Axis of Bob

Yep, that's probably clumsy from me. He's not just barrelling through every stoppage waiting for the miracle ball but he's definitely prioritising getting a high impact clearance over defending his opponent a lot of the time. Or at least having him in the centre means that the coaches are prioritising that aspect because of his strengths and weaknesses in that position.

I think there are probably a couple of different ways to look at it. There are the basic stats (often known as 'counting stats') like kicks, handballs, clearances, hitouts, etc.... basically anything where you are just counting the things that happen on the field. Then there are the more advanced stats which can give you an idea of what, in particular, actually helps your team to win. The 17-4 centre clearance stat is a counting stat. It simply counts how many times a team clears the ball from a centre bounce. This will include a dominant clearance where a player runs out of the stoppage and kicks a goal directly, but it will also include a 15m scrub kick forward to a defender (who then moves the ball quickly for a counterattacking goal). Counting stats are nice, but only have limited use. The very interesting thing I saw was that, despite being 17th for centre clearances, we're actually 4th in centre clearance score differential. This indicates that the relative quality of our clearances is extremely high. If you look at the players we have in the centre, we have some very damaging players .... Petracca, Oliver and Viney. If you look at the setups, Petracca often runs a bit of a 'Hail Mary' run through the stoppage. The odds of this coming off are pretty remote, but we have Viney to disrupt anything that goes wrong. We obviously didn't on the weekend but generally our lost clearances are pretty ineffective whilst our won clearances are very dangerous. My favourite stats are ones to do with the expected gains based on a particular event. Things like strokes gained in golf, or expected runs in baseball. Here we can quantify the fractional gain of a good drive vs safe layup shot, or expected number of runs from a sacrifice bunt in baseball vs letting a hitter swing away. It doesn't mean that a golf shot saving you 0.1 shots will have a direct result on that score, but it means that over 100 shots you should be saving 10 shots on average, which builds up over time. These statistical models are built over time using a huge number of instances. I think about footy in a similar way. Something along the lines of the expected scores for different types of clearance, which should show you what to prioritise. For instance, a high quality centre clearance (which is delivered cleanly, unpressured, and deep to a forward target) might average (for example .... these numbers are made up!!) +2.5 points each, whilst a pressured, shallow, hack kick forwards might earn you +0.1 points per clearance. This would mean that a clean clearance is 25 times as valuable as a poor one, so we shouldn't be prioritising poor clearances to the detriment of good ones, even if we get a lot more of them. By the same token, we should be trying to prevent opposition clean clearances as much as we possibly can, even if we have to stop our own wins to do so. A reminder that I made up those numbers to explain an idea. They aren't real! What is real is that the 'counting stat' is far less important than the number of points we are expected to score from centre clearances vs the number we are expected to concede. So this explains why we have Petracca running kamikaze whilst others often are very defensive, and that the presence of Viney is crucial in them. We could definitely be getting more clearances by putting players like ANB, Spargo, etc in there because they can make use of the extra space available in the centre bounce, and sending Petracca (a power player who isn't a great stoppage player) into the forward line. This would improve the counting stat of clearances but we would score fewer points per clearance because the quality of those clearances would drop markedly. So there is a tradeoff: quality of clearance vs quantity of clearance. Quantity is the easiest thing to measure but it can often be misleading when trying to do what you're trying to do ..... which is to score more points than the opposition.

Way, way back in the day, it was only match reports to be found online. Whispering Jack was doing it way back then too, plus Hoju had his own going, with the Melbourne Chronicle along with Demonology. There may have been a few others too. There was nowhere for people to talk about the footy and it was more having some knowledgeable people shouting their thoughts into the universe. Jack was the only place I could find out how the Melbourne players went in the VFL at Sandringham. Demonology was a really interesting place during its heyday. It had a very simple layout that often made it hard to find stuff, but it was a great place to have a debate (especially in the early 2000s). Also, who could forget rono's obsession with turning Darren Jolly into a 'multidimensional tall', playing forward, back and ruck! It's definitely something that Terry Wallace would have done! ? I was on Demonland back in the day too. I was Spunjy (I changed it in 2005 when the forum software was switched to prevent ambiguity, and embraced the 'Spongebob' that I was sometimes called). I never really understood the rivalry between the two sites. I was just happy to have multiple sites to be able to chat about the Dees, although my memory is that most Landers were members of both whilst those who identified as Ologists probably cross pollinated less. I do think that the move across to proper forum software and the really great work put into the site by @Nasher as well as the far superior moderation (Ology always had problems with that) resulted in Demonland becoming a much more welcoming place for newbies. I think that the strength and stability of @Demonlandand @Whispering_Jack as well as Nasher's work was the key reason we have such a vibrant and long standing community which is certainly one of the better fansites in the AFL. Thanks to everyone who helped make that happen, as well as those who helped with many the other MFC sites that have kept me distracted since the late 90s.

A 32 year old Trac is still going to be a hell of a player. He could play in a forward pocket for the last 3 years and still be a nightmare for the opposition. There is a history of power based midfielders like him having excellent longevity in the game too. Shaun Burgoyne had 24 touches and 2 goals in the 2014 Grand Final at about that age. Spreading his contract out over 7 years also provides us with the flexibility to move it around to accommodate players, either by bringing some of it forward or pushing it back. It's much harder to do that with 3 year deals. Also, all decisions like this are based on risk vs reward. Trac is transferring some of his risk to the club by getting more money guaranteed (ie, longer contract) but the flip side for lowering his risk will be in lowering the reward (ie, that the club doesn't have to pay him as much). In our case we are comfortable with the increased risk in exchange for the increased reward. Hopefully we can use that reward on other players to keep a strong group around Trac and hopefully win flags.

I think the lack of clearances is because we replaced Viney with players who aren't Viney. He's a bit polarising on here, but Viney is really crucial to our midfield setups because of his insane intensity and power, especially defensively. He's able to control where the space is and, if something goes wrong, shut it down really well. When you replace that with Brayshaw, for example, then you are getting a big body who hits in straight lines to replace a shifty but powerful tackler. We had one player get 7 tackles against North (Jordon), whilst Viney averages 7 a game. Oliver had 4 and nobody else had more than 4. As a result North were able to walk the ball out of clearances, especially early.

I don't there's any need to change our tactics. Thankfully Tomlinson's role is the easiest to replace, although he was doing it well. His job is just to run with the opposition's big forward and be competitive. At the best teams this role is played by the least talented tall defender, as all they have to do is stand and engage the opponent whilst support flies for the ball. Think of the likes of Astbury, Broad, Balta, or Marcus Adams, or Clurey, or J Kolodjashnij. These are good, honest, reliable talls that have a specific role to play, but the role they play isn't impossible to replace. If May or Lever were the ones to go down they're tough to replace ..... they're uniquely good players that we build our defence around. But we probably still wouldn't change the tactics, we'd just implement them more poorly. I think our forward structures are easier to mess with based on personnel. We have 3 tall forwards available (Brown, TMac, Weid), plus Jackson and Fritsch who play tall and small, so can probably experiment with a one tall (+Jackson and Fritsch), 2 tall or 3 tall forward line at different stages to see what works. Having Fritsch and Jackson show strong ground level skills so far does give us more options.

I'm not for the Goodes comparison. Goodes was a linebreaking, power athlete who played ruck at certain times because he wasn't being exposed by him opponents. His best ruck year was comfortably 2003, and he only averaged 12 hitouts a game that year whilst his back up ruck Jason Ball averaged 15. Playing Goodes in the ruck was the equivalent of playing Joel Smith in the ruck, if Joel Smith was a superstar. Also, Goodes was a straight line runner with immense power. He broke into open space and, once he got there, he was devastating. Such a good player to watch. Jackson is more like a ballet dancer. He's all twists and turns, dancing feet, doing his best work in close confines. There isn't really a good example of him in the game, I don't think. The skills he has are unique, especially in a player of his size. It's hard to know just what he'll end up being because there isn't really a great reference for him.

I’m watching too. Already it looks like the Dogs trying to handball through, but the second tall is a real issue for them. Very interesting.

I don't have access to it you could get an idea from players. That said, a midfield intercept may often created entirely by forward pressure, and a defensive intercept by midfield pressure etc. It's complex. But, FWIW, here are our top 10 interceptors: Rank / Name / Games / Intercepts per game 1 Jake Lever 6 11.17 2 Christian Salem 6 7.67 3 Steven May 5 6.40 4 Max Gawn 6 6.17 5 Michael Hibberd 2 6.00 6 Angus Brayshaw 6 5.33 7 Jayden Hunt 6 5.17 8 Trent Rivers 6 4.83 9 Clayton Oliver 6 4.50 9 Ed Langdon 6 4.50 Interesting that they're all defenders in the top 8 aside from Gawn and Brayshaw. Also, over 11 intercepts a game from Lever is cartoonish. Nobody has finished a year with double figures since they've been keeping the stat.

I know it's going to sound really boring and cliche, but I think it's mostly to do with the players just 'playing their role' better. We've always been really strong at the footy but we just haven't had anyone holding their position on the outside. This means that we have people ready to receive in better positions .... but also those players outside will drag defenders away from the ball and create opportunities for others. By not going for the ball (or sometimes even coming within a kick of the contest) you are able to stretch the defenders and stop them helping each other out. And that requires each of the players to know their role, even if that role is to stay the hell out of the play for a while until the play reaches a certain point. The interview on the club site with Spargo is very good and shows a lot of this. He used the example of Brayshaw, a very good inside midfielder, who is playing as a specialist wingman. He's used to going in to grab the ball in contests and he's now having to run away from the ball to create space and lock up space in defence. That's a hard bridge to cross but he's doing a really good job of it at the moment. In 2018 and 2019, he averaged 10.6 and 9.4 contested possessions a game. In 2020 and 2021 he's only getting 6.5 a game and his overall disposal numbers have dropped significantly. His intercept possessions are well up as are his score involvements, which shows that even though he's not winning as much of the ball, the play that he's involved in is much more important. Last year he was a bit lost playing on a wing but he's playing his role much better and other players are benefiting from it. One of the big stats I see for us this year is intercept possessions (differential) because it's a structural indicator. Last year the top 4 in this were Brisbane, Richmond, Geelong and Port. Richmond have been top 4 in this since 2017. Teams don't just get unlucky and kick the ball to you, they do so because you force them to kick the ball where you have advantage. That's what we're doing. We have +10 intercepts per game, with the Bulldogs 2nd with +3.5. That's extraordinary and the only precedent is the (mostly!) dominant 2018 Richmond team who had +9. It probably won't continue at that level but it indicates a level of structural dominance over games. That's a whole of team stat too because intercepts involve multiple levels of defence: good field position, small forwards harrassing, inside mids pressuring, outside mids holding structure outside the contest, and finally the defenders winning the ball back from the rushed kicks that the rest of the team created.

I think the difference with the handballing we did is that most teams handball as a way of shifting the pressure away from themselves and on to a team mate, because they are under intense pressure. Handballing, in itself, isn't a bad way to play but it depends on how and why you do it. Richmond relies on pressure around the ball to either turn the ball over or to force a longer kick down the line. Teams often feel this pressure and shift the ball to a safe player behind the ball (putting that player, who is in a worse spot, under pressure) or chip it sideways to a free player (which slows the game and forces a long kick down the line). But there are only limited resources on the ground at any time, so you have to make choices about where to spend them. For example, we used Hibberd to tag which has advantages but also robs us of a line breaker. In Richmond's gameplan, they commit players to pressure around the ball and towards the defensive side of the contest, and commit them to defending the long kick down the line that results from that pressure. The tradeoff is that a composed short disposal forwards from the contest will be going into the gap where those pressure players have come from because they only have a finite amount of resources on ground. We exploited this gap with composed handballs to players who were taking the ball forwards. This took the pressure players out of play and forced their down-the-line defenders to come at the ball, which took away their defensive shape and allowed us to get some one on one (or better) looks near goal. To do this you have to be a good team with good footballers around the ball. Salem was wonderful at this by being able to absorb the pressure behind the ball and make great decisions that turned that pressure back against the Richmond tacklers.

Trust me, there's plenty of rubbish that I've got in my post history. But don't look too hard for it! ?

I think Jackson suffers from the fact that he looks so much less like a young ruck/forward than most young ruck/forwards do. He moves so smoothly and with so much coordination that he gets judged like he's a 25 year old. He actually looks too good for his age so people can get fooled into judging his forward play like he's a mature player like Tom McDonald. But he's 19. He's a ruck forward. What he's doing is remarkable. He was beating Ben McEvoy, a 31 year old premiership ruckman comfortably in the ruck and then spreading like a midfielder. He's beaten or halved against every mature AFL ruckman he's played this year. He's a viable forward target against mature AFL key defenders. And he's 19. He has more contested marks this season than any player his age or younger. He gets his hands to more than others because he's much, much better than others. He's 19. McEvoy didn't have as many hitouts as Jackson had yesterday until he was nearly 22 in his 4th season. Lycett was nearly 22. Nankervis didn't even play until he was 22. Jordan Roughead was 24. Max Bailey was nearly 23. Mike Pyke was 25. Brad Ottens was 19. Darren Jolly was 21. That's all of the premiership number 1 rucks for the last 11 years, and they all first got 22+ hitouts when they were playing as a solo/leading ruck, not as a key forward who gave the number 1 a chop out when he was tired. I feel a bit sorry for those who can't appreciate what Jackson is doing. This should be a time of wonder and enjoyment at a kid who is doing phenomenal things at this stage of his career. Sit back and enjoy it.

I love Chunk. He's been a really good, durable player and the sort of player and role model that we're been lucky to have had. Started as an outside runner with an inside midfield's body and he worked hard early in the VFL to change his game to suit what he'd need to be at AFL level. Some players are coach-proof. They don't complain, don't wallow, and just work so hard that they can succeed in any system. Nathan Jones is one of those players. He won B&F's in terrible teams because he just kept turning up and doing the work when others didn't. The journey of an older football is an interesting one, where you initially lose some athleticism to see yourself return to the pack, then eventually lose enough that you are clinging on just to compete. It's a slow, frustrating journey for players who can't play the way they know they can/could but some players can move past that to the point where they see the development and success of younger players as being part of their own success, which becomes very satisfying. I think Nathan Jones is at that point now, and he's playing a very selfless role to help those players achieve that. He's a former captain, former B&F (multiple times) and must take enormous personal satisfaction in his part of turning a woeful, dysfunctional team into a genuinely good one at the end of his career. He may not ever win an AFL flag, but we wouldn't have been able to navigate the way out of the mud without him setting standards and getting the job done, becoming the standard setter that new recruits could aspire to. If we achieve success it will be built on the hard work he did when a lesser person would have given up. Well done. 300 games is no less than you deserve.

A Kozzie taking down Selwood thread, that becomes a TISM thread. What time to be alive. Although it does need more Les Murray.

As a key forward, Jackson is currently the best contested mark (statistically) of any Rising Star qualified player. He has 5 whilst the next best (Georgiades, Koschitzke and Treacy) have 3. He's also second for contested possessions, first for hitouts, third for clearances, etc. So, for a 19 year old tall forward who also chops out in the ruck ..... he's doing exceedingly well. Dr D is just a troll, but blows up his credibility too often to be any good at it.

We do lack structure up forward. We look best with either Cunningham or Zanker marking well but that has be oh so rare. Obviously Bannan is the hope here, and she shows so real promise, but is just too light at the moment to be a really target against stronger opponents. We are kicking scores with our smalls but our next step forward needs the big forwards to win against settled defences.

So this is step 1 in Eddie's image rehabilitation campaign. He's just saying a bunch of popular (to the lay-person) but largely impractical things. It's a PR piece for Eddie and that is all. Sad but predicatable.

Jackson led Melbourne for ground ball gets on the weekend, along with Jack Viney (9 each). He also had 11 contested possessions, behind only Viney, Oliver and Gawn. Of all rising stars, he has the second most contested possessions (1 behind Chad Warner) this season. Given that he's a teenage second ruckman, the signs for him are ultra-promising.

Funnily enough I've been thinking about the Dogs. I'm trying to work out how good they actually are. Their best 6 players (Caleb Daniel aside) all play the same role in the team (Bont, Macrae, Libba, Dunkley, Treloar and Smith), which is different to pretty much every other team. They monopolise the ball with all their mids and they often flood the stoppages with numbers, making it difficult to get the ball out cleanly. Then they pretty much just have those midfielders follow the ball around everywhere as they try to make it a midfield slog. But if the ball gets out and away from their midfield then they just don't have the talent around the ground, especially aerially. We saw that in the final last year, where they dominated the inside 50s but then struggled to contain any reasonable St Kilda forward entry, They conceded 20+ contested marks in a shortened game, and are conceding 18.5 a game already this season, which is easily the worst. So it looks like they're doubling down on last year's game. I just worry that they're spending so many of their resources in an overpowering midfield that they're going to get diminishing returns as they eat each other's lunch.

The other way to think about this is that you can set up your team to win clearances by throwing an extra 4 forwards into the stoppage. Eventually opposition defenders will stop following them in and instead will just camp out behind the stoppage and any clearance won will result in a kick to a 5 on 2 situation. By adding extra numbers to the stoppage you increase your ability to win the clearance but you may reduce your ability to score from it.

Some interesting discussion about stoppages, which has been a theme since we were dominant here in 2018. A few interesting things from the weekend: This is a typical stoppage from the weekend. Notice that we are playing one short in here, with the extra player being Sinclair on the far right. His counter, Salem, is sitting 30 metres defensive side of the contest (left of screen). We lose this clearance, but the the ball is just dumped straight to Salem who launches a counterattack. We leveled the clearances on the weekend but that only tells part of the story. We are committing our resources away from the stoppages because we've got such talent in there. We are diverting it from stoppages and into a structure behind the ball, minimising the danger of any lost clearances. Effectively we are saying that one of our lost clearances is kicking to a defensive outnumber for us, but any won clearance goes forward to an even contest for us. This is what a gameplan that maximises our strengths looks like. We've been talking about our gun inside players cannibalising each other's possessions and clearances, but this game plan actually maximises the value we get from two of the best contested ball winners in the league (Oliver and Viney), even if they'll actually have fewer clearances because of it, and also having Max. The plan is in several parts: 1- We go into a stoppage with a numerical disadvantage but superior behind the stoppage. 2- Max can direct the ball away from the spare players in the stoppage and to where we have 50/50 numbers, so that the impact of the opposition extra numbers in the stoppage is lessened. 3- Oliver/Viney/Trac can win a lot of these clearances now and get it forward to 50/50 contests. But if the extra numbers win out, we have defensive cover. Max is a big part of this because, whilst getting a clean tap to advantage is really hard, having a big dominant ruck advantage means that we can direct the area of the stoppage that the clearance battle will take place in (ie, where we have even numbers). For instance, in the above stoppage, Max directed the ball front left, which gave Oliver, Petracca and Langdon a fair go at it before the extra opposition numbers can arrive. The end result of this is that we play a pretty distinctive style of game. We're in the middle of the pack league wide for most statistics but we are currently first in intercepts (quite comfortably) and first in intercept differential (by an absolute mile). Check out the intercept differential below: So we intercept the ball 11.5 times more than our opponents every game. If we can stay in the ballpark with clearances then we're getting a massive advantage. Often the biggest strengths of a team are used counter-intuitively because that's where you get the most incremental value. I think about it in terms of the late 2000s premiership teams, Sydney, West Coast, Geelong and Hawthorn. Sydney and Hawthorn both had their strengths in their forward line. Barry Hall, Micky O, Goodes .... Buddy, Roughy. Both those teams played defensive game styles, with Sydney crowding stoppages and Hawthorn employing a very aggressive defensive zone to cover their defensive weakness (Croad and Brichall, then later threw Hodge in as cover, whilst Sydney had Bolton and Barry, who were both undersized). Conversely, Geelong and West Coast had very strong defences (Scarlett, Enright, Mackie, Milburn, Harley etc, and Glass, Wirrpanda, Banfield, Waters) but comparatively weak forward lines (Mooney and N Ablett as keys, and Hansen and Hunter as keys), so they played very aggressive, creative and expansive game styles so make it easier for their less talented forward to score (although they still had Stevie J!). You can solve your weaknesses with numbers but you can back your best players to win contests if given a sniff. Like Richmond does with Riewoldt, Lynch and Dusty up forward, who have to fight against extra numbers but they'll win enough of them to kick you a score, whilst they throw extra number behind the ball to cover their less talented defenders. Unlike previous years, we aren't doubling down on our big midfielders to smash the opposition in clearances every week, we are backing in their ability to win difficult contests and committing our numbers outside the contests where we are weaker. Our mids must be respected, but our ability to commit numbers outside is making it easier for us to defend but also making it easier for our less formidable forwards to kick goals. We evened the clearances last week, which is a great effort when we go into each stoppage outnumbered. If we split the clearances with the opposition this year then that will be a massive win for us. I'm very happy with how our game style has looked over the first two weeks.

Scully never played more than 90% game time for us in any game. He played 100% in only one game with GWS, which was in 2017.

I thought Brayshaw was very good on his wing on Saturday. He had 6 intercept possessions and 5 score involvements, which indicates that he's played a strong role structurally. Langdon had 5 SI and 5 Int, so the impact was similar from a structural point of view. If Brayshaw can continue to hold his position on the field and do his job defensively then he'll keep helping us win. He's a much stronger ball winner than most wings and his overhead marking will allow him to keep drifting forward to impact the scoreboard too. Having two winning wings was one of the reasons why we won the structural battle and never really looked threatened.

And nobody needs to be subjected to articles of that quality. Please, just think of the children .....