, it slowly loses its meaning as its definition is softened more an more. It used to be 'excellent', 'brilliant' and 'star', until people were using those terms for every hack that played more than 15 games in a year. 'Elite' didn't exist as a rating 10 years ago, and it probably won't be used in 10 years' time as someone will popularise a term that is even higher than elite to define players that even surpass the level of .... *checks notes* .... Jack Scrimshaw.

I think that there might be a trend off the back of Jackson but I reckon that they are probably still going to be missing a trick with it. At that's because he isn't a hybrid, which is a combination of some elements of a ruck and midfielder, but rather he's two different players ... a fully functional AFL ruckman during the ruck contest and a fully functional AFL midfielder after the ruck contest. There's no sacrifice being made in fitting between the roles. There are two parts to Jackson's game in the ruck, and I think there's a danger in looking at one of them in isolation. Jackson has genuine midfielder athleticism and movement, rather than just being 'really good for a ruckman' (like Cox, Grundy, Fraser, Kreuzer etc). This is the bit that everyone sees because it is special and we haven't really seen this except for Goodes when he rucked. Teams have tried this before and it hasn't really worked out well for them (especially since the third man up rule). Players like Tim English have had good games but get destroyed against strong, decent opposition because of their lack of competitiveness in the ruck contest, which brings major issues. The lesson to learn is that it's OK to lose the ruck, but you can't get smashed. Teams default back to strong, competitive (and cheap) battering rams rather than pseudo midfielders because of it. Jackson is still a genuine ruckman but he plays the ruck taps very differently, which is difficult to emulate. He takes away the natural advantage of his opponent (ie, his physical size and strength) by dodging and weaving, but being big enough still to tap the ball once he dances his way to good position. He jumps quickly, not requiring a run up or balance step, letting him get position on his opponent and disrupting him. The end result is that his style is so awkward and disruptive that, even for a big strong opponent, he's nearly impossible to dominate in ruck contests. I think there will be a trend towards trying to find a Jackson type ruck, and those efforts will likely see people select tall midfielders to play ruck or athletic rucks to play around the ground. But they will all be making sacrifices in one of their roles, either they will be passable midfielders that are big enough to play some ruck time (eg. taller versions of Grigg) or slightly underwhelming rucks that are athletic enough to win more ball around the ground (eg, English). It's a wild goose chase because Jackson is special and different .... it's like everybody trying to pick up the 'next Buddy' or 'next Judd'. You can't because they're unique players. People weren't leaving Chris Judd undrafted in the past because they didn't like his style combining line breaking speed and contested possession, it's just that there generally aren't any Chris Judd's around to draft! We're just lucky that, when we had pick 3, there was a Luke Jackson around for us to draft.

There is an element of dumb luck in clearances and, indeed, almost all contested possession. Anyone who has played footy and been inside a stoppage will understand exactly how random a lot of it is. The hit out is about a 50/50, the ruckman can't really see what's happening on the ground, the tap is hard to direct under pressure, the ball takes a lot of time to hit the ground, opposition players trying to stop a clean possessions, .... and, on top of this, the ball is a weird shape and could bounce anywhere. All of it means that both teams need to balance defence and attack, so even a dominant ruck cannot run basketball style set plays ... because one bad bounce or deflected tap could mean the opposition goes bang, bang, bang. But some teams are better than others, but even the best and worst teams are pretty close to each other. The best and worst centre clearance teams were still only 3.4 centre clearances a game away from each other, which is a big deal but demonstrates that, in a match between the best and worst using season averages, the best team would still only win 57% of the centre clearances (and only 54% of total clearances). It took a lot of luck to go bang, bang, bang, but you need to set your team up to take advantage of that. We were able to turn clearances into goals, whilst preventing the opposition doing so, which is a big tick for the setup. The Dogs were not able to do that .... they had too much faith in their ability to win clearances without investing enough into what happens if they don't.

Knightmare seems to love doing what he does. He gets notoriety from it and seems to enjoy watching the players too. I think it's very difficult to be a draft analyst without access to the clubs because you simply don't have the resources available to know any players other than the obvious ones. As a result you have a very strong bias towards the high production players in the mainstream underage competitions, and it's then easy to reinforce those opinions as those obvious players keep putting in good performances. But good, high production underage players aren't necessarily good AFL players, because the roles these players play at underage level (usually a ball winning midfielder) usually aren't the roles they will play at AFL level, as those positions are taken by the best players in the competition. The other part is that it can be very difficult to go against the grain by trusting your eye and risk looking stupid. As a result he just follows the consensus. Ranking players is really hard, which I think people underestimate. Once those on the internet come to a consensus it becomes very hard to break, and then people rank the success or failure of a team's drafting based on that internet consensus .... except that the internet consensus is not a reflection of reality. I don't think he has a very good eye for talent spotting, but I am sympathetic to his draft rankings because it is much harder to formulate than it appears (especially without using a reference, such as the internet consensus). I am vastly less sympathetic to his ratings of a team's drafting/draft grades because it reflects a lack of self-understanding of just how far away from reality he really is.

No doubt he was a good pick at #48. Not many people play nearly 250 AFL games. But was the value of his 248 games greater than Cyril Rioli's (pick 12) 189 games? Alex Rance's (pick 18) 200 games? Callan Ward's (pick 19) 248 games? Or Jack Steven's (pick 42) 192 games? These are all from the same 2007 draft. My point is not to denigrate Mackay, who had a long and useful AFL career, but more to demonstrate that the number of games you play is not necessarily a great indicator of player value. As such, draft analyses based on that metric are going to be hard to draw really good information from.

Fritsch's biggest strength is his ability to play on the opposition's intercept defenders and make them accountable. We've seen that a good defender (especially talls) can keep him out of the game if they stick to their defensive task (because he's undersized and only a mediocre athlete) but you simply can't cheat off him to help out your team mates because he's so great at finding the space a turning that into a score. He's especially good at being threat from the goalsquare, which takes these offensively minded talls/mediums out of their comfort zone and anxious to get up the ground to help team mates. He makes good decisions about his positioning that force his opponent to gamble. The intercept game is so important in modern defences and his role is useful to breaking that down.

The site is a News Ltd subsidiary, so I assume any paywall hack that gets you around those sites (HS etc.) will get you around this one.

I think that there are a few levels to this. Firstly, it's really difficult to measure the quality of the contributions of each player drafted. There's no overarching, unifying metric which approximates how valuable a player has been (like, for example, WAR in baseball). All metric are imperfect but 'games played' is especially so. As an example Robbie Gray was drafted at pick 55 in the 2006 draft, won a Coach's Award in 2014 and was AA 4 times, won 3 B&Fs. On the other hand, David Mackay was drafted at 48 in the 2006 draft and his career highlight was the one game where he was awarded one Brownlow vote for his 23 possession game against Melbourne in 2015. Robbie Gray has played 255 games and David Mackay has played 248. Games is an imperfect metric for player value. But beyond that, there is a lot that rings true from the article. Midfielders, especially those that are contest winners, tend to be far easier to judge at the very top of the draft. This is because their games are more developed (they win contests against similarly developed peers) and the level of projection needed is very small. You only need to look at a tape of Horne-Francis for about 30 seconds to realise that he's a gun and that his game would translate to AFL footy easily even if he made minimal further improvements. But a tall needs to beat far stronger and developed opponents in one on one contests. It takes longer for those talls to develop the strength to compete against and eventually beat these older players. It's this additional level of physical development required of the taller players to play their role at AFL level that means there is a lot more faith required that they will develop as hoped. The more 'one on one' element there is to a player's game (eg, rucks, power forwards/defenders) the more development required and hence the greater risk you take that the player won't develop as hoped. As for the difference between picks 6-10 and 11-20, past the top 5 you are generally dealing with players with significant flaws to their game and a lot of it will come down to what the recruiters like/don't like or what sort of risk they are willing to take. Recruiters are picking their own poison in a way. With all these picks, would you rather the tall that needs development, the speedy mid that needs to build a tank, the small defender with limited further scope, the intercept defender who isn't a great kick ..... they all have strengths but also flaws, otherwise they'd be in the top 5. It isn't a raffle. It's more like picking stocks. The ones up the top are your biggest companies: they're expensive but you're a lot more certain that they'll keep being good companies for a while. You're much more likely to pick an Amazon or Apple, but there's also a small chance that you pick AMP. As you get further down the draft you start getting into smaller companies: they're cheap because they're flawed or the development is really uncertain. You're far less likely to pick a winner here, but there are almost always a few diamonds to be picked from the rough, if you're lucky and know what you're looking for.

Agree wholeheartedly. I initially had the median scores against in there to demonstrate this but took it out otherwise the post would be too long. But the 2019 score stats were skewed because Gold Coast conceded 237 more points than any other team. The median AFL score conceded jumped about 50 points total (about 2.5 points per game) between 2019 and 2021, which illustrates your point nicely. Effectively the typical games are better since the rule was introduced, it's just that teams aren't smashing Gold Coast by as much as they used to.

Also, here are the statistics to back that up. I'm comparing 2021 with 2019. The 2020 numbers would actually demonstrate even stronger trends, but I'm ignoring them because the 2020 statistics are skewed by the reduced game time due to COVID. Since the introduction of the rule: Clearances down 6.9%, hitouts down 12% (ie, fewer stoppages because of less congestion). Clangers up 3.8% (ie, more risks being taken with disposal rather than bombing defensively down the line). Contested possessions down 6.1%, tackles down 9.0%(!!!) and uncontested possession up 1.2% (ie, less congestion) Contested marks up 0.9% (ie, more one on one opportunities. Interestingly, the contested possessions were way down but the marks were slightly up, indicating fewer ground contests and an more even aerial contest). Marks inside 50 up 3.0% from 1.0% fewer inside 50s (ie, more space for forwards). Clearly this rule has helped to reduce congestion make the game faster. I think that represents a successful rule.

The game moves far more quickly and there's a lot more overlap running. It makes transition from defence a lot easier and teams are far more willing to take risks with the footy with more porous defensive ground coverage.

The rule worked well. One of the best rules to be implemented in a while.

It's both. If a player is a poor runner then their flexibility is really limited. You basically need to be a top level ball winning inside midfielder because there aren't any other roles for you .... and that's where the best players are already. Basically you need to be so unbelievably good that you can play a role where speed is less important. Even Dunstan, who is a far superior footballer of that type to Constable, struggled for a regular place at St Kilda because he needed to be better than Steele, Crouch, Hannebury etc to get a spot. Zac Jones, on the other hand, gets a game regardless because there are rules for him even if he doesn't play in the centre square.

It depends whether you are low enough to get a pick before your player is bid on. For example, Collingwood had pick 2 this year which would have allowed them to pick a top player as well as Daicos, but they traded their pick 2 away last year because they didn't realise how terrible they would be. Collingwood made their own bed for this one, effectively trading away their FS advantage for picks last year. In effect, in 2020 Collingwood traded their 1st and 2nd round 2021 picks (picks 2 and 21) for 2020 picks 24, 30 (for pick 2), 41, 42 (for pick 21). Note that I'm not including picks past the 3rd round as they are steak knives at best. At the time they didn't realise that they were giving up picks 2 and 21 but they could have had a large advantage by selecting a two top 3 players this year.

I think the merits of NGA and FS picks can be debated, and the Bulldogs have certainly been great beneficiaries, but there are certainly tradeoffs for those clubs that can access those early FS/NGA players 'out of order'. Last year the Dogs selected Ugle-Hagan, but they only took 2 selections in total (other being Dominic Bedendo at pick 55). This year they will do something similar (if Darcy is picked at 3 as some on this thread suggest) by selecting Darcy and then their next pick being at 53 ish. They will get 2 good players in 2 years ..... plus a bunch of hopes and prayers. I'm sure that they would happily make that tradeoff but it's not without its downside. Collingwood is the same but with a list in a different place. They will get Daicos but they'll get nothing else (except for late picks) when they are in the early stages of a big rebuild. They need to build a group of good young players but will only really only get one of them this year.

This is the Bobby Hill I think of any time I see the name in the media.

It's disappointing because it just wastes the time of clubs that could be doing other stuff at the end of the trade period. Hill seemed fine about it so all of the 'he won't go back to GWS' talk from Young just makes Young look like a liar in future negotiations. Imagine a situation where a player is genuinely disillusioned with a club and can't stand the idea of going back .... if it's a client of Young then a club is may well keep him anyway because they won't believe the player's issues are genuine. I'd be very disappointed if I was a client of his right now. Especially the way it looked like Hill was used as a pawn for getting Lobb back to GWS.

I just don't think either party wanted it enough to make it happen. Hill is a nice player but the whole situations stinks of something weird. I'm not much of conspiracies but the Colin Young theory makes a bite of sense.

Doesn't make him the 16th best player in the AFL. Recency bias.