Canary M Burns

Saw what looked to be pretty much the whole list out early in Yarra Park this morning doing an extra fitness session with kettle bells, rowing machine and the like. Didn't stand around and watch as it wasn't exactly footy stuff. For me Gus looks better in person than the training image everyone is talking about but I don't have any further insight. There are still questions about our best midfield mix and fewer sessions in the main group is unfortunately probably not the best prep. Dustin Martin was looking very fit over at Punt rd oval today, and seemed to be a few kgs down from last year. I've caught bits and pieces of the Gosch's sessions over the last couple of weeks. I'd agree that Sestan looks like the most comfortable of the draftees, I'd probably temper expectations for this year given he's pretty raw. You get some good things and some not so good things and I think they will want that gap bridged a bit before he's let loose. Schache has pleasantly surprised me watching how he performs in terms of intensity and tackling during the in-close drills.

Well done to Max for the new deal, great show of loyalty and getting it done early gives us plenty of time to work with Salem and Oliver on contracts. I would think the resigning of two of our higher paid players on long term deals also has a fair bit to do with the fact that we don't appear on the below list. If we aren't going down a collective path, there needs to be fairly extensive individual negotiations to get us under the cap for 2021. https://www.sen.com.au/news/2021/02/16/players-at-multiple-clubs-set-to-agree-to-collective-pay-cuts/

In terms of the 100m times, for reference Hunt ran 11.18 in the APS finals his final school year. I think in the pub test, if Salem did hit 34.8km/h v Sydney then you would expect with that he would have reached greater than 33.9km/h at another point in the season. The numbers have a fair margin of error and what is being presented are the outliers over the course of the season. In the bigger picture the players only do the running that the game plan and specific situations require them to. While not disputing what Dee Spencer said about running being one of the most important elements in footy, there is generally a negative correlation between running distance and winning. I haven't seen anyone look at it, but I wonder if having the highest speeds in a game is the same?

They are great for measuring distance covered, but the top speed stats put out by the GPS units are pretty sketchy as I understand it. The largest margin of error tends to be seen in sprints, particularly where direction is changing. The units really struggle on the fine scale and have issues in the indoor stadiums. There was talk about using a different method to capture the data taking cues from the NBA, however that was going to require an investment and is probably not something that would be a priority in the post Covid AFL. In having a look at some info on current day GPS units I came across this article from Deakin Uni. It talks about GPS use in the AFL context up to the 2012 season. Admittedly it's 8 years old, and surprisingly poorly written in parts, but presents an interesting insight into the take up and attitudes around the technology. https://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30049079/foreman-globalpositioningsystems-2012.pdf

Richard Little posts some really interesting graphics around ball movement on his twitter. Here is one he posted last night around both teams ball movement in the back half. It does seem repetitive but we retained the ball well and it was effective enough for the win. Defensive half turnovers are a massive momentum killer and disposal efficiency has been an issue for us this year. Did we have enough players in our back line last night who you can trust taking the kick into the corridor?

I'm with you Binman, those graphs have been very informative and the articles really well done. I think they are being generated with R or R studio which are free open source stats programs. The benefit being they are able to pull data from the web, and the process is recorded in code so users are able to copy and build on the work of others. The downside is the steep learning curve involved. There are a few AFL related links around to get started and a ton of more general intro material on the web. Its actually something that I'm needing to learn elsewhere, so its probably a useful skill to develop. It's big in the scientific community as it allows others to understand and interrogate your process as well as your results. Hopefully in the future I might have time to apply it to a bit of AFL data. https://analysisofafl.netlify.app/fitzroy/2018-05-04-make-your-own-afl-graphs/ https://www.crowdatascience.com/2020/07/16/introduction-afl-analytics-data-r/

You're right about the words I've used, definitions of outsourcing often but not always imply payment and doesn't quite fit the above examples. I've brought it up as I think they fit the topic of conversation in terms of utilising unpaid labour (and I'm not suggesting it will come in the form of youtubers or well meaning forum members) On outsourcing I'd say that there are certain functions that will be more cost effectively undertaken externally rather than in house. In other areas there is talk of some administrative functions currently undertaken on a club by club basis being brought back under an AFL umbrella. There is a drive to do more with less and it will be interesting to see how that happens.

Not as out of touch as it sounds. I agree that the Dee's media dept is producing some outstanding work but outsourcing under the reduced soft cap is something that will only grow. Richmond have even previously used graduate students in the fitness dept as a means of outsourcing some of the data collection grunt work (although that was a few years ago the person I spoke to was involved, may not still be the case) I would hazard a guess that any university alignments will only be increased by the covid related constraints to be placed in the future. https://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/2019/09/swinburne-extends-partnership-with-richmond-and-backs-tigers-aflw-team/ We've previously been linked with Monash University in our "Read like a Demon" program, its something that I think would be really interesting to explore further. https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/role-model-status-of-afl-players-drives-monash-university-and-melbourne-football-club-partnership

Mini post match presser with Matt Egan just posted up on the MFC site. Fritter sounds like he had a big day, although you would expect that from our leading goal kicker this year. RD 14 | Practice Match | Matt Egan

Great stuff Engorged Onion, its fascinating to get those insights especially the possible downsides of mindfulness within an elite program. The interface between game plans, fitness programs etc and the players who carry them out can be easy to overlook from all the way up on level 3. I was speaking with someone who had recently been working in strategy/analysis at an A League club. As part of this role he would put together videos every week for each player on their likely match ups with strengths/weaknesses and the like. With all the other things players have to do while at the club they were loaded on to i-pads for the players to go through in their own time. From memory he told me only about half would be watched.

A F's right, stats are a bit meaningless without context. Here is how both those elements look across the last 4 years, which I cant say matches my perception but its important to challenge the feel with numbers. 2019 has an asterix given we only won 5 games (small sample size) and one of those was against the Sun's where we lost uncontested possessions by 51 but fell over the line by a point. The trend is away from uncontested possessions in both wins and losses, which could be both our evolving gamestyle/zone but also the tendency of opposition teams in 2019-2020 to defend with the ball in hand. The stat is one element in a larger puzzle, but throws a bit of a light on trade offs happening as the team evolves and the difference between the 2018 Dees and the 2020 model. UP diff 2020 2019 2018 2017 Season avg -12.83 -19.9 8.2 25.7 Win avg 2.33 -16.2 25.125 31.9 Loss avg -28 -21 -21.88888889 18.2 Marks diff 2020 2019 2018 2017 Season avg -7.66 -5.2 3.16 0.1 Win avg 9 5 16.75 1.9 Loss avg -24.33 -8.3 -9 -2

Really interesting topic, spurred me to start an account to add to the discussion. The earlier talk about pressure acts prompted me to have a bit of a deep dive into the stat during our games this year. You'll be surprised to know we won pressure acts overall against the Dogs 271-231, so its certainly something to take with a grain of salt. Not sure how it goes posting big tables, so I've gone with a summary for now but what stuck out to me was that pressure acts wasn't a particularly good indicator in our wins and losses. Sure we often win when we put on good pressure, but looking at this stat alone changes in pressure acts are often small in percentage terms, and the average number of pressure acts from each of our forwards doesn't seem to change markedly at all. On first glance I'd say that game style of the opposition, time in possession, and weather conditions are playing a big part in the number of pressure acts in a game rather than effort alone. PA (for) PA Diff FWD PA (avg) UP diff Marks diff Season avg 253.5 3.5 10.48 -12.83 -7.66 Win avg 257.5 6.66 10.44 2.33 9 Loss avg 249.5 0.33 10.52 -28 -24.33 Given this unexpected outcome I added a few columns to see if anything else stood out across our wins and losses. Uncontested possession differential and marks differential really stood out to me. We've been soundly beaten for uncontested possessions in all our losses this year. It seems to agree with what we see on TV. The physical pressure is ok at the contest, but as other have mentioned we're off in our spread and ability to guard the space. So where to from here? I think we've seen this season the effects of changing the number of talls, mediums and smalls in our forward mix, but there is an element of continuity missing too. When looking at forward pressure acts I first had to look at who I thought was playing forward in each game....by my count we've run 15 through there this year, excluding resting mids like Petracca. That's surely not conducive to executing our zone in the forward half.