Watson11

The value of a 208cm forward target in a full on pressure final was shown by Cox when he wiped Richmond in the first half of the prelim, and Gawn is 5x better than Cox. When forward Max can take big grabs, and with 10 or 11 goals enough to win a close GF a few goals from Max/Preuss when forward could be the difference. Just having Max fresh in September will be huge. I love that the footy department are just leaving nothing to chance, and don’t have the “ain’t broke don’t fix it mentality.” Even if we win every game and the flag in 2019, we should still be looking to improve.

Maybe but I’ll back Max and Preuss to lay more forward 50 tackles than Hogan did last year.

Judging by the number of photos posted in the last 4 weeks of Preuss versus May there is no way that Goody isn’t locked in on Preuss spending time forward as the 3rd tall. Hopefully it works well all season. Will be really valuable in low scoring finals.

Just like Preuss has been handcuffed to Max.

SWYL, I seem to recall you have a tv industry background. Any interaction with Pert when he was MD of channel 9 in Melbourne? @rpfc, you sound like an old melbournian upset at losing guaranteed board seats whenever you wanted them. I’m happy those days are gone. I personally think the board and Bartlett have been excellent. He was spot on when he labelled MFC soft on and off the field in his first speech 5 years ago. MFC is no longer soft in either. Everything done by MFC in the last 5 years has been about losing that soft gentlemen club tag, game style, list management, player trades. I can’t imagine prior boards approving tough decisions like trading Watts. For me the Pert appointment is just another decision where the soft option would have been an internal appointment. Only time will tell if Pert delivers which will be almost entirely measured by delivering a facility in the MCG precinct, which he is uniquely qualified to do.

Hawthorn have won 13 premierships in 50 years by being arrogant. Hawthorns leaders like Matthews, Scott, Brereton, Dipper, Lewis, Hodge etc all got suspended, all gave away 50m penalties, all could be called undisciplined. I’m happy to take the occasional “undisciplined act” to get some of that culture into Melbourne, and hope Lewis gets his 5th flag. Even if he doesn’t, he is sure helping by turning up in peak condition and showing the list what it takes to take the next step.

Geez I liked Melbourne 20 years ago. Less congestion, could afford a decent house, less crime, less traffic. Is Adelaide really that good? I’ll have to visit.

Bit rough calling Puopolo an out the back player. But your point is spot on. Forwards who can’t create turnovers are now a liability. If Jeff wants to play 22 games he doesn’t need 40 goals, he needs 100 tackles. He has never done that in a season and hasn’t been close since his first year at Melbourne. Puopolo and Rioli pretty much did it every year at Hawthorn. Jeff goes into this year a bit like Bugg went into 2018. He’s on his absolute last chance. One poor defensive game and that is his career done.

Haha. Maybe you and other Luddites can package that up and sell it to the footy department. Who knows, maybe they are predicting improvements in players based on age and games played. I wouldn’t know. Big data and machine learning is being applied everywhere whether you think it works or not. Champion data can never predict injuries, but big European and US teams are measuring every training session and game and have been applying big data and machine learning to non contact injury prevention for several years. They don’t publish much for obvious reasons, but BarcelonaFC recently published 2014 data that showed they can predict 60% of non contact injuries and thus can prevent them. I’m sure that has improved in the last 4 years. They have huge budgets and are way ahead of the AFL. Maybe this is also happening in the AFL. Point that started all of this is despite your opinion and comments on the CD list rating they have no user bias in the analysis of the data at all. It is just data and unbiased processing of it, with all of its limitations ie garbage in garbage out. I personally think it is pretty good in, pretty good out. It’s not perfect. Time to move on.

Yes after every game the model is updated with those stats and the result. Because the model is based on many years of data, each game only changes it a small amount. The player ratings change far more after each game, as they are based on only 2 years and weighted to the most recent. The intent of all of this data is simply to make CD lots of money, because the professional clubs pay big $ for it. The professional clubs pay for it because it gives them unbiased insights into what the really important stats are that give teams an edge. Watch Moneyball if you have not seen it. It's where all this data stuff really started. Clarkson was the first in the AFL to use data and built his 4x premiership list using it.

One on one loss stats for 2018 are below showing the top 20 ranked key position defenders. Name 2018 Career Will Schofield 15.1% 19.9% Jake Lever 15.4% 30.6% Harry Taylor 16.7% 15.4% Lachie Henderson 16.7% 22.8% Sam Frost 17.6% 26.7% James Frawley 18.4% 25.0% Alex Keith 18.5% 32.8% Daniel Tahlia 18.9% 20.5% Heath Grundy 20.3% 22.6% Steven May 21.4% 23.2% Robbie Tarrant 21.7% 27.8% Scott Thompson 23.5% 26.7% Tom Jonas 23.6% 24.3% Alex Rance 25.0% 21.3% Phil Davis 25.3% 31.1% Lynden Dunn 26.1% 22.4% Oscar McDonald 26.7% 25.1% David Astbury 27.5% 24.7% Jeremy McGovern 27.6% 19.4% Jake Carlisle 27.6% 24.6% Michael Hurley 27.6% 29.1%

Can't predict injuries, modified game plans, improvements in players or teams, poor form or loss of confidence. So no one knows for sure what will happen in round 1 next year let alone the entire season. Where they are good is when the siren goes at the end of our round 1 game, you could put the stats into one of these models and it would predict the winner with 99% accuracy. We just can't predict what those stats will be before the game with any certainty. All this tells us is based on the data we have a very, very good list.

You are correct in that humans at the moment record the stats (and need to decide what is a 1%er, tap to advantage, effective kick etc). But no human decides how to weight the various stats. When you train these systems, you start with all the stats as inputs, and you know the result the model needs to give for each game (Team A won by X points). The system repeatably adjusts parameters (weights) until it gets the correct answer, and repeats that for every game in its database. What you end up with is a model that given a set of input stats will predict the result, and that is simply how the lists are ranked. I

Nope that's wrong. They just put all the data in and train the model. The training of the model weights the stats. Not a human. Then they put the stats of each list in and put that into the model to weight the list. It's just data. As was made clear it can't account for everything and is imperfect, but there is no assumptions put in.

Not sure who says we have had the best defence by a country mile. But definitely have never agreed with your view that the problem has been that our key defenders are hopeless one on one defenders.

CD just uses data and they make no assumptions. They use machine learning, specifically a convolutional neural network (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolutional_neural_network). Consider it a "brain" that has no pre-concieved assumptions but hundred of millions of ways to combine information. They just train the network on the data they have (well over 20 years of comprehensive data), putting in the stats for each game and the result. The limitation is the stats don't cover everything, as that is impossible to do, and they don't take into account things like injuries, the draw, player improvements etc. They do measure a lot though. The list is just a ranking based on this information and simply tells us in an unbiased way that we have a very very good list. As Prodee says though the premier can come out of any of the top 10 teams on that list.

One good thing about stats is they don’t suffer from confirmation bias. Not all us supporters know our defence was our weakness. Some of us attribute our habit of leaking goals to our forward 50 and midfield pressure going missing at times.

Based on the stats West Coast's midfield was middle of the road for most of 2018. They had a 3 week purple patch that just happened to co-incide with the finals, helped hugely by Gaff replaced by Redden who averaged around 15 CPs through the finals. Adelaide will be top 4 this year.

Won the 20m sprint at the combine. 2nd in goal kicking comp and his skills look good. Had big stats in TAC cup. Memo to JT. Pick him up in the rookie draft and sort out whatever other problem made everyone pass. Can’t be any worse than Dusty and he went pick 3.

Has this kid not been picked up?

I was a huge Jesse fan, and argued we should keep him over May, but in hindsight I can see the logic of the trade and now think we are a much better chance to win a flag in 2019, so JM gets a big tick from me. IF we win a flag this year, imo it will be because of improving 3 things: 1. A forward line that can kick goals when the ball is bombed in. 2. Forwards and mids who consistently pressure. 3. A defence that holds up. Jesse out, Weid+May+Preuss in helps all 3 of the above immediately. For Jesse to be the difference we would need a midfield with elite inside 50 footskills to make the most of his speed. That is something we could develop, but we just don’t have it yet.

I’ll take a bath and drink some of the water while I dream about the next 4 flags in a row....

In the US the NFL draw is biased but not as badly as ours. They have groups where every team plays the others twice in that group which creates some equity in their group. The AFL could do something similar: 1. Two conferences of nine teams (5 Vic and 4 interstate) who play each other twice. To be fair each conference to have 1 team from each non vic state and split the smaller supporter bases (Saints, North, dogs, us). That is 16 games. 2. Other 6 games play against teams from the other conference including two games against a rival ie showdown, Coll v Mel if needed etc. These games are also based on ladder position from prior seasons with 2 games (one home and one away) against 1-3, 2 against 4-6 etc. means playing 5 of the teams in the other group with one double up. 3. Finals could just be top 4 from each conference and same as current series. Or ditch the pre finals bye and have the 4th from each conference play a wildcard team from the best performed 5th and 6th from both conferences to make the final 8. Would even up the travel for all teams, not lose rivalry games, and the draw difficulty would be much closer for everyone. Conference strength would change year to year but come finals it would be fair.

Better than most comparisons. Funny to look at the 2018 analysis that had us as the equal 3rd most difficult draw! Yet everyone else saying we had an easy draw by the end of the season. I don't mind our double ups and difficulty of the draw. In 2018 Richmond, Geelong, and Hawthorn were handed ridiculously good schedules. In 2019 all the top teams have tough schedules due to more Thursday night games. I think the top end of the draw is fairer this year. I also think it helps us as there is a lot of "veterans" in the other top teams that will be more injury prone than our younger list.

Now the draw is out time for ladder predictions Adelaide (soft draw) Melbourne (6/6/6 and learnt to pkay the G) GWS (soft draw) WC (Sheed has stepped up to solve their cp weakness) Richmond (Drop back because still weak around the contest 6/6/6 will affect them) Collingwood (Tough draw, backing Melbourne but could swap with 2nd if they have our measure) North (Ok draw and will improve) Essendon (May just scrape in) Hawthorn (Too old) Brisbane (Big improvers) Sydney (Drop back some more) Dogs (Soft draw) Geelong (Tough first 12 weeks. Season over by the bye) Fremantle (Improve over last year) Port (Cooked) St Kilda Carlton GC