Demon Dynasty

We are a fair way off WYL. It's an important factor letting us down week in and week out and has been for a few years now. The Cats are 2nd only to Port Power in "contested marks" averages so far this season. Hawks are 10th here and The Demons 15th. We average approx 20% less contested marks compared to the Hawks and about 63% vs the Cats. Approx 19% less contested marks every week vs the league average.

Yep. Cross and JKH massive positives for me so far. JKH obviously a long road ahead but love the early signs. It's no accident that Cross leads the tackle averages so far this season, 4th in clearances and 6th overall in effective disposals. Let's hope he can keep it up. Been a huge helping hand through the middle so far and is providing Jonesy with a decent chop out.

Agree with this sentiment BB. It's hard to watch some of our boys coming out of the back line at times. Garland might take some pressure off T Mac here though and hopefully free his mind up a little and maybe even guide him a little when it comes to options etc. What we do need is to replace each soldier with a better one. I'm not sure we have too many "better ones" running around at Casey atm. Effective Disposal % is a very questionable stat, especially down back where we see so many junk/panic disposals and strategic switches, but 1 percenters and tackling are a little less questionable (maybe). We should also be looking at these numbers in comparison to League averages (if i had that sort of time and could be bothered). Lets look at some numbers so far down back.... Player Averages Effective Disposal % / Team Ranking Georgiou / 2 Grimes / 6 McDonald / 8 (Ranked 12 up to Rnd 17 last season with 75.1% vs this season so far 76.2%. Slight improvement? AFL average is presently running at approx 70.9% but that's overall. Need to see the one for backline players only). Dunn / 11 Terlich / 12 Pederson / 16 1% ers / Team Ranking McDonald / 1 Pederson / 2 Georgiou / 3 Dunn / 5 Grimes / 7 Terlich / 9 Tackles / Team Ranking Pederson / 6 Terlich / 8 Georgiou / 19 Grimes / 21 McDonald / 23 Dunn / 25 Rebound 50s / Team Rank Grimes / 1 McDonald / 2 Pederson / 3 Terlich / 6 Georgiou / 8 Dunn / 9 (understandable as often designated kicker and sometimes plays forward)

The OP is on the money. This club hasn't had a match winner or 2 since Alan Jakovich and Gazza were running around sticking it up the opposition and that's an eternity ago. There's no speed, no silky skills and no power in a marking contests, other than Dawesy. We have an amazing mid, in terms of grunt and see ball get ball with the Jones boy but not really a match winner as such. Very few weapons to worry anyone. No wonder so many opposition players, even the rookies, just run off their opponents and spread like mad whenever it looks like they might gain possession. It's a massive 2 to 3 years in the draft for us... and Roosy must surely be realising the enormity of it all by now. He can't leave in 2015. He'll sign for 2016 for sure now. 2015 is just the beginning of the build of a new look list for mine.

I thought we took Morton over Cyril?

I think they are both lacking in any particular weapon that would worry the opposition. Spencil can tackle a little in close and competes better in congestion IMO. Jamar a slightly better mark or at least brings the ball to ground a little more often by getting to a few more contests. Jamar can occasionally push forward and clunk a mark i50 and kick the odd goal once in a few matches. Spencil never does this. A marginal call but both are lumbering. Spencil can get a short pass off fairly accurately. I wouldn't bet on Jamar doing that. So what do you do? I say we're going nowhere with either. Get Gawn in once fit, develop Max King to see what he might have in the locker. Meanwhile keep looking elsewhere for a decent ruckman who has a weapon or 2 that will worry the opposition and can assist in a few extra goals our way.

RG you're either the most amazing optimist the world has ever set eyes upon, or you're into your 5th glass of JD on the rocks.

Evans is ranked last in the averages for effective disposals out of all players who have played so far this season. He's averaged approx 46% "on the ground" game time in his 3 games this year.

That's about right for me. But we also need at least another 2 quick players over the ground and who have AFL standard kicking ability to pinpoint hit up leads or direct the ball to our advantage ie., on the fat side of our contesting forward so if it doesn't hit target it's on the correct side for him to run onto. One off HB and another outside mid who are willing to run the lines and take opponents on to create the overlap/link up and make our opponents chase us as well as take the occasional shot on goal themselves from 50 odd. Wear them down a little with positive "attacking" thrusts instead of us chasing their tail all day watching them making the attacking thrusts i50. Personally i don't think we have these players right now and will need to draft them (hopefully) but i would certainly role the die on possibly one or more of Strauss, Clisby and/or Blease if they are showing something decent at Casey. And my outs for say two of these ins ... Watts and McKenzie.

Unfortunately Gonzo what we have with Watts is a "two faced" footballer. When he is given the ball 5 meters (or more) in the clear, or he is matched with a similar sized small build opponent that he feels comfortable on in a one on one marking/or ground ball contest (again in the clear without a pack looming down on him from side or behind) we see a very accomplished user and finisher with the ball, IF he happens to get it. Then there's the other side when he doesn't have the ball is being checked closely, or...is going into a pack to contest and try and get the ball for himself or contest a mark in a pack (ie., himself plus 2 or more solid players contesting). Committment to the contest...putting the body on the line for the team. Just seems to lack the will to compete and fight tooth and nail in a hard pack contest, marking, loose ball or stoppage situation. In addition his second efforts after a first up marking contest or tackle are virtually non existent or just so lacking in intensity that it has no impact on the play or opponent. And many of his tackles are the non body contact ones, throwing out an arm at the last second as you run past the player with the ball, rather than hitting in heavy at the hips and driving the shoulders/bod into the tackle, dropping knees and bringing player to the ground. This will often end in a high tackle and a resulting free kick to opponent. I've seen this very tackle attempt so many times now throughout his career. I thought he might eventually rid himself of it and start nailing guys around the hips etc. But i've yet to see it on a consistent basis anyway. One example today which was very disappointing, but not unusual, there was a quick kick into HF from the middle in the first quarter, and sure Watts was behind his player (Warnock i think), but could still have made an attempt to impact the contest and bring the ball to ground. He made a half hearted attempt to get hand on the back of Warnock, and seriously, that was about it. Warnock marked easily and proceeded to lay off. Unfortunately i see Watts as a school boy....still. Playing high school type footy. Albeit his skills are leaps and bounds ahead of most at high school level. But from an effort/intensity/physicality point of view, i hate to say it but that's around about where he is at right now. Pure talent (ie., in Wattsy's case...ball use/evasiveness through a bit of traffick) can only take you so far in this game. Time to look elsewhere.

I'm sure champion data would offer an "effective" tackle count somewhere Titan. This is the number we really need to see as a simple "tackle" stat really tells us only that the player layed some kind of tackle. Agree, laying no tackles is a pretty damning stat regardless though. 43 in total this week vs 84 last week. Horrible result and about 23 below the league average and about the same below our own too! No way you will win many games with those numbers. Turnovers are a massive part of scoring now, especially turnovers through the middle and back half. And if you're tackling is down almost 50% then you're really relying on your opponent to make a hec of alot of unforced errors. Good luck with that. Most of our backline play was like watching scared rabbits in the headlights in that first half as well. The lack of risk taking, run and carry and quick ball movement by foot through traffic in that back half was a massive step backwards this week for mine and part of why we lost the match today. As to why Dunny kept on persisting with the outlet or down the line kick to the right hand pocket or flank i'm at a loss. The number of times i saw Dawes 1 on 1 against Warnock in the middle of the ground and Dunn just ignored going there. Probably under team instruction, but hey, rules were meant to be broken at times. It was an obvious change up for mine and Dunn just refused to even consider it. We were way too predictable and only when the game was lost did Dunn finally decide to take a risk and roost a torp down the middle, which if my memory serves me well, may have resulted in a last minute goal lol. Alas too little....too late. If something isn't working over and over and the ball just keeps coming back, why the hec do we keep persisting with it? I'm not sure who the designated kicker should be. The highest effective disposal players in the back half are presently Pedo (when he's not playing forward...and i wouldn't play him forward) and Jetta who's just come back in and still finding his feet at AFL level.

6. The Jones Boy - No tag job in first half and instead Mckenzie/Vince/Cross to Ablett all day and we win this. What a leader and in my opinion he is now a genuine A grader with the occasional "off" disposals that let him down but usually it's under intense pressure so go figure. If his fellow players block more and work a little harder to give him some room to work in, i believe his effectiveness would improve enough to shrug off the doubters. 5. Daniel Cross - Hard and always in and at it. Knows when to possess and when to get it moving quickly. 4. Jack Viney - Awareness and poise needed once in the clear. Learning fast though. Another solid game from the youngster. 3. Jeremy Howe - Swing player trying to fill the gaps, ran hard, tackled ok, disposals mostly on the money. We only had 6 contested marks today and Howe accounted for half of those. A stat that needs massive improvement if we are to win games like this. The sons doubled us around the ground here. 2. Chris Dawes - Great soldier, asset and leader for the club. Fantastic body work/strength and positioning. Lacked finish today. Suspect a little sore from first up game last week. Accuracy and ability to get to more contests should improve as the weeks progress. 1. Matt Jones - Not a great game by any means but he still manages to get involved, runs hard and creates outlet options in congestion.

Jones, Cross and Viney. Jones mostly inneffective wile on Ablett tho (who wouldnt be).I expected us to be down by 4 or 5 at half time as GCS spread and generally run harder to make an option. That can be countered once the sting come out of their legs a little in 2nd half. But to do so we wld need to be putting a lot more pressure on them to get the ball back than we have so far, up the tackle count to wear em down (legs again). Also work harder to get the ball into the hands of guys in our team who can run and break lines (JKH, Bail, M Jones, Jetta, Terlich). Make them chase us (legs again) and bring the game back on our terms. Hard to see where/who thats going to come from tho. Howe to HF for mine. Leave him, Dawesy and JHK one out and go from there. Dunny needs to stop the right flank outlet kicking. Too predictable. One option is Dawesy one out straight down the middle once in a wile. Mix it up. Take risks!!! Dawesy will beat Warnock one out 8 times outta 10! Fingers crossed. Go Demons!!

Some basic junk stats for today's match up for those interested.... Team Averages to Rnd 4 MFC vs GCS % Differentials Contested -21.2% Uncontested +15.4% Effective Disposals +10.1% Effective Disposal % MFC 72.50% GCS 66.3% Clangers -17.5% Contested Marks +5.6% Inside 50s -20.0% Marks i50 32.6% Clearances -38.4% 1 Percenters -19.3% Bounces -85.7% Kicks 3.6% Handballs -1.0% Tackles -1.8% Disposals per Goal MFC 49.9 GCS 34.6 Average Attributes @ Round 4 2014 Gold Coast (Attribute) Melbourne 188.5cm (Height) 187.4cm 86.5kg (Weight) 87.3kg 23yr 3mth (Age) 24yr 4mth 57.3 (Games) 60.5 Total Players By Games to Rnd 4 2014 Gold Coast (Games) Melbourne 12 (Less than 50) 12 7 (50 to 99) 5 1 (100 to 149) 3 2 (150 or more) 2 Stats: Courtesy Footywire

Really hope it works out for Nev. I think he has much upside. I wonder where he fits in a role playing sense though for the team as i just haven't seen enough of him. Wondering how others who may have seen him recently at Casey view his role in the seniors, assuming he gets a call up soon?

Haha...you can say that again MD. Nice work on the comparison. Those stats are in complete contrast to what we've been hearing from some of these so called experts lately.

Grimes is currently ranked 13th in the clanger count. He was ranked 5th overall in the team up to Rnd 17 last season. I didnt bother taking stats after that Rnd. In fact i'm not even sure why i did it that long last year. Must have been delirious with joy. While i'm not suggesting Grimes is amazing with ball use i'd like to propose the following theory. He might still be turning the ball over in a horrible fashion, which stands out like bull's balls when he does, but he just might be doing it less often than last season. And yes, i might be wrong. These are pretty junky statistics and as i've said before many times, they don't tell the full story and are only a rough comparative guide/indicator vs other players/teams progress within that same stat over various points in time. That's correct Titan. It doesn't account for the disposal being either.... A junk one (eg., panick offload handball / kick which still gets to fellow player); A strategic one (eg., switch kick); or An attacking forward thrust type of disposal. Disposals that have a high attacking impact value are the one that we should be most interested in. Roughly 20 years of data scrutiny since Champion introduced this form of stat in 1996 suggests this is one of the KPIs to watch and one that is most damaging in terms of "wins" vs opponents when you see a significant differential ...if only it were publicly available...which of course it isn't. The overall stat without the "attacking" carve out, as you say, is flawed. When Champion data introduced this stat in 1996 it was a reasonably well thought out stat as most teams were encouraged to push the ball forward at all costs by their coaches and players were often berated if they stuffed around with the ball too much (eg., sideways/backwards etc).

That's a good point Al. That's why many of these publicly available junk stats have to be taken with a grain of salt at times. There is one very loose stat they provide us with where you can also see if a player is prone to turnovers (which might/or might not result in a goal etc) and that's clangers. So the 2 are worth looking at in unison. High efficiency and high on the clanger count might indicate something along the lines of what you're suggesting. Only by watching the match live (replay or being there) would you really get a true indication of a player's efficient ball use when the heat is on. Oh, or a feed into the decent stuff from Champion data.... any talented hackers on here!??

Very true Hoges. In fact it's a very small sample for the team overall really and probably too early but had to get started at some point and why not after our first win! The data set will be a little more robust after Rnd 6 to 8 so we'll have a better idea then once some of the new entry players have put in hopefully 5 to 6 games each (at least).

Early days but it's a promising start WJ. I think the media just assume anyone we choose will probably end up being the 2nd best option due to our poor recent record on these matters. Hopefully it's not just the media assuming these things if we are turning it around on the field and off (development). Without wanting to talk him up too much he could well be an A grader for us given a few more pre seasons if all goes well.

Yes it's a pretty good effort from a first year eh. However, there's a good deal of the stuff in the back half that could be considered junk disposals i guess as they chip it around so much these days. Of course some of it could also be very good quality. Champion data has the good oil on more meaningful data that we will obviously never be privy to. It's interesting to look over though.

Just some basic scraps they throw us FWIW. Stats are inclusive of all games to Round 4. Yes it's only 4 rounds of data but i think it's time to take a peek and check out who's doing what. I'll try and do same after Rnd 8, 12 etc. Player Top 5 Rankings Contested (average per game) 1. The Jones Boy (11.5) 2. D Tyson (10.7) 3. D Cross (9.5) 4. B Vince (7.7) 5. J Viney (7.5) Uncontested 1. The Jones Boy (18.5) 2. D Tyson (16.2) 3. J Frawley (15.2) 4. M Jones (14.2) 5. B Vince (14.0) Effective Disposals 1. The Jones Boy (21.2) 2. D Tyson (20.0) 3. J Grimes (18.0) 4. M Jones (17.0) 5. J Toumpas (16.2) Effective Disposal % (Best) 1. A Georgiou (84.6%) 2. J Toumpas (83.7%) 3. M Jones (79.5%) 4. J Grimes (79.5%) 5. D Kent (79.2%) AFL average (70.9%) - Excludes MFC MFC average (70.7%) - All Players to Rnd 4 MFC vs Carlton (74.7%) MFC vs Giants (60.5%) MFC vs Eagles (72.1%) MFC vs Saints (75.9%) Effective Disposal % (Worst) 1. M Evans (31.3%) 2. J Viney (56.5%) 3. B Vince (58.8%) 4. J Kennedy-Harris (64.0%) 5. J Fitzpatrick (64.2%) Clangers 1. D Tyson (4.5) 2. J Viney (4.0) 3. The Jones Boy (3.5) 4. J Kennedy-Harris (3.0) 5. R Bail (2.5) Clearances 1. The Jones Boy (5.7) 2. D Tyson (4.7) 3. D Cross (3.5) 4. J Viney (3.0) 5. B Vince (2.7) Tackles 1. D Cross (8.7) 2. J Viney (6.5) 3. The Jones Boy (6.0) 4. R Bail (5.5) 5. J Spencer (4.5) Stats: Courtesy of Footywire

This has probably already been done to death but i like this part. This guy is really pursuing his life long dream. Small steps but he's on the way. James Harmes: He played inside mid and had a really strong game. He went hard and showed his strength of winning contested football. It was a really strong performance from him and it will put him in contention for Casey seniors next week. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/south-east/lifelong-melbourne-football-club-fan-james-harmes-fulfils-his-demon-dream-through-draft/story-fngnvoeu-1226769698721

That's pretty uncanny. Could you refrain from making any further injury speculation please Jack.... not exactly a great "depth" team atm *_*

It wasn't but it was the start of it IMO. Lead by Jones, Dawesy and Cross. Finally "multiple" leaders standing up and showing the way. Master, "actions" like that of Spencer today speak louder than any words on the field. Sends a signal and message to others in the team that we are not about laying down and taking a backward step and it begins to run through the group that this is what's required if you're playing in this team. Some aggressive attack on the ball and carrier starting to emerge... and not just by the 1 or 2 usual culprits. Positive signs. A little confidence beginning to show, and it's amazing what can happen when that creeps into the group.