Demon Dynasty

Cant argue with any of that. Grimes deserved a few consecutive games. I think what lets him down is his instinctive nature to look to go up the line (safety first/easiest option) and not look inside as a first option when coming off HB. This could be due to his inability to accurately hit targets by foot on a regular basis but im just speculating based on what ive seen in previous years. Hopefully he has addressed this part of his game.

No probs deanox. U were pretty much on the money on the definition. Agree re defenders and UPs/ DE %. My understanding is coaches place alot more emphasis on metres gained, run & carry, rebound 50s, i50s, Marks i50, pressure acts around the ground, clearances from stoppages etc vs junky stuff like effective disposals and DE%. I could be wrong but my understanding is that most stats that are publicly available (not all) arent used very widely by the coaching fraternity at the highest levels. We should therefore not get too caught up in them either. Although there is no harm in using them as a very rough guide as to where a player is vs team mates' averages or the league's averages as long as you're using a compilation of them and they are weighted to avoid one absolute rubbish stat skewing your view of a player's or players' performance. Observing the game should always be the most important method of rating/ranking a players performance of course. With stats just there to help paint a bit of a story around what's actually happening on the field. With regard to Watts I believe talent wise he is capable of great things. Talent is not an issue for him IMO. But you can't "teach" courage. I think you either have it or you don't and playing footy requires alot of it alot of the time. Watts' challenge is to find it. In a good or very good list he would be asked to do so at the next level down and earn the right to come back into the seniors if/when that happens. I don't blame Watts as i believe the OTT spotlight on him is a result of years of sub standard recruiting ie, failure to bolster the depth on our list as well as ongoing poor management eg, gifting him (and others) senior games when they are a fair way off AFL standard (back to recruiting standards etc). Having said that I think Roos is doing a solid job of fixing our depth problems. Another 2 shots at the draft by him and Goodwin should see us finally edge somewhere into the middle group of teams in a year or 2.

Very, by my junk stats compilation rankings he was 8th just behind the Jones boy last week. This is easily our worst team of the year and likely to be thumped by 12 sausage rolls (plus) as a result unless it absolutely pizzez down. Might be 50 if so. Bring on the rain!

Watts should thank Jordie for that! Was the only one with a worse performance statistically. Although to be fair on Jordie he was only on the ground half as long as Jack

Yeh i'm not saying he wont be good demoniac, just don't think we should entre' him in this particular match, or a few immediately after that! Def worth a look when the opponent is appropriate.

Effective Disposals is something like :- effective long kicks, effective short kicks and effective handballs. An effective long kick is one that is 40 metres to a 50/50 or better for the team. An effective short kick is one that results in a teammate's possession who was the intended target of the kicker. A handball to a teammate that hits the intended target to the team's advantage is recorded as an effective handball. The top 6 MFC players with average disposal efficiency % higher than league average who also rank highest in uncontested so far are.... Player/UPs/Disposal Efficiency % Michie 11.5/75.7 McDonald 11.4/78.0 Lumumba 10.8/76.9 Dunn 9.2/80.3 Garland 8.6/80.2 Howe 8.6/81.1 The next best, but with a below AFL average disposal efficiency% is Cross with 11.6 UPs at a DE of 70.6% The average DE% for all league clubs (excluding the MFC) is 72.8% It would be nice to have average "metres gained" per disposal stat if we could get our hands on it showing who is delivering the ball forward of play, putting pressure on the opposition (if delivered to our advantage) and providing potential scoring opportunities versus many of the junk "standard" UPs which often go sideways/backwards in the back half giving many defenders and maybe some not so good decision makers/users of the ball through the middle a skewed leg up in the DE% each week.

Yes, although i would turn this around and say & his FD are waiting desperately for next year in order to avoid a selection dillema like this again! None of the "ins" are deserving IMO apart from Stretch and i wouldn't include him for his first try out against anyone in the top 8 with this list. A stronger list like Norf, Port, the Pies etc.... but not us and certainly not against a rampaging Swans on the rebound. Reminds me of the inclusion of Watts against the Pies so many years ago

McKenzie also had 0 tackle attempts. I'm calling them attempts as the "effective tackles" stat is more relevant, even though Jordie would have scored a big 0 here also. I think the coaches place alot of emphasis on pressure acts and 1%s. Pressure acts like effective tackles, effective tackles inside 50, pressure acts inisde 50 etc so this would make sense. And i'm not saying the coach & FD are lead by stats so much as they are obviously observing what's going on as the first driver with some key (coach) stats just used as a guide pre match and most match. Having said that, McKenzie had 7 effective disposals with a TOG% of only 42% against the next equal or worst ranked players of Garland (7), Grimes (7) Jamar (6) , Salem# (6) , Watts (5) and Garlett (4) all had full games. # The exception was Salem who only managed a TOG% of 48. Oh, and pretty much everyone gets monstered by Sandilands Older D

Not so sure, isn't the AFL one sports scientist down now?

No the most baffling part was not having him in a shut down role on Fyfe or Hill from the get go to try and limit their early damage. You bring in McKenzie for only one role and that's shut down which is about all he is capable of. No point bringing him in as sub to come on in the second half AFTER the horses (Fyfe/Hill) have bolted. IF playing him at all then it had to be "starting" 22 not off the bench and especially not as sub. Sub him off if it's a complete fail but yeh.

I hear he hasn't set the world on fire at Casey this year so far which is a shame RP. As you mention he was right up there last year on UPs & effective disposals. I only kept averages to round 14 as i couldn't be bothered after that so not sure how many games he played in the last 8 rounds but i had him ranked 3rd in UPs behind Nate and Tyson and 4th in effective disposals behind Nate Tyson & Cross till then. Hopefully he can get one more shot at it this year if he gets it right at Casey.

Surely his strides are big enough already!...

Put together a weighted average of some publicly available stats just to see how they fell out in terms of player rankings. And no i didn't use weightings to produce an outcome. I simply balanced out a number of stats like contested, uncontested, marks i50, tackles, goals, rebound 50s, clangers etc which produced the following outcome. Of course the outcome will change if the weightings are changed so no doubt it probably means very little and is a poor construction but thought i would put it up for interest sake. MFC player averages to round 5 Player/ Weighted Score 1. Viney 5.41 2. McDonald 5.08 3. Cross 4.94 4. Jones 4.67 5. Lumumba 4.32 6. Tyson 4.27 7. Michie 4.25 8. Vandenberg 4.20 9. Howe 4.15 10. Vince 4.03 11. Newton 3.83 12. Garland 3.75 13. Dunn 3.57 14. Salem 3.52 15. *[Pedersen] 3.48 (TOG 90%) 16. Hogan 3.43 17. Garlett 3.34 18. Brayshaw 3.20 19. Watts 3.02 20. JKH 2.91 21. Dawes 2.63 22. Jetta 2.44 23. #Jamar 2.01 24. Kent 1.99 25. Frost 1.78 26.* Toumpas 0.70 (TOG 27%) * Not an average as player has only played 1 match # Key ruck stat of "hit outs to advantage" not included Note: Average TOG for all MFC players who have had game time to Rnd 5 is 76.9% Stats: Courtesy of Footywire

Man i think if the effected player (ie., in this case Swallow) is decked off the ball and it's proven via video umpire as you say then it's minimum 20 minutes in sin bin. If Swallow gets concussion test and is advised not to return to the field and doesn't, then the offending player misses the entire match also PLUS he is also up for tribunal penalty. This would take away the advantage a team (player) may gain by knocking out an opponent and having an extra player to rotate off the bench as well as the opponent potentially losing a key profile player to an act of thuggery. But i agree, no one should be ordered to sin bin until video ump has reviewed, even if it takes a few minutes.

lol jumbo. Can we wait till Viney comes back pls!

I have to stick my hand up here and say i was pleasantly surprised and wrong at thinking Jack was mostly biased towards "inside" possessions. Seems like he has developed another side to his game here (or was it there all along and i just didn't see it or labelled him as an inside type player?). With a few more seasons under his belt and a bit of luck with injuries can we look forward to a potential gun mid fielder here as was forecast by some experts?

Not hanging a "great hope" tag on him at all. My response to another poster was along the same lines as yours here in that we can hope that he "might" bring an X factor but that's all it is at this point given his bad luck and that he's a raw rookie with no history. Certainly wasn't singling him out as any kind of saviour. In fact i was doing the opposite.

Yeh our inside quality is reasonable (no i'm not saying it's great either u guys! ) it's what happens outside and on the spread that appears to be one of our main concerns. We certainly don't run/carry/spread and overlap much. We don't worry our opponents in this department at all really apart from the clubs at similar level to us. Most of the top eight have this side well covered. Some better than others of course.

Good info cheers

If we could compare the averages of each line vs individuals. Eg., mid field league (average) effective disposal % vs the % of guys playing there such as Jones, Vince, Viney (others). Same for HB line etc? Although with the amount of running, positional changes and rotations off the bench now, this would be a very difficult proposition.

He's been an absolute stalwart through a horror stretch M C. He's had some good and some not so good weeks so far but might also be feeling the weight (disctractions) of the captaincy. I think he'll be alot better once Viney comes in to add a decent rotation through the mid to ease the load a little.

Snapshot to Round 5, 2015. Note: Rankings based on player averages (ie., played at least 2 games or more this season) Top 5 Rankings Contested (average per game) 1. Tyson (9.8) 2. Jones (9.4) 2. Cross (9.4) 4. Vandenberg (9.2) 5. Newton (8.0) Uncontested Viney (15.0) Cross (11.6) Michie (11.5) McDonald (11.4) Jones (10.8) Effective Disposals Cross (14.8) McDonald (14.6) Viney (14.0) Howe (13.6) Michie (13.5) Effective Disposal % (Best) Howe (81.1%) Dunn (80.3%) Garland (80.2%) McDonald (78.0%) Lumumba (76.9%) Note: AFL Team Average 72.8% (Excluding MFC). Highest % >> Dockers 79.3 , Lowest % >> Demons 68.6 Effective Disposal % (Worst) Frost (46.8%) Vandenberg (53.9%) Garlett (54.0%) Kent (56.7%) JKH (59.4%) Clearances 1. Tyson (5.2) 2. Viney (4.5) 2. Vince (4.5) 4 Cross (3.6) 5 Jones (3.2) Tackles Viney (7.5) Vandenberg (5.6) Brayshaw (5.6) 4. Garlett (4.80) Vince (4.75) Contested Marks Hogan (2.6) McDonald (1.6) Salem (1.2) Howe (1.0) Jamar (0.8)

Guys while i agree the midfield is a big issue we have to keep it (Sunday's match) in context in terms of where this list is (STILL) at. As much as it pains me to say that. We beat the tiges with an average number of games of 80.9 vs 66.5 vs the Fockers where we were totally outblitzed 82 v 126 That's a 64 game turnaround on the previous week and effectively 2 additional seasons of game time experience, engines and know how across the field. Not saying it's down to this alone. I realise without experience AND talent we are always going to struggle against top 8 sides. Although with enough talent and effort you should be able to perform above expectations as the Doggies have shown us.

A long way from mashing up anyone outside the bottom 6 i would think curry. You can dress it up as much as you iike we just don't have a superstar (or 2 haha) in the offing through the mid field at this point. I haven't seen our mid field dominate anyone in the comp over a full season....ever. I would also argue we still don't have one A grader either, let alone a superstar. Alot better than we were 2 seasons ago though but we all know how bad that was.

Jamar didn't do too bad in a relative sense i reckon Cards but i hear where you're coming from. Sandy had something like 25 hit outs (15 or so to advantage) and the Russian roughly 15 with about 7 (or 9) to advantage if my memory serves me correctly. Im trying to recall the stats from Champion i saw today in the Sun so pls forgive if a little loose. I didn't see the match Card so could be way off here but i assume that most of the time Clarke was in the middle we more than likely had Pedo in there against him. When i have witnessed Pedo into the ruck in past matches, whether it be under Neeld or Roos, i have noticed our output from the centre is just pitiful and the oppositions goes up a about 2 or 3 gears and we end up getting scored against from the middle even more easily than usual. Pedo is a horrid ruck option and the stats indicate this also in this match >> Clarke 16 hit outs (9 to advantage) and Pedo 7 hit outs (0 to advantage!). This is not Pedo's fault, i blame this on whoever feels he is an option here. He just isn't and the results will always be disastrous whenever it's tried. I would rather Dawes in here vs Pedo if we don't have another genuine ruck option. I think Freo are one of the best drilled side out there Card and it shows in the numbers. We scored 0.1 from stopages and they had approx 7.4 or thereabouts. Many seemed to bag our disposal efficiency too but it wasn't that bad (compartively to previous weeks) @ approx 74%. Our average from the previous 4 rounds (all players who have played so far/average) was 64.4%. It appears we just turned it over a little too often with key clangers and the Dockers took full advantage of this also scoring about 6 goals from turnovers. Where we did seem to fall down was our tackling numbers compared to previous weeks. We've been averaging 80+ tackles a match so far (not every match ...but that's the overall player average until last week) whereas this match we only managed 58. Although we matched the Dockers on the day (59) it's still down a massive 24ish tackles vs the previous weeks' average. If you look at the first half vs the 2nd it's also a very interesting split showing the Dockers are a mile ahead of us tank/running wise (outside?) it would seem and/or just use the ball more effectively once they do have it. They had 100 more uncontested possessions! They had 5 more scoring shots in the first half which is enough but not disastrous. And we almost matched them in the conversion rate (55.6% vs 57.1%) by a small margin leaving us down only 20 points. However, as we all know, the 2nd half result was shizenhauzin. A 9.1% conversion rate. Probably an indication of the quality of the opponent and their pressure. We also had roughly only 15 tackles inside our own 50 vs about 29 for Freo. That's a massive gap and shows we just aren't able to put enough pressure in our 50 and keep the ball in for long enough periods...nor convert later in the game against quality opposition when we do get it in there.