Watson11

I don't know why Cornes triggers supporters. He will say stuff to grab headlines and is open about why he does it. But he is a good analyst of the game. He has no agenda against Melbourne and is calling it how he sees it. He went on the Deeluded podcast in July 2021 and predicted us as premiers reminding everyone how good and underrated Fritsch is, how BB will come good that year, how good our defence was etc etc. He is different to say Dermott, someone with a hatred of MFC, who even after we won the flag hardly conceded it happened.

Only can be good or bad. Have you ever seen one of these things...

Although its interesting to look at Traccs stats and impact. He played mostly forward up to 2019 and he was involved in 22-29% of our scores when he was a forward. Since 2020 when he went midfield, the impact was immediate and he has been involved in 33-37.5% of our scores. He has been number 1 or 2 for score involvements in the AFL for 4 years. By comparison, Clarry's best year was 2021 with involvement in 28.7% of scores, but he has generally averaged around 26% (dropping to 19% this year). But this is probably for a different thread. On topic, I'll be interested to see which Port turn up this week. Hopefully they are busy drinking their bathwater.

Do you really think Tracc needs to play forward? We need stars in the midfield. And with his spleen injury and the way we bomb it into our forward line, it would be the last place he would want to be.

So that would mean only 2 finals in Melbourne 6v7 and the GF. 2006 was close. Top 4 were all interstate.

That’s such a ridiculous argument. I mean by 2013 Hawthorn only had 9 of their 2008 premiership list still playing. It just happened they were all absolute A-graders which is what premiership teams are built around. Same with us. It was actually 10 players and included Max, Tracc, Viney, Salem, Brayshaw, and Oliver. Also Jesse Hogan who turned into May and Sparrow. That was the core of a premiership list. Also included Hibberd, Harmes, TMac, and ANB, as well as Joel Smith and Hunt that were injured, and of course Jones. Goody had a lot of A-graders and top 10 draft (and top 3) picks to build premiership team with.

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Considering that every coach who has coached as many games as Hinkley has got their team to a GF and Hinkley hasn’t, it’s a lost final or two from exploding again.

Nah. They’re doing heavy loading. Not joking either. PS Not an excuse, just a reason…

Does it make any sense that Geelong are paying $1.31. Dogs are paying $1.32. Crows have lost their last 5 against Geelong and not won at the cattery since 2003.

I think this is spot on with another factor. I’m always surprised at who is the quickest in the GF sprint. You could probably throw a blanket over 50 afl players over a 40m sprint. But give them a footy and I would expect some who are classic sprinters become plonkers. They just lose all their power. Kossie, Windsor, Hunt etc and others seem to be efficient with a ball in hand while plenty of others (say Chandler) who are super quick without a ball drop right back to the pack.

Another viewpoint is May had the strength to matchup on Hogan while TMac didn’t. Hogan didn’t get many 1 on 1 opportunities until that 7 minute patch. And when he did get them he monstered T-Mac, kicked 3 quick goals, and they won by 2 points.

Lamb and Mahoney had different jobs. Did you mean to compare Lamb and Viney Snr?

That was the year before which was also poor. INS: Schache, Hunter, Grundy OUTS: Hunt, Bedford, Wiedeman Lloyd Meek, who was unwanted at Freo that year, would have worked much better for us as a backup to Max than Grundy. And he would have been good for 6-8 years.

That was always going to happen. Even last time when Darcy and Jackson were up against Max they won 15 hit-outs to advantage against Max. Our only chance was to crowd stoppages. I was watching and counting numbers at stoppages at the start hoping we would crowd them and could not believe what I saw. Below are the first 2 non CB stoppages. What you can't see at the first is that Jordan Clark was 5m off to the left by himself and Darcy tapped it in that direction for an easy clearance. No idea what Chandler and Throlstrup were doing. The second boundary throw in shows it better as its wide angle. Freo brought their high half forward (Frederick) and we had to have Sparrow pick him up, meaning Freo just had numbers on the outside that could do what they liked. Then we reset at half time. In the third we started crowding stoppages (see third stoppage). We have everyone there. That worked better but the game was done by then.

Thanks for pointing that out. BTW, good article. But including loose ball gets as a contested possession seems confusing. In the passage of play shown, if the soccer by Heeney had bounced in front of Clark does it become an CP to Clark rather than UP?

This will be a tricky one. MFC and Geelong were bottom 6 for pressure act difference in premiership years. Pies must have been lucky to win last year as they were 8th while the deserved premiers (GWS or ourselves) were bottom 4. I guess when you have the ball more the opposing team has lots of opportunities to create pressure.

@binman I'll just start by saying Goody will be a legend simply because he led us to a flag after a 57 year drought, no matter what his final W-L record is or how many flags he ends up with. Same as Roos at the Swans or Beveridge at the Dogs or Bomber Thompson (who for some strange reason you left out) at Geelong. BTW Bomber coached 264 games, won 2 flags, and had a W-L record of 62% (and a finals W-L record of 57.9%) so he has Goody covered in every metric. Of coaches to coach at least 150 games, have >50% W-L record, and win 1 premiership, there are actually not 14 but 34 coaches. Did you mean to say 150 games, better W-L record than Goody, and at least 1 premiership. If you had then the list would have been 18 coaches. But in this list only 2 have not won multiple flags (Goody and Longmire). So on behalf of all demonlanders, I request Goody win another flag so he can fix that anomaly. PS How did you leave Checker Hughes out of your list? 348 games coached, 6 GFs, 4 flags, 65.4% W-L record.

It was probably even numbers at them but that’s down to the bombers following our half forwards in to keep it even. Throlstrup and Chandler were at a lot of stoppages (stoppage below was the first I found in 2 minutes trying to freeze frame on a wing stoppage). It meant the stoppages were a contested slog and we had more space in our forward line. Jones and Luke Hodge both commented on it. I hope it was not a once off. It would be a mistake to give Freo an extra at stoppages or an open stoppage setup next week.

I would stay with JVR and Petty as well. I am praying it’s wet next Sunday and we have no change. Freo will have a huge hit out to advantage benefit and it will be easier for us to nullify if it’s wet and slippery. Last time they beat Max in hitouts to advantage (+6), smashed us in clearance (+25), resulting in +14% in time in forward half and +42 points in score from stoppage. But more important on who rucks is whether Goody sticks with the stoppage structures from last night regardless of the weather. We went in with a plan to bring extras to the stoppages to nullify Drapers advantage, something Goody has been reluctant to do even when it’s wet. The benefits were pretty obvious (winning more clearances and a more open forward line). We actually have a very quick forward line that is dangerous when it’s not crowded, but completely ineffective when there is no space.

You need to stop thinking about it from the individual player perspective. When we watch the game the ball moves back and forth until a score. So one side move the ball forward and add to their metres gained until the other side gets possession and moves it the other way and add to their metres gained. It’s effectively a net zero game until a goal where the side that kicked it will effectively be +85m. It then goes back to the centre and goes back and forth and if the same side kicks the next goal they have another +85m and are +170m up. And so on and so on. As an example, our dreadful 25 goal bombers loss in 2013 had our metres gained difference as -2365m, which is mostly due to the 28 times it went through the Essendon goals and back to the centre to be repeated. After that happened 20x and Essendon were +1700m, can you tell me any plausible way we could have evened it up that day without scoring goals?

That’s fair enough. It’s pretty rare that backwards kicks are turned over so they are probably a minor factor, Also tap outs, spoils, knockons, throw ins etc make small differences. But generally, as you point out, every metre made by a team is made back by the opposition until there is a score. So as far as metres gained differential goes, there is an extremely high correlation between winning and metres gained difference irrespective of game style. Raw metres gained is different as game style will impact that. A case in point is our Geelong game this year that had very few stoppages and very high 6294m v 6207m gained. The raw metres gain stat tells you a bit about how the game was played but overall the differential barely tells you anything that the scoreboard doesn’t.

@demosaw is actually almost spot on. In a hypothetical game where neither side kicks a goal or a point, and the ball happens to finish the end of every quarter in the centre circle, both sides will have identical metres gained regardless of how many inside 50s or how much time in fwd half they have. Each time a side kicks a goal, they get an automatic 85-90m benefit based on the ground size. For each point a side kicks, they get a 10m benefit as the kickin side loses 10m. Then depending on where the qtr ends there is an adjustment. For points, the opposite applies to what you stated, as for every point kicked the side kicking out loses 10m gained no matter how far they kick it. It’s a pretty meaningless team measure really and I’ve always wondered why it’s recorded for teams (I understand it’s meaningful for individual players). If you want to check some big differentials, just go look at games with 20 goal margins like WC last year. They lost metres gained by around 2000.

They were effectively 4 games clear on top of the ladder 2 weeks ago and are still effectively 3 games and massive percentage clear of 5th. If any team was ever going to smash the players with a 4-5 week block of heavy training to prepare for finals, its the Swans right now. The form of the last 2 weeks is an meaningless. They are a well run club and their current form is not a surprise.

To be honest, your two very long posts might have a lot of valid points in them, but you lost me when you said Goody took over a rubbish team. In 2016 our ladder position all season was 9-11, and until the last game our percentage was 105% (up from 54% in 2013). If we had won our last 2 games in 2016 we would have made the 8 but we lost both. We had 4 top 3 draft picks playing that were clearly going to be stars, and Max had a breakout All Australian season. We added mature recruits that were right for the club and our young list. We were clearly going places which is why the 2017 preseason predictions had 90% of pundits predicting we would finish top 8. We were not rubbish. Mitchell took over a rubbish list at Hawthorn (as did Yze at Richmond). Goody didn’t.