Axis of Bob

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.

I know it's a Melbourne forum but Fritsch at 16 is clearly the biggest outlier on that list.

Disposal efficiency has never been a useful statistic because it doesn't measure what you think it measures. It doesn't measure how well you kick and handball, it measures how well you can maintain possession of the ball. I haven't looked at the rankings but I'd be shocked if there any correlation between DE and performance. Teams like Geelong that chip the ball around to maintain possession will be high in DE because they don't take risks with the ball. We will be very low ranked because we play very fast paced, aggressive and direct football with numbers behind the ball. It has absolutely no relevance to how well a team kicks the footy.

In the preliminary final Geelong's 2nd youngest player was Gryan Miers, who was 22 years old. We had 8 players in that game younger than Miers, whilst Geelong had 1 (Max Holmes). Our second oldest player in that game was Max Gawn, who was 29 years old. Geelong had 11 players older than Gawn, whilst we had 1 (Hibberd). They're probably right to try to keep wringing whatever performance they can out of this group because, really, what's the alternative? They have 11 players under 22 on their list and they have combined for 42 games in total .... of which 29 have been played by Jordan Clark who is leaving. It's pretty dire.

Given that these were the only two occasions in the last 20 years, the odds are about 10%. Not high enough to worry about a hypothetical future first round pick being 8 spots lower.

Richmond didn't trade picks for either of them. We're doing what Richmond didn't do. The counter argument is much more compelling, which is that Richmond should have brought forward their first round picks from 2021 (when they missed the finals an got best value .... currently pick 7) through to 2017 when they won the flag (pick 18). By continually bringing picks forward during the flag window, you are betting that a player drafted at pick 18ish in 2017 would have more impact on Richmond winning flags than pick 7 in 2021, since that the difference in the trades. There are several players drafted at around pick 20 in 2017 that could have seriously helped Richmond win flags, like Tim Kelly, Liam Ryan, Noah Balta, Oscar Allen, Brandon Starcevich and Jack Higgins. The play they draft this year, albeit with pick 7, will have far, far less impact. I would argue that pick 17 in the first year of you premiership window is far more likely to impact your ability to win flags than pick 7 in the year after your premiership window closes. The value of a good kid contributing to a flag diminishes ever year closer you are to the end of your flag window.

If we miss finals next year, then our future pick will also be worth more if we trade it forward. Also, each year further into our flag window makes the pick less and less valuable because the player we select will have less and less chance to impact on our ability to win a flag. Look at Jamarra Ugle-Hagan this year .... how much impact does he have on the Dogs winning a flag? We're better off getting a good player (pick 17) earlier than a slightly better (pick 10) player a year later. That player will be playing his first year in 2023 and probably not make any real AFL impact until 2024-5. We are in a situation where we need to bring the draft value forward because we want our draft assets to impact on our team whilst we are still a top team competing for flags.

I think that the analysis looks at the centre bounce like it's a basketball play. One of the fundamental differences being the ease of winning possession and maintaining possession. He looks at ruck taps as being the way of gaining clean possession (like a basketball play), when that rarely has a strong impact when compared with directing the play into general areas where you can have a structural (or personnel) advantage. Melbourne's dominance of scoring from stoppages were for a few reasons: 1- Being able to maintain dominance at the defensive side of the stoppage. We always maintained the most defensive player at the stoppage. Each time the Dogs won the ball they had to shift the ball around our mids, go sideways or kick forward quickly. These resulted in their clearances being less effective. But that isn't the only aspect of defending. Our other mids used defending the stoppage as the basis for attacking. There were several occasions where the Dogs would cheat a bit on the contest and then be caught out if they lost. We didn't do this, but rather played the defensive side of opponents, forcing them to go through multiple layers to get a clean takeaway. The reason why some of those big contests were lost by the Dogs late in the 3rd wasn't because of Liberatore as the sweeper, it was because the big guns like Bontempelli overcommitted to winning the ball, or assuming they'd win it, and got caught in positions where they could no longer defend. We maintained the ability to defend, even when we lost the clearance. 2- Being able to transition decisively from the contested ball phase into offense. The same idea, but because we were holding more defensive positions, our mids could react more quickly to winning the contests because they knew that they had defensive cover if things got messy. It's very much our 'offense is generate from being the best defence' mentality. Having a dedicated defensive minded midfielder in the centre allows you to attack when you win it. In other words, we were quicker at turning contested ball into offensive running than the Dogs were at turning it into defensive running. It didn't necessarily result in us winning more (or fewer) clearances but it did mean that our next offensive possessions were far more decisive than the Dogs'. 3- Rucks being able to follow up post bounce. This was really big. The taps are largely useless, except for getting the ball into general areas where you are dominant. Sometimes a Hollywood tap comes off, but these are rare (although the impact of a truly great set play can be big, albeit it a bit of a party trick). What Gawn and Jackson did so much better was to be much better on the ground than Martin and English, especially since a lot of teams don't appear to really plan to defend it. Jackson's work here late in the third was special. Gawn and Jackson were responsible for a few occasions getting forward of the stoppage whilst their opponents stood like statues in the centre. By competing for the ball inside they allow us to get a numerical advantage outside the contest (which is very dangerous) and by spreading from the stoppage whilst others compete it also provides us with an advantage outside. The youtube guy missed this completely (he even thought Jackson got forward of the stoppage by stumbling!) but it's a really important part of our centre advantage. 4- Being able to dominate the outside of the stoppage. This was where the stoppage was won an lost. When the Dogs had their run on in the 2nd it was through Bontempelli and Macrae wheeling out onto their left side whilst carrying the ball outside the stoppage. That was where they were dangerous, not because they won the ball on the inside but because they were able to turn that into dominance on the outside. In the 3rd it was the other way around. Oliver was able to force Bontempelli on the inside of the stoppage where he was less damaging competing with multiple opponents, and if we won it then we had the outside dominance and moved the ball really quickly. We were able to get this dominance through Petracca's power and discipline, Oliver and Viney pushing opponents into the stoppage, and Gawn/Jackson being able to spread better than their opponents. The key to winning the stoppage battle isn't being able to win possession .... any team is able to win their fair share of stoppage possession, but rather it's ability to turn those stoppage wins into something more useful and dangerous than your opponents.

I appreciate the effort that he went to in creating the video and he clearly wants to know more about how these happen. Enough to make a 50 minute video on the centre bounces for a game only twice that length. However I think he generally misses the most important parts of the centre clearance. He places an undue importance on getting front position. The important part is that front position is only situationally important and often it can be quite a detriment, which the Dogs succumbed to. The inside space is only important to own if there is actually space there (ie, between the player and the ball) and if there isn't space there then you are just getting lost in the mess. The reason why Melbourne were so successful is because they owned the outside space more often, so the clearance wins resulted in damaging entries rather than shallow scraps out of congestion. I'll do a bit more at some point on some important clearances from the game but it's important to note that these weren't won from owning the inside, they were actually won from owning the outside. This resulted in the Dogs struggling to get value from their wins and, conversely, allowed the Melbourne wins to be genuine scoring threats.