AFL Power Rankings: Round 7 2012

This week we have a new No. 1 - Hawthorn, which might seem a bit strange given that they were ranked fourth a couple of weeks back, and on the actual AFL ladder they are not even in the eight! However, the Hawks' rivals (particularly Geelong) have crumbled around them over the past couple of weeks, and their only 'bad' performance for the year so far has been the loss against Sydney; their other losses have been narrow defeats to the Cats and the Eagles in Perth. 

Meanwhile, the team that some are calling a premiership contender - Essendon - are in eighth spot. The hype around the Bombers has stemmed from their performances over the past four weeks, during which they have been phenomenal, earning double the ranking points of any other team. (Hawthorn have been the second best team over those four weeks, and the Bombers' opponents next weekend - Richmond - have been the third best.)

And at the bottom of the rankings, the GWS Giants' win over the GC Suns has lifted them out of the last spot.

1 (2) Hawthorn 28.3 (26.2)
2 (3) Carlton 25.4 (28.0)
3 (1) Geelong 25.3 (32.9)
4 (4) West Coast 20.6 (27.9)
5 (5) Collingwood 16.1 (14.8)
6 (7) St. Kilda 14.6 (11.3)
7 (6) Sydney 9.7 (13.2)
8 (9) Essendon 6.9 (1.0)
9 (8) North Melbourne 6.0 (9.3)
10 (10) Richmond 0.8 (-1.9)
11 (13) Adelaide -3.9 (-11.2)
12 (11) Western Bulldogs -5.7 (-8.8)
13 (12) Fremantle -10.5 (-9.4)
14 (14) Brisbane -19.9 (-16.9)
15 (16) Port Adelaide -36.4 (-35.7)
16 (15) Melbourne -36.6 (-35.0)
17 (18) Greater Western Sydney -50.3 (-52.1)
18 (17) Gold Coast -51.2 (-48.2)

The Best Goalkicking Season In VFL/AFL History

We often hear nowadays how the era of the 100-goal-a-year full-forward are over, and with the leading goalkicker this year - Taylor Walker - only having kicked 20 goals in 6 matches that trend looks set to continue. On the other hand, back in the ‘70s and ‘80s average scores used to be higher, so maybe the general fall in scoring is contributing to this trend. And thinking about this led to another question: just which is the most impressive goalkicking season by a player in VFL/AFL history?

To investigate this I went back over the leading goalkickers for each season and evaluated them according to a metric that, for want of a better term, I’ll call a “Goal Efficiency Rating”. The formula for this rating is as follows:

Goal Efficiency Rating = Goals kicked by player in home-and-away season / [Average goals per match for home-and-away season (all teams) * Number of matches in home-and-away season]

Essentially to calculate the rating a player’s goal total over the season is divided by the average number of goals that would be expected to be kicked in a team’s matches over that season. For example, in 1970 Peter Hudson kicked 146 goals in the home-and-away season. The average number of goals per match that season was 24.77 and there were 22 matches, so the average number of goals that would be expected to be kicked in a given team’s matches in the 1970 season is about 545. In kicking 146 goals for the season, Peter Hudson kicked 26.80 per cent of the goals that would be expected to be kicked in a given team’s matches over that season. (Note this is different from the actual percentage of goals that Hudson kicked in Hawthorn’s matches that season.)

Using this formula, the best goalkicking season home-and-away season ever is... Gordon Coventry in 1929. Coventry kicked 118 goals when the average number of goals that would be expected to be kicked in a given team’s matches in the 1929 season was about 387 (21.55 goals per match multiplied by 18 matches). Bob Pratt’s 1934 season (where he kicked 138 in the home-and-away season, and 150 overall) comes in second, and John Coleman’s 1952 season comes in third.

Below are the ‘Goal Efficiency Ratings’ for every leading goalkicker since 1897. Leading goalkickers in the 2000s tend to be near the bottom of the table, suggesting that the modern era does indeed have the least reliance on full-forwards. In fact the 2011 Coleman Medallist, Lance Franklin, comes in at second last on the table. (Only leading goalkickers are included in the table, so for example, Peter McKenna's 1970 season goal tally isn't included.)

Some of the modern-day 100 goal seasons take a battering in these rankings, as scoring is relatively higher than it was in, say, the ‘20s or ‘30s, and more matches are played. So the drop in reliance on the full-forward to kick goals seems to have been happening for a while, but it hasn't really been noticed due to the higher scoring.

John Coleman comes in three times in the Top 10 "GER"s, while Peter Hudson and Gordon Coventry make the Top 10 twice. Again, makes you wonder what Coleman would have done if he played more than 98 games, doesn’t it?

AFL Power Rankings: Round 6 2012

Quite a lot of minor shuffling this week in the placings, with perhaps the most notable move being Hawthorn nabbing second spot from the Blues. Minor shuffling aside, based on ranking points the teams can currently be broken up into the following tiers:

1st tier: Geelong, Hawthorn, Carlton, West Coast
2nd tier: Collingwood, Sydney, St. Kilda, North Melbourne
3rd tier: Essendon, Richmond
4th tier: Western Bulldogs, Fremantle, Adelaide
5th tier: Brisbane
6th tier: Melbourne, Port Adelaide
7th tier: Gold Coast, Greater Western Sydney

1 (1) Geelong 32.9 (35.9)
2 (4) Hawthorn 28.9 (26.2)
3 (2) Carlton 28.0 (29.9)
4 (3) West Coast 27.9 (27.7)
5 (6) Collingwood 14.8 (16.0)
6 (5) Sydney 13.2 (16.2)
7 (7) St. Kilda 11.3 (13.1)
8 (8) North Melbourne 9.3 (8.3)
9 (10) Essendon 1.0 (-3.5)
10 (9) Richmond -1.9 (-3.3)
11 (12) Western Bulldogs -8.8 (-10.6)
12 (11) Fremantle -9.4 (-7.8)
13 (14) Adelaide -11.2 (-15.8)
14 (13) Brisbane -16.9 (-13.5)
15 (16) Melbourne -35.0 (-38.3)
16 (15) Port Adelaide - 35.7 (-34.5)
17 (17) Gold Coast -48.2 (-49.5)
18 (18) Greater Western Sydney -52.1 (-55.5)

What Has Happened To Collingwood?

So far in the 2012 AFL season Collingwood has not been the dominant team they were in 2010 or 2011. In 2011 they beat every team except the eventual premier Geelong, usually quite easily. In 2012 so far they have lost to Hawthorn and Carlton, and haven’t beaten any of their other opponents – all of which finished no higher than 8^th last season – by more than four goals.

But what is the reason for this drop off in form? Have a few players gone off the boil or is there a general malaise? Let’s compare the average Champion Data (SuperCoach) player ratings for Collingwood’s main 22 players in 2011 and 2012.

	Supercoach Average
	2011	2012	Diff.
Luke Ball	99.21	62.67	-36.54
Chris Tarrant	52.30	17.00	-35.30
Ben Johnson	79.44	49.33	-30.11
Dale Thomas	109.67	86.33	-23.34
Ben Reid	77.88	59.75	-18.13
Chris Dawes	76.28	61.00	-15.28
Travis Cloke	97.32	93.67	-3.65
Heath Shaw	99.59	96.25	-3.34
Dane Swan	120.62	119.00	-1.62
Scott Pendlebury	129.76	129.17	-0.59
Sharrod Wellingham	74.90	74.50	-0.40
Harry O'Brien	74.96	76.00	1.04
Alan Toovey	61.25	62.83	1.58
Dayne Beams	93.50	95.40	1.90
Darren Jolly	81.62	87.80	6.18
Jarryd Blair	73.96	81.20	7.24
Nick Maxwell	61.58	70.00	8.42
Steele Sidebottom	84.32	105.00	20.68
Leon Davis	101.57
Andrew Krakouer	76.00
Leigh Brown	67.17
Alan Didak	57.25
Martin Clarke		81.00
Alex Fasolo		67.50
Tyson Goldsack		60.83
Lachlan Keeffe		57.67
Ben Sinclair		56.17
Changed players	354.29	323.17	-31.12
Total	1850.15	1750.07	-121.26

The table has been divided up into several groups. At the top of the table we see there are 6 players who have had a large drop-off in form in 2012: Luke Ball, Chris Tarrant, Ben Johnson, Dale Thomas, Ben Reid and Chris Dawes. However, with the exception of Dawes, all of those players have been hampered by injury in 2012. Therefore it looks like injuries really are a significant reason for the Pies’ drop-off in form. Many of the other core Collingwood players – Cloke, Shaw, Swan, Pendlebury, Wellingham, O’Brien, Toovey and Beams – are pretty much the same players they were in 2011. A few players have marginally improved, including Jolly, Blair and Maxwell, though both Jolly and Maxwell missed significant portions of 2011 with injury. And one player – Steele Sidebottom – has significantly improved, though given that both he and Blair are young it shouldn’t be too surprising that they have improved from last year.

Further down the list we see the core players from 2011 that Collingwood are missing in 2012, including Davis, Krakouer, Brown, and Didak. Given that Tarrant has only played one game so far he could also be included in this group. Replacing them in Collingwood’s main 22 have been Clarke, Fasolo, Goldsack, Keeffe and Sinclair. These five players have so far averaged 31 less ranking points (about 2 per cent of the team’s productivity in 2011) than the players they replaced. The main loss here has been Leon Davis, with Marty Clarke being a capable but not as productive replacement. Overall though the main 22 is producing 121 less ranking points per game than 2011, a 7 per cent drop in productivity. Pretty much all of this can be attributed to Ball, Johnson, Thomas, Reid and Dawes, with Davis’ loss offsetting Sidebottom’s improvement.

So in summary then it looks like injuries and the loss of Leon Davis has led to Collingwood’s fall so far in 2012. (Though the Pies did drop off towards the end of 2011 as well.) The good news for Collingwood supporters then is that the team may well improve again as these players become healthy again, though Ball is out for the season and Davis is not returning. In other words, it may not be new coach Nathan Buckley’s fault after all.  

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 40: The "Other" Wooden Finger

Turns out there is a band called 'Wooden Finger' that, in an act that was equal parts narcissism and boredom, I found when I typed 'wooden finger' into Google and they came up first. (How rude!)

I had a listen to them over on Myspace. How to describe them? Well their Myspace page describes them as "folk", "indie", "Americana", "shoegaze", "classical/baroque to bluesgrass/folk", and "Southern gothic indie folk". From my cursory listen I would say that last description is the most accurate. It also pretty well describes their band photo:

They also have a logo of a wooden finger! Why haven't I done that yet? Well, probably because they're more serious and passionate about their music than I am about this blog. Still, I may have to look into this ... maybe I can persuade Ms Wheatley and her graphicy-design-magic to come up with something for me.

Anyway, from one finger to another, give Wooden Finger and their 'Southern gothic indie folk' a try.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 5 2012

The big development in this week's rankings is the Sydney Swans jumping from eighth to fifth - yes, even above Collingwood - after comfortably beating Hawthorn on the weekend. They're still a bit away from the top four, but they've closed the gap considerably in the past two weeks.

Meanwhile in the bottom half of the rankings Fremantle has significantly improved their standing so far this season. Could it be that Ross Lyon is one of those coaches who actually has a considerable impact on his team's performance? Possibly, given that St. Kilda - the team he left - has gone backwards so far. Or could it just be that the Dockers have regained a few of their better players? Or maybe it's just natural improvement? Whatever it is I'm feeling less certain about my bet that the Dockers would win less than 11 1/2 games this season.

1 (1) Geelong 35.9 (37.5)
2 (2) Carlton 29.9 (34.4)
3 (4) West Coast 27.7 (28.7)
4 (3) Hawthorn 26.2 (31.1)
5 (8) Sydney 16.2 (11.6)
6 (5) Collingwood 16.0 (20.4)
7 (6) St. Kilda 13.1 (14.7)
8 (7) North Melbourne 8.3 (11.8)
9 (9) Richmond -3.3 (-4.4)
10 (10) Essendon -3.5 (-6.3)
11 (12) Fremantle -7.8 (-9.6)
12 (11) Western Bulldogs -10.6 (-9.4)
13 (13) Brisbane -13.5 (-14.3)
14 (14) Adelaide -15.8 (-15.8)
15 (15) Port Adelaide -34.5 (-33.5)
16 (16) Melbourne -38.3 (-40.4)
17 (17) Gold Coast -49.5 (-52.1)
18 (18) Greater Western Sydney -55.5 (-55.3)

Is Andrew Bogut A Bust?

It kills me to even ask this question – Andrew Bogut seems like a nice bloke and has one of the best Twitter accounts of any athlete. When he first entered the NBA and basically came out and said that he was a far better player than three-time NBA champion Luc Longley – drawing scorn from outraged Aussies in the process – I just nodded my head in agreement. But has he actually lived up to the expectation of being a No.1 draft pick?

According to the NBA Geek website, Andrew Bogut has averaged 0.133 wins per 48 minutes over his career. What on earth does that mean? Well an average NBA player accumulates 0.100 wins per 48 minutes, so according to this metric Bogut has been better than the average player.

I find it easier to think about this if you look at Bogut’s stats compared to the average center. Bogut’s career true shooting percentage is 53.8 per cent, compared to 55.0 per cent for the average center, meaning that Bogut is not as efficient at scoring as the average center. (One comment I heard from a commentator was that watching Bogut shoot free throws right-handed he thought Bogut must be left-handed). However, Bogut is a better-than-average rebounder (13.7 rebounds per 48 minutes compared to 12.9 for the average center) and assist-maker (3.4 compared to 2.3).

But does one expect more from a number one pick than just being ‘better than average’? Bogut has produced 37 wins in his seven-year career. From 1977 to 2006 the average number of wins produced over the first four years of their careers by number one draft picks was 34.6 wins. This suggests Bogut is below average for a number one draft pick. However, this group includes very productive players such as Magic Johnson, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Shaquille O’Neal, Tim Duncan, LeBron James and Dwight Howard, who would all bring up the average wins produced. Hence, without doing the detailed calculations, Bogut may well have been better than the ‘median’ number one draft pick.

In summary then Bogut appears to be a better-than-average player who was an OK but not outstanding choice as a number one pick. Whether or not that should be considered as ‘being a bust’ is up to you.

The Avengers Movie Review

Since the age of eight I’ve been borderline-obsessed with Marvel’s comic book series ‘The Avengers’, as can be seen here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here. I’ve always liked the concept even when the stories sucked; a club of heroes kinda hanging out and taking on evil schemers and such. Naturally then I headed down to the first session on the first day of release to see the new Joss Whedon-directed flick – so what’s the verdict?  

Well the first thing to note is that it’s not really that much like ‘The Avengers’ comic book at all. It’s more reminiscent of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s ‘The Ultimates’, a 2002 series that basically re-imagined the Avengers as a big-budget blockbuster. So like that series Nick Fury is black, Captain America uses a gun, Hawkeye and the Black Widow are black-ops agents, the Hulk is on the team, and the heroes are battling some alien race called the Chitauri. Given that ‘The Ultimates’ was arguably one of the best ‘Avengers’ stories ever though that’s not necessarily a bad move. Having said that there are some typically ‘Avengers’-like traits on show. The heroes don’t get along, the main villain is Thor’s brother Loki (who long-time Avengers fans will know was the very first villain the comic book version of the team faced), and it all ends in a huge battle in the middle of Manhattan, that perennial backdrop for destructive superhero fights.

The best Marvel movies to date – ‘Spider-Man’, ‘X-Men’ and ‘Iron Man’ – have taken the best elements out of the original comic books and tweaked them slightly to create their own modern style. ‘The Avengers’ movie does that to some extent, using the S.H.I.E.L.D. organisation to re-create the clubhouse feel, but also to inject some conspiracy and espionage – those tried and true tropes of modern TV and cinema – into the franchise. Frankly, having the heroes hang around in a mansion being served by a butler probably wasn’t going to cut it in 2012. It also makes the heroes – Captain America excepted, but that ends up being part of his charm – seem more worldly and less like Saturday morning animation figures.

Of the players Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man/Tony Stark is the obvious standout, and his presence helps to give the film some credibility and clout. Mark Ruffalo though is the best of the many Hulks to date, adding some wit and panache to Bruce Banner’s otherwise brooding existence. A scene with Ruffalo and Downey Jr. bonding over S.H.I.E.L.D’s highly-advanced technological toys is one of the movie’s understated highlights. Tom Hiddleston reprises his role from ‘Thor’ as Loki, but goes from regal pest to full-on chaos-bringer, which might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Still he remains the strongest of the Avengers-related villains to date (although the villain foreshadowed for the sequel after the credits roll gave me a goosebump or two). The other Avengers are all at least serviceable and do have their moments. Chris Evans portrays Cap as a sort of clueless jock who nevertheless knows how to take charge in an emergency, Chris Hemsworth is epically ham-irific as Thor and has a couple of nice interactions, and Scarlett Johansson holds her own alongside her more noticeably ‘super’ teammates. Only Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye kind of gets the short shrift, spending about half the flick as Loki’s mindless automaton.

Which is not to say it’s a complete home run however. For a two-and-a-half-hour long movie remarkably little seems to happen. There is character conflict, but as Ms Wheatley noted it doesn’t go too far beyond the ‘Biff! I’m tougher than you!’ variety. Still Joss Whedon does a decent job of balancing his cast, and I doubt there will be many viewers coming out feeling like they’ve been cheated. Although, now that I think of it, I don’t remember getting to hear the cry of ‘Avengers Assemble!’ at any point.