Axis of Bob

This is the full list of (vaguely) AFL standard key forwards selected after pick 14 in the draft prior to 2022. This ignores those that were mature players redrafted (eg, doesn't include a 27 year old redrafted Mitch Brown but does include Ben Brown, Brodie Mihocek and Jake Ricciardi). 2021- Jacob Van Rooyen (18) 2020- None 2019- Mitch Georgiades (21), Harry Jones (30), Harry Petty (37), Jake Ricciardi (51) 2018- Jacob Koschitzke (52) 2017- Oscar Allen (21), Brodie Mihocek (Rookie pick 22), Joel Amartey (rookie pick 28) 2016- Todd Marshall (16), Nick Larkey (73), Mitch Lewis (76), 2015- None 2014- None 2013- Daniel McStay (25), Rory Lobb (29), Ben Brown (47), Matt Taberner (70) Over this time period there would have been about 1000 draft pick made, of which there were only about 15 decent young key forwards drafted outside of the first half of the first round. What you see here is how rare it is to draft these types of players successfully without the best picks. Van Rooyen isn't the norm, he's an absolute exception and one of Taylor's best ever draft picks. If we get a long term forward line out of Van Rooyen and Jefferson from late first round picks then they should build Jason Taylor (another) statue.

The key position/rucks Taylor's drafted with picks inside the first 2 rounds: Weideman (9), Petty (37), Jackson (3), Van Rooyen (19), Jefferson (15), Adams (38), Whilst it's too early to judge the success of Jefferson and Adams, the strike rate is really good. Everyone will reference the Weideman pick, which wasn't the best (albeit he's had a nearly 10 year AFL career so far) but the other picks have been unbelievably good. If Jefferson continues to develop then we'll have been able to get a 10 year forward structure out of two late first round picks, which is an absolute coup. There were really only about 4 or 5 talls worth picking in the 2021 draft, 3 of which were taken before our pick, and we got arguably the best one at 18 (Van Rooyen). Outside of that we really haven't even fired a shot at taller players in the draft. We clearly don't really rate talls in the back end of the draft and haven't really tried. Each of these players were taken early in Taylor's tenture and Oscar was probably a win, whilst the others weren't. You could argue Rosman was a tall but he was really drafted as a wingman. Late ND picks: Oscar McDonald (53), Mitch King (42), Liam Hullett (46) I would argue that Taylor has bee very successful drafting talls. however many supporters have tunnel vision because of how the Weideman pick played out. It'd be an interesting exercise to see if there are key forwards drafted after pick 15/18 in Taylor's time that could eventually be considered more successful picks than Van Rooyen and Jefferson.

That first year he turned a first rounder, a 3rd, a 5th and a 6th rounder plus 4 rookie picks into three 200 game players (Salem, Harmes and Hunt), a good ordinary player (JKH), a couple of mature fringe depth players (Clisby and Georgiou), a whiff (the real Max King) and a Neville Freaking Jetta (Nev, who played 118 games after being redrafted) is an outstanding draft based on the picks he had available to him. We took 2 of the 3 best players in the rookie draft, which is pretty good when there were 53 players selected. To call it 5/10 is hilariously underselling it, like picking up three 200 gamers is just what every team does on average. Particularly with only one pick under pick 40. For context, Collingwood (who Taylor had just come from) had picks 6, 10, 85 and 77, plus a rookie draft pick. They were Scharenberg (41 games), Freeman (2), T Langdon (89), Marsh (15) and Gault (6). If you add them up it's fewer games between them than from 3 individual players we drafted (not even including Jetta), and none of the Collingwood players have been on an AFL list since Jonathan Marsh was delisted by St Kilda in 2020.

The funny thing is that Jeremy McGovern, the 4 time All Australian, didn’t even play seniors until he was 22 years old.

Big boy forward which probably gives us a complementary skill set from Schache and Fullarton. Seems less mobile than them but willing to camp under the high ball and compete, which we need. Old fashioned style of forward so I’m excited to see how his skill set translates to AF L level. Going to be an interesting Casey team with Jefferson, Brown, Fullarton, Schache and Kentfield in the same forward line!

Josh Schache played the first 4 matches of the VFL season for Casey. In that time he kicked 11 goals (1, 4, 3 and 3) and is a very good VFL forward. He has since been injured and unable to play for Casey. In those games since Schache has been missing, Jefferson has played 4 games and kicked 11 goals 7. Jefferson has struggled to do the running needed to impact the game as often the fourth tall/marking forward in the team behind Schache, Fullarton and Brown (and McAdam, and sometimes Turner). That will take time and preseasons as his body matures. But when he's being asked to do a bigger load as a key forward target, as he has been in the past 4 matches where Casey have played 2, 3, 2 and 2 tall forwards) he's stepped up and performed well. We have some capable tall forwards that can play AFL in JVR, Petty and Turner, so there's no rush to get Jefferson in. Just let him keep getting continuity as his body and tank build. It's slow, boring, but also much more likely to work.

No it isn't. He elected to bump instead of contesting the ball, and the result of that bump was a broken jaw to a player that actually was trying to contest the ball. That's a very open and shut case. I know you take pride in trying to be a contrarian but arguing in favour of more head injuries (especially a really obvious incident like this) is an odd hill to die on.

Using your analogy, if a person is walking down the road then a car driver should aim at them because it isn't their fault if kill a pedestrian when there are cars around. In that scenario, that driver would rightly go to jail. It is upon those people to take reasonable actions to avoid inflicting serious harm on the other person. Streets are dangerous places where over 1000 people die each year. We try to manage roads so that people don't pay with their lives, in the same way that we manage the laws of the game so that people don't get picked off away from the play and spend the next 2 months being fed through a straw.

I wonder if that will comfort him for the next month or so as he spends his match days running sets of 400m by himself.

Oh no, not our second round pick (would have been pick 41) and our end of second round James Jordon compensation pick (would have been pick 45)!!! Won't somebody please think of the children!

Didn't do any preseason due to his foot injury. Came into the AFL team off just a couple of half VFL games (where he also struggled) and people are surprised that he is struggling to get involved. Running is a very important part of playing AFL football and Petty hasn't been able to do any due to a long term foot injury. If you can't run then you can't play.

10 goals to 2 in the second half and only gave up 5 goals all match. Demonland can be the absolute worst sometimes.

At the point of contact with the player (who is contesting the ball), Greene was not contesting the ball. Your words even say this, that he was "up and until it was deflected and a collision was imminent". As such, when the offence occurred, Greene was not contesting the ball and therefore committed a reportable offence. He has two options once he is jumping at the ball: 1) Contest the ball, or 2) stop contesting the ball and protect the player who is still contesting the ball. He chose to stop contesting the ball and made no effort to minimise the harm to the other player's head. That's a reportable offence.

If he was contesting the ball then he wouldn't be in the brace position, he would be reaching for the ball. GWS can try to argue that he's contesting the ball but it'll only need that one photo of him bumping the head with his arms tucked in to show that he wasn't. Just because he jumped with the intention of contesting the ball doesn't mean he was contesting the ball when he bumped into the face of his opponent. If the player he was jumping to was Jesse Hogan or a small child then he wouldn't have braced himself to bump, he would have shown some form of protection. A collision of some kind may have been inevitable but bracing yourself to bump your opponent with your shoulder was not inevitable. If one person is contesting the ball and the other isn't, then the responsibility for the collision lies with the non-contesting player. Greene messed up by not trying to protect the player contesting the ball and, at best, treated the player contesting the ball with negligent indifference.

If he marked it then he would have been contesting the ball, which is legal. Bumping the face whilst not contesting the ball is reportable.

The hit rate on category B rookies is very low, but the hit rate on the dregs of under 18/VFL/country league players is also low. Recruiters aren’t trying to draft VFL players, they’re drafting potential AFL players. There are heaps of guys who can play VFL but have a ceiling that is almost worthless at AFL level, so drafting any of them is a waste of time and resources. Recruiters can be pretty certain what they’ll get with those players, with the range of potential outcomes being very narrow. At least drafting a 206cm kid who hasn’t played much before exposed you to a very wide range of outcomes, some of which might include being a valuable AFL player. Whilst the average category B rookie will be much worse than a state league player, the likelihood that they’ll be a valuable AFL player is probably significantly higher. Jason Taylor isn’t a VFL recruiter, he’s an AFL recruiter.

I have similar thoughts but probably for slightly different reasons. Since the evolution of tactics in AFL, from an '18 one on ones' style before the mid-2000s, we now have an ability to refine the gameplan far more to suit the philosophies of the coach and the personnel they have available to them. In that time (last 20 years) pretty much every good team has set that balance of attack and defence in a similar way ... except for us. 2005 Sydney - defensive gameplan with great forwards (Hall, O'Loughlin, Goodes etc) and undersized defenders (Barry and Bolton) 2006 West Coast - attacking gameplan with great defenders (built around Glass and Wirrpanda) with ordinary forwards (Hansen and Lynch) 2000s Geelong - attacking gameplan with great defenders (Scarlett, Enright, Mackie, Milburn, Harley, Taylor/Egan etc) with comparatively ordinary forwards (Mooney, N Ablett, then smalls like Johnson etc) 2000s Hawthorn - defensive gameplan with great forwards (Buddy and Roughy) and undersized/ordinary defenders (Gibson, Gilham, Lake, Spangher etc). 2010s Richmond - defensive gameplan with great forwards (Riewoldt, Dusty, Lynch) and comparitively ordinary defenders (Rance for 2017, but just Astbury, Broad, Grimes, Vlastuin thereafter). 2023 Collingwood - attacking gameplan with great defenders (Moore, Quaynor, Howe, Maynard etc) and a bad forward line (Mihocek, Elliott, McStay). We have been different, with our strength being our amazing defence (May, Lever), ordinary forward line but still going for a defensive gameplan. The reason why this is mismatched is because the marginal gain of May and Lever is small when you set up your team to protect them whilst, at the other end, you're asking JVR and Ben Brown to compete against the odds all game (which they aren't really good enough to do). As an example, Richmond beat Geelong in the 2020 GF because the game was tight and congested, with scoring difficult. At 3/4 time they led 46-44 (7 goals to 6), so it was hard to score. In the last quarter they kicked 5 goals to win it (Prestia, Lynch, Dusty, Riewoldt, Dusty). Between Dusty, Riewoldt and Lynch, they kicked as many goals as Geelong did. Defending was easy with the extra numbers - kicking goals against those extra numbers was hard and that's why Richmond's best players were the ones to do it. Conversely, Collingwood could get relatively easy goals in 2023 (Hill, Elliott, Michocek, Ginnivan, McCreery and Frampton had 19 contested possessions between them - about 3 each on average) because they kept numbers forward and relied on their more talented defenders to win the difficult contests. You don't need to make the job easier for your good players because they're going to win you more of those really important contests (like Dusty against 2 opponents, or May one on one against Curnow), so they don't need as much support. But if you can then use those extra numbers somewhere else to make it easier (like supporting Astbury in defence, or playing an extra forward to allow Ben Brown a 1-on-1 and space to lead) then you're helping them enormously. May and Lever may help a defensive plan reduce the opposition's score by 20 points, but an attacking plan could help our forwards kick 30 extra points because they need that extra help a lot more than May and Lever do. tldr; Teams usually create game plans to add support where they need it most, trusting their best players to play well without support. We've given May and Lever too much support when they don't need it, and I am happy that we're now giving that support to our forwards (who do need it). Also sorry it was so rambling!

I would be delighted to see a quote showing me where I said this. In return I will show you the quotes where I said that umpiring isn’t particularly important and has very little impact overall, which is not the same thing. Basically I think we’re arguing different points. I also accept that you don’t like metaphors/analogies as a way of further supplementing an argument. It would be like a dog that doesn’t like eating its dinner anymore because it knows someone has hidden a heartworm tablet inside. 🙂

I didn’t say it can’t affect things, I said it is not important. This was especially so in a Melbourne context where it had no discernible effect on us last year. That was the whole point of the trend/noise discussion - umpiring variability can affect things in the very short term but, overall, it has such little impact that it’s barely worth thinking about. Certainly not the obsession that seems to be in this thread. As for the metaphor, it is to help people understand what is being spoken about. The point had originally been made with noise and trend but this way was more inclusive for those who may not have understood the concept. As a recovering teacher, I usually prefer to help people access new concepts. If you already understood it then you didn’t need the help. It’s also more fun.

This is called randomness or noise. There are hundreds of decisions to be made every game and there is an element of randomness in those decisions due to the 'grey areas', as you say. But over the course of a game, a season or an era, it doesn't affect it as it's just noise. This randomness only makes the most miniscule of differences to a result, if any. Think about it like somebody walking in the park with a dog on a lead. The dog will wander all over the place, but by the end of its walk it ends up near the owner holding the lead. The owner is the trend, as they just walk in a straight line towards the end of the park, whilst the dog is the noise. In the end it doesn't matter what the dog does because the owner determines where they end up. In football, the team performance is the owner and the umpire's performance is the dog. Worrying about what the dog's doing is a fool's errand.

This is the 'I trust my eyes' argument. If it was an issue surely there would be some evidence of it. Richmond won the flag in 2017, 2019 and 2020. Across that 4 year stretch they were comfortably the best performing team. Their free kick differential across the 4 years from 2017-2020 .... 18th, 18th, 13th and 17th. They were easily the team with the least favourable frees for/against ratio in the league across those four years, and they won 3 flags and should have won the other. Last year the most favourable free kick ratio was Freo (finished 14th on the ladder) and the worst was Port (finished 3rd). It's just not very important in the grand scheme of things.

Firstly, it was round 10, 2021 (3 years ago), so there's that ..... Secondly, umpiring has very little to do with the result of a game of football. Last year we played 24 games. The free kick count was equal in two of those games. In the remaining 22 games, the team winning the free kick count won 11 games and lost the other 11 games. The winning team had the most free kicks literally 50% of the time!! It had no statistical impact on who won the game! If that doesn't show you how much of a non-issue it is then I don't know what will.

For the amount of complaining in this thread about umpiring, a reader might be mistaken for thinking that it was actually a really important part of the game.

Windsor has already shown us that he’s got pace, class and is a road runner up the wing with defensive intent. He’s shown that he’s a safe bet as a decade long wingman even if he just maintains his current level. Being that, I’ve been very impressed with his ability to do some work in tight spaces at AFL pace. He’s winning some impressive contested balls and using his athleticism in closer to extract himself and using it really well under a lot of pressure. This is beyond what you’d typically expect from a wingman. He definitely shows a lot of scope for future midfield time, which would be a plane pleasant bonus. It is only very early in his career but he’s shown enough to think that there is a possibility he could develop into a better player than we (in the public) imagined.

Close. It depends on what the average is for shots taken at each location. For instance, a shot from the goal square is converted, say, at 95% accuracy on average. So, on average, you should score 5.75 points from that shot at goal in average (95% x 6 points + 5% x 1 point). But from 40m out directly in front you would kick a goal 50% of the time, a point 40% and no score 10%. So you have an expected score of 3.4 points (0.5x6 + 0.4x1 + 0.1x0). The expected score just stops counting before you kick at goal without caring if you miss, whilst the actual score cares very much about whether or not you miss.