Watson11

Like this last week that didn’t even get a free against.

Toby will probably get a week as it’s intentional, high contact, low force. Maynard does what Toby did 5x a game. He tackles players and then sticks his forearm on their head and pushes down and mouths off. Maynard example from last week didn’t take long to find, wasn’t a free, and not a single comment from any commentator about how pathetic it is.

That must be out of date. Geelong have lost to GWS twice and Brisbane twice. They are not even close to #1 against top 8 teams. Dogs are 9-0 against bottom 10 teams with a percentage of about 500%. They are easily #1 against bottom 10. Did you find this graphic on a Geelong fan forum site?

Thanks. On my must read list.

Good pod as always. @binman what was the book you mentioned that had data on coaches not impacting sports performance. I missed the name, so googled “coach impact on team sports performance” and only came up with stuff saying coaches have a big impact. This study stating 20-30% of performance was down to the coach was top of the list. University of Chicago NewsHow much do coaches impact success in sports?For pro and college teams, leadership can make a big difference.

That’s fair. Tracc is not the same player as he was pre injury yet. His kicking efficiency is his poorest ever. But his score involvement percentage is still ridiculously high. It was 35% of disposals since 2020 down to 30% this year which is still really elite. Which contradicts what the marks inside 50 data suggests.

Kicking efficiency is such a useless stat. It rewards 15m backwards kicks that are a far worse outcome than a kick to a lead inside 50 that falls short but still might result in a score. If you want a meaningful stat, then Wheeloratings also has Kick Rating made up of Risk Rating and Retention Rating. It’s only available for teams from what I can tell. @WheeloRatings Are the individual player kick ratings available? Our team retention rating is 5th in the AFL so it’s not too bad overall. I’d love to know where each of our players sit compared to other teams, as that would actually be useful.

Of course fitness plays a huge part but you are right that it’s probably more psychology than anything. But what is your explanation for our amazing 37-7 run that took in the flag? During that run it was the same players and skill level. Interestingly we were either behind or even at 1/2 time or after in 26 of those games yet only lost 7. That is not a first half record of a team that would normally even make finals. If we were not super fit and mentally didn’t believe we were super fit during that run we probably finish bottom 6 in 2021.

That last statement is factually incorrect. More than often it does happen. The AFL era is now 38 years and in 21 of those years the flags are part of a repeat or 3 peat. 10 of the one off premiers played in a GF the year before or after as well. But it could be that everything went right in 2021 for us. If you just looked at our first halves or into 3rd quarters that year we were not looking like a premiership team. We were either behind or even in 11 home and away games at half time or after that we came back and won. Think about what 2021 would have looked like if we finished games like we have in 22 or after.

And yet Longmire said “We had a great uptick when we changed completely… one of the reasons why I went and got Don Pyke, I thought Don Pyke was one of the best attack coaches in the competition and I was very strong with my defensive philosophies, and I thought he was able to balance that out a fair bit.” Sydney missed finals in 2019 and 2020 and were bottom 4 for scoring yet changed completely in the 21 preseason to become the second highest scoring team and only miss top 4 on percentage. Clearly Longmire was being gentle on Adam Simpson who completely stuffed West Coast. Good coaches can get teams to change over a preseason even if it’s difficult. Longmire is a good coach. Macrae is a good coach. Plenty of other examples.

Expected score ???

Do you really need to call out specific incidents or just look at the Frees For leaderboard. Some of the ruck infringements given against Max were ridiculous.

I suspect every supporter thinks their team has quite a few butchers who can’t kick. It’s our confirmation bias. @WheeloRatings has a great stat that measures field kick retention rating compared to the average kick from and to the same location in games. We actually have a pretty good kick retention rating when accounting for all the other variables. It’s a much better measure than kicking efficiency (where we are ranked #2). But we are way behind the better teams in the risks we take by foot. Goalkicking is a separate issue. We are #18 by some margin in difference between expected score and actual score. The crows have a 3 goal advantage over us just because they are stacked with brilliant kicks for goal.

Wow. Those other three games resulted in an average losing margin of 92.3 points!

Sometimes horrendous pressure ratings are structural. Sam Mitchell spoke about it after they got walloped by the Pies, making the point that they just did not get in the right positions to apply pressure and tackle, ending up with only 38 tackles. It looked like we were the same. The Saints just got extras back into our forward line and then had loose players everywhere when they ran it out. We were totally unable to get near them. It reminded me of the performance against Geelong where we just let them have the extras in defense.