Axis of Bob

Dr Norman Swan says that the stats indicate that Trump's mortality rate, given his age and obesity, is likely to be between 7 and 18%.

Giving Smith a year, after being selected for the last 4 games of the year whilst we were competing for a finals spot, indicates that the coaching group thinks he provides some value. He only got a one year deal, so they're clearly not convinced, but he's certainly worth a spot on a list rather than pick 80 in a year where half the potential draftees haven't even played a competitive game. As for Jones, even if it isn't just about coaching, I can see him getting a year on the list. He's not the player he used to be but he's still a player capable of being in the bottom couple of players filling a role in the side. From round 8 on, he played every game where he was fit (and even one he wasn't!) because of his ability to do a selfless role to a reasonable level. Plus his cost is almost zero (ie, the same pick 80 as above), so why not? Plus he would be a good influence around the group.

I appreciate that Murph, however whilst I am grateful and flattered by some positive comments I received of late, I'm pretty uncomfortable with it. I think it's really important important to note that I'm not an expert on any of this, and have only the barest amount of information and experience of those employed at football clubs. There is so much that they know about football that we don't know, nor would we even realise what information is around for us not to know! I think we all need to realise this, and also that there isn't one way to skin a cat in a game as complex and random as AFL. But it's still fun to try to work these things out with many of the thoughtful posters on here.

I agree that it isn't typical and also not a surefire winner, but the key is Jackson. The opposition may wish to focus on Weid, as they probably will, but they will likely be in different parts of the ground. Weid didn't have the high impact late in the year because he was forced to stand down the line and just compete for long balls whilst his best footy was as a move flexible foil for McDonald. Most of his success came from either getting out the back or getting it one on one. He's quite mobile and clever but couldn't use any of that doing the dog work down the line. By bringing in Brown/Petty, you can have them set up down the line to do the aerial competing and Weid can be set up slightly away either to attack the contest if in range or position himself to be dangerous as the next target. For instance, you may wish to focus on stopping Charlie Cameron, but if Brisbane are still going to kick it long to McStay then you still need to defend it and that creates opportunities for others. As for whether it's possible, last night Port mostly played 3 tall forwards (Dixon, Marshall and Ladhams), which mostly shut down Geelong's strong interceptors and allowed their dangerous small forwards to reap the benefits. But Jackson is unlike any of those forwards because of his unique mobility for a player of his size. His unique attributes make him the sort of player that we can almost create a position for. You could play him as a medium forward, or perhaps even as a 'high half/tall forward' where he plays up around the ball but then pushes forward as a marking threat. Where he ends up, we don't really know because he's different to what has come through in the past. I suppose my point is that we should be setting up a structure that functions without Jackson because Jackson's flexibility and mobility allows us to play him in unique ways, rather than pigeonholing him as a tall forward. But if we play tall then we do need to get the smalls right around them. Sorry, that's just kind of just a brain dump. I hope it made some sense.

If you run at the wall enough times then eventually you'll pass right through. ?

I'm not 100% against Brown (as much as he annoys me as free kick actor) because he at least provides us with a number 1 target that makes each of our other forwards more effective. Weideman as a second tall this year was very effective, but got smothered as a number 1. But I think we can use our chips in a better way. I think Petty can play as the contesting forward with Weid and Jackson being the dangerous secondaries, much in the way the McStay plays for Brisbane. Brisbane's worst loss this year was against Richmond when McStay was out of the lineup and Richmond key Brisbane to 4 goals (admittedly it was 4.17!). McStay only kicked 10 goals for the year, but he kills the long kick forward, which allows players like Cameron, Hipwood, Rayner, McCarthy and their midfielders to get good opportunities. Weideman did this at the end of the year when forced to, but he more valuable as the second banana. Jackson can play anywhere because he's a freak. But there's only so much salary cap and draft assets to spread around, and there are probably other way we can spend them rather than a key forward. But I can also see the argument in favour of recruiting a high quality marking forward at below market price.

I was initially going to laugh at your comment as the joke it should be, but 2020 has been a pretty weird year, so a St Kilda flag wouldn't feel out of place.

Interestingly, when Tomlinson was playing as a key defender this year we were 5 wins and 2 losses. With Oscar 3W / 4L. With Joel Smith alone (or just May and Lever), 1W / 2L. So he clearly fits the defensive system pretty well and a mobile big body who can keep opponents on the ground in marking contests. Matt Suckling would have with the Bulldogs had he not injured his achilles int he semi-final. And let's see what happens with Grant Birchall ....

Interestingly, Frost is 27 and has played 107 games in 9 seasons of AFL football ... but only ever played a single winning season, which was 2018 when he was part of our end of season charge. He's getting a full AFL career as a journeyman defender, and I'm happy to see him getting regular AFL games at Hawthorn in the second half of his career.

Good on him. Desperately unlucky not to finish 6th, given that Sicily only played 11 games. He finished 9th in the B&F for us last year.

His win/loss record would be a lot better if he had never played Preuss and Gawn in the same team! ?

He has tried it for 7 games since he's come to the club. We are 1 win and 6 losses in those games. When he was the sole ruck we were 2 wins and 1 loss. The year before he played 6 games with Goldstein ..... they lost all 6 games. He was only involved in one win, and that was when Goldstein was injured and Preuss was the number 1 ruckman. Overall, when playing in a 2 ruck setup, Preuss is 1 win and 12 losses, whilst being 3 wins 2 losses when rucking alone. I'm not sure how much more evidence we need to understand that Preuss as a second ruck is definitely not a winning tactic!

These are the ruck trades (excluding those that are so complicated that it's hard to ascertain the value) simplified from the past 10 seasons so that we can get an idea for the value of Preuss. Some are mentioned twice because they've been traded multiple times. Matthew Lobbe, Jonathan Giles - Free-ish Sam Jacobs, Darcy Cameron, Zac Smith, Marc Pittonet, Andrew Phillips, Nathan Vardy, Stef Martin, Jonathon Griffin – 4th round Toby Nankervis, Trent West – 3rd round Tom Hickey, Jarrod Witts, Zac Smith – 2nd / 3rd round Shaun Hampson, Shane Mumford, Billy Longer, Tom Hickey, Ivan Maric, Brent Renouf, Sam Jacobs – 2nd round Paddy Ryder, Ben McEvoy, David Hale – 1st round I think Preuss sits comfortably in the second round, perhaps even at the early end of it. The difference between a lot of the rucks on this list and Preuss is that barely any were in contract and were leaving for more opportunity. We have Preuss in contract, so we don't have to accept a sub-par trade. I'd be extremely surprised if we got anything less than a decent second round pick for him, especially with the thin ruck stocks for trade this year.

It was measuring top speed, so how long it takes to reach the top speed is irrelevant. But Salem running a 12.30 second 100m sprint time during a game passes the pub test. The stats check out, even if they don't really mean much, so trying to convince you to believe meaningless facts is not important to me. But I did enjoy calculating Salem's 100m sprint speed. ?

Here's a good article about Usain Bolt's speed during the Beijing Olympics. https://www.quantamagazine.org/infinite-powers-usain-bolt-and-the-art-of-calculus-20190403/ Because I'm a nerd (and lockdown is clearly doing things to my brain!) I actually tried to fit in Salem's maximum speed with Bolt's maximum speed, then adjusted it to Bolt's Olympic world record speed profile graph (in the article) to see what Salem's typical 100m sprint time would be with that top speed. FWIW, that top speed is the equivalent of Salem running a 12.30 second 100 metre sprint. That's not bad considering it was with fatigue during a 100 minute long game of football and he has not been training for a sprint event.

This table is the ranking of teams by Centre Clearance differential (ie, how many more centre clearances per game more than your opponents) in red, and Stoppage Clearance differential (ie, non-centre bounce stoppages) in green. What sticks out to me is that the lists are reasonably correlated (ie, Port, Geelong, Blues all good, Crows, Tigers, Hawks, Dockers, Swans all stink) but that the answer is probably lying in the teams where there is difference between the lists. Let's divide them into different categories: Good centre, lower stoppage: West Coast, North Melbourne, Collingwood. Good stoppage, lower centre: Gold Coast, Melbourne, Bulldogs. The first thing I notice about the first group (Eagle, Roos, Pies) is that they each have AA quality ruckmen. Naitanui and Goldstein are enormously responsible for the centre clearances in comparatively weak midfields. I think that this one is pretty easily analysed. However the other AA ruckman is Gawn, who is part of the second group, which is comparatively poor in centre bounces! That's really interesting! Bulldogs have a great midfield and a terrible tap ruck (at this point), while the Suns have some really strong bodies over the ball (Greenwood, Swallow, Miller, Rowell) and a bullocking ruck (Witts). What I think this information leads us towards, is that the centre bounce tends to depend on the quality of your ruckwork (in addition to the midfield) whilst around the ground stoppages rely on the quality of your midfield, with the ruck being only a minor factor. Perhaps the problem is, despite his ability to get his hand on the ball, Gawn just isn't a very good tap ruckman but, rather, just an exceptional around the ground ruck. Or perhaps we just don't design good centre bounce plays.

Interesting. I thought I'd try to get some basic stats to see how we rank. Luckily it's in footywire's advanced stats page. And you're right, we average fewer centre clearances per game than our opponents (-0.4 pg - 11th best) but are ahead in stoppage clearances (+1.8 - 4th best). It's very curious, and something I might have to have a think about. Why are we so much better around the grounds than we are in the centre? Especially given a dominant ruck and a bunch of quality inside mids?

It's really hard to pick up in real time unless you already know what's going to happen. I certainly wasn't able to do it and I previously thought exactly the same way as you did (basically all the way up until the B&F results came out). I just figured that Viney was the weak link and we probably would finction better without him. But then, once I actually looked closely, I realised that I was just completely wrong! I think you need to go over the footage a few times before you can see what's happening because there's so much going on in real time and your eyes get drawn to the footy. I guess I needed to do something 'productive' during lockdown! ?

A 100m sprint starts the race at rest, rather than at top speed. The 100m is the time taken to go from a stationary position to a position 100m away, whilst this measures a split second where the footballer is moving at their fastest. Usain Bolt hold the top speed record (according to wikipedia) of 44.72 km/h, which was between the 60m and 80m mark of a race, which is significantly faster than Salem! If Bolt ran at 44.72 km/h for the entire race (from 0m to 100m) then he'd have run the race in 8.05 seconds!!

This is the exact opposite of everything anyone has ever told me about Viney. His B&F results over a long period across different coaches also strongly indicate that he is extremely coachable. There are legitimate faults in his game that can be rightly argued. He's not perfect. But this seems extremely unlikely to be one of those faults.

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm as guilty as anyone. Yeah, just a few things. I don't have the figures but I'd suggest we are a very good centre bounce team and probably an average/below average general stoppage team. I think, generally, we set up our clearances primarily to not get scored against. We will often concede an extra number in the stoppage whilst our extra number is a fair way off the back of the stoppage. I think this is primarily because we don't mind conceding the territory as long as we don't concede scores, however this does usually result in 3 midfielders fighting for a clearance against 4 or 5. Also, I think Gawn's tap value is often overstated and we actually often look better when Jackson is rucking in stoppages around the ground, because he was able to even up the midfielder numbers around the ball whilst still allowing us to play an extra number off the back of the contest. I would like to see our scores from stoppage vs scores conceded from stoppage. I'd say we're probably right near the top (although that's just an educated guess) of that. They're my thoughts but I'd be interested in others having a look themselves to see if they can dig down into it a bit more.

I think his style of play is often an important difference in our midfield. It's so hard to create scoring opportunities in the modern game that you need players that can beat a tackle to create space where there is none. He's not a great kick, quite one sided, and not a 'finesse' player but they would be nice add ons to his game rather than important to his role. I suppose I'd like Max Gawn to be a better crumber too, but it's not that important to his role. He's not a perfect midfielder but he's an incredibly good one, not just for the times he has the ball but especially for the times he doesn't have the ball. He's a 'glue guy' in the stoppages, that makes all the others play better. If you're only looking at what happens when he gets the ball then you'll never see his value. He is often willing to take a risk to score, which is important because scoring is so difficult. Here are some interesting stats for Viney this year (AFL wide rankings) that bear this out (footywire.com): I've marked the most interesting bits: Clearances. Turnovers. Inside 50s. Scores. Excellent at winning contested footy and clearances. Ordinary ball user. The way he plays results in us scoring goals. He's a player who will annoy those who focus on shortcomings because he makes mistakes and humans, being loss averse, notice bad stuff more than they notice good stuff. But his mistakes are outweighed by his unique abilities, including winning one on one contests in stoppages, defense in stoppages (and contests) and his ability to beat an opposition defender and therefor punch a hole the opposition's team defence. Compare that to the other players that could play that role (AVB, Melksham, Sparrow ....) and he becomes even more important.

So your biggest issue with this whole thing is that the specific footage that I used for a joke on an internet forum during the offseason was from 2019 instead of 2020? OK, you got me. I concede.

I will say that Viney's abilities inmaking the stoppages function is only something that I've recently developed an appreciation for. I had a vague idea of what Viney was doing and also though that his play may have been cannibalising the play of the other midfielders, but his high B&F placing made me do a double take and question why the coaches rated him so much more highly than me/us (comfortably ahead of Oliver). It was only then that I went back to have a good look at the stoppages to see what exactly the players were doing (which is what the coaches would do) and how well each of them performed their role in each stoppage. It became pretty obvious that Viney was the best at his role and had a greater variety of roles depending who was in the stoppage with him, plus he was able to recover the fastest once the play broke down to defend.

This is closest I could find: