Axis of Bob

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 .....

As you'd probably assume, my post demonstrated the extent of my expertise. I certainly didn't anticipate that my knowledge of early 20th century psychoanalysis would be tested beyond knowing how to spell Rorschach! ?

They're the ink blot tests that a psychiatrist may show you and ask you what you see. Link: Rorschach test - Wikipedia In reality they're just blots of ink on a page with no meaning. Despite this, the patients will often see meaning in them, revealling more about the issues in the patient's head. In other words, I find that comments about body language only really reveal the poster's issues, not the subject's.

I tend to find that comments based on 'body language' tend to be most akin to Rorschach tests.

But Bowey did play well in the VFL scratch match ......

Good article.

Cheers, I appreciate it. https://www.statsinsider.com.au/blog/afl/understanding-how-clearances-shape-the-results-of-afl-games FWIW, this is the best place I've seen dealing with clearances. It gives a good idea (point per clearance, for and against) of some of the issues. I prefer those sorts of articles a lot more than the 'ideas' of what's happening, as AFL is so chaotic that it's hard to really analyse, plus we all get caught up in our own teams and miss whether or not these are issues with us specifically or with the whole competition. I, almost always, try to temper my feelings with the knowledge that things are neither as good nor as bad as they appear, so I'd prefer to have hard data to let me know if I'm in the right ballpark or if I'm completely FOS.

I was showing you the other side of the coin for the statistic you provided. If you rank a team in average clearances per game, then you need to know what the opposition did in order to know if you were better than them. The differential does this because it incorporates both sides of the coin. I offered up the opposing side of your 'average clearances' statistic by showing 'average opposition clearances' to demonstrate that you couldn't draw the conclusion you did from the data you had. If I had used our excellence in limiting 'opposition average clearances' as justification for a claim that we are the best stoppage team in the league, then you could justifiably have thrown my logic back at me. I fully agree with you that there was a big drop off in centre clearances last season. I'm not entirely sure why, since we had 2 of the best centre clearance players in the league (Oliver and Viney) and a very good ruckman (although I'd suggest he is less dominant as a centre bounce ruckman than in a wrestle). I'd imagine it has a lot to do with how those players work together as well as the lack of impact of our second string centre square midfielders. Of the top 3 teams, West Coast had 5 players with more than 1 centre clearances a game (4 mids and Nic Nat), Power 4 (3 mids and Lycett), Geelong 5 (4 mids and Stanley, of those that played more than 6 games) and Carlton 4 (3 mids and Pittonet .... although Cripps was number 1 in the AFL). We had 3 .... Oliver, Viney and Petracca. After that we had Brayshaw and the Gawn, and then nobody else really playing a meaningful role. It was not dissimilar in 2019 and 2018, although our second unit was definitely bolstered by the likes of Jones, Harmes and Brayshaw. Lacking that depth through the middle means that we end up with some pretty average units in there trying to help Oliver or Viney. So, in short, I think the issue is probably our depth of centre square midfielders, more than anything. This bore out against the Dogs last week where we were smashed in clearances without Viney, Oliver and Brayshaw.

So your argument is that teams have figured out how to stop our clearances ..... by allowing us to win clearances? I'm sorry, but this is getting pretty silly now.

You can't make that point with anything based on total clearances (like an average) because it doesn't adjust for the number of stoppages that a team participates in each game. It needs to be a differential in order to adjust for that. In fact, one of the most interesting stats in all of this is ..... .... Melbourne were the best team in the league at preventing opposition clearances. Teams had only 26.9 clearances against us last year, comfortably better than any other team. Probably better would be to work out the probability of each team winning a clearance. We were +6% chance of winning a clearance (6th best), with Port being best on +16% and Adelaide worst being -20%. Interestingly Richmond were 16th with a -12% probability.

And the point I'm making is that there has been very little difference between our strong clearance numbers in 2018 and our strong clearance numbers in 2020, just the number of stoppages that we have been involved in when compared with the rest of the competition. Slipping for 4th overall to 6th overall is barely significant (especially since we were 3rd in between), as it still says we are a top level clearance team. Of the top 7 clearance teams (differential) last year, 4 of them had a negative hitout differential. We were one of those three teams (along with West Coast and Gold Coast) that had both a positive clearance and hitout differential. Based on the stats, we are a very effective clearance team and its is a strength of ours. People think about hitouts like it's 1975, where a dominant tap ruck could feed a midfield. But 50 years ago (even 20 years ago) there was a lot of space around the stoppages so a tap ruck could create more advantage. Nowadays it's far more about the midfielders whilst the ruck is more dominant for what else he can do (ie, mark, tackle, win contested footy). They need to not be terrible in the ruck, but serviceable seems to be just as effective as excellent. The correlation between hitouts and clearances is very weak across the competition, so I don't know whether you can make an argument us being 3rd for hitouts and 6th for clearances represents an issue.

In 2020 we were 6th in clearance differential. 3rd in 2019 and 4th in 2018. We have been comfortably better than our opponents for the past 3 years. So we have been consistently good at clearances. The total clearance statistics only reflect that our games have involved fewer stoppages in the past two seasons, not that we have been poor at them.

Maclure was a good footballer in his day, which was last in 1986 .... 35 years ago! However I'm not necessarily sure that he's the one to be talking about off-field culture either, given his reputation during his playing days. The reason he has the nickname 'Sellars' is because his messy behaviour when drinking reminded them of Peter Sellars. Is this the guy who you want to be lectured to about culture?!?! Did he give 100% of himself? Reports are mixed. As for listening to him rather than bagging him, the reason I'm bagging him out is because I have listened to him! I'm bagging him out on the basis of what he says. And what he says is terrible.

We have been bad for different reasons at different times. Combining them is lazy. Maclure is beyond lazy, intellectually. He's just there to make the viewer feel better about their own knowledge, although not necessarily for the same reasons.

As I said, it's low-analysis populism. It resonates with those who don't like to think too hard, like Maclure.

He's just speaking in generalities that can't ever be proven or disproven. It's extremely lazy. His evidence of poor culture is senior players not being dropped (which I'm sure Tom McDonald disagrees with). The only reason he is still kept around in the footy media is because he has name recognition and because his low analysis populism appeals to a certain subset of the population who relate to what he says. It's easy to come up with his comments, which I'll do for any team that lost this weekend: Bad culture They're soft and don't go hard enough at the contest Lazy and don't work hard enough Bad gameplan Players look lost Players don't want to win enough Coach is out of ideas and has no plan B Not fit enough Players unmotivated or 'not switched on' It's completely unprovable, but just panders to many supporters' existing feelings. It's like reading your horoscope. If you put generalities out there without any evidence (or knowledge) then people will just insert their own preconceptions into it. If you want to see how this sort of thinking works, just check out this forum after a loss.

I think clicking on any link that follows this sentence is a pretty good diagnostic test for internet addiction.

Garry Lyon is the worst commentator out there. An impossibly self-important lightweight. I often wonder if he lives in constant fear that everyone's going to realise that he doesn't know what he's talking about anymore, although I suspect that that he probably doesn't have the self-awareness for that.

Our forward line, for all the missing players, was actually fine yesterday. We played a forward line of (mostly) TMac, Jackson, Fritsch, Chandler, ANB and Spargo, and we managed to have 13 marks inside 50 from only 41 entries. As a yardstick, the Dogs also had 13 marks inside 50 from 64 entries. From 41 entries we kicked 10 goals (24%), whilst the Dogs kicked 15 from 64 (23%) despite having many of those extra entries from stoppage clearances, which are far more dangerous. Our structures held up pretty well and, despite what has been said here, our kick ins were very dangerous and a real weapon. Having two players who can cover territory quickly, along with 2 ruckmen, means that our direct kickouts are going to be very dangerous. That, in turn, will force teams to throw numbers long and straight, which will open up gaps later on. They kicked 6 goals to 1 in the 3rd quarter where, from memory, I think we only won one clearance for the quarter. That isn't a typical occurrence for us since contested ball and clearances are usually strengths for us, but with 3 of our 4 best contested midfielders being out we were exposed. That is a one off, so we should be looking past that and thinking how we fared assuming we win 50/50 contested ball and clearances, rather than losing them 113-164 and 24-48.

Without our best contested midfielders, we were dominated in the clearances and contested footy. That's pretty much the tale of the game right there. Alex Neal-Bullen was our leading clearance winner, and he was essentially playing as a defensive half forward. At one point our centre bounce setup was Jackson, AVB, ANB and Sparrow. It's pretty hard to judge how went, TBH, because we were beaten around the ball by so much. Not ideal but not particularly concerning.

I believe they were 2015 and 2016 whilst playing for Casey in the VFL. Certainly at AFL level he hasn't. I think ANB is a better player than most think he is .... but Dr D is clearly wrong about him (among others). His value is as a hard running defensive forward, not as a midfielder because he isn't big enough, quick enough, classy enough or good enough. If he could solve 2 or 3 of those problems then he can play midfield. But full credit to him for pushing past all those failings and getting a satisfactory AFL career almost entirely from hard running and a first class attitude. He should be lauded for what he has been able to do.

It's an interesting play because it's all set up for Cotchin to be the target for an aggressive Nankervis tap (against Jackson, not Gawn). Cotchin goes for the outside space and runs forward, but Harmes keeps body contact with Cotchin and maintains position on the defensive side, which blows the play up. After that it's just Oliver winning a one on one and Dusty finding defence a bit too difficult. But, in short, the set play is broken up by Harmes' initial bodywork on Cotchin, allowing our best two players to win the footy. It's certainly a much better structure (and was all game) than we've seen the last year or two. Good clip, TPF39.