No Oppo Supporters Non Bulldog Footy Talk - Bulldogs only - Part 4

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Do 'good' teams generally fair better compared to expected scores than 'poor' teams? Or is that completely irrelevant?

I don't know the answer to this, but I suspect it depends on what you mean by "good" and "poor" teams.

We can characterise the outcome of any game as depending on some combination of the relative strengths of the two teams playing, and random factors unrelated to their strengths. Clearly stronger teams will win more games than weaker teams, but all else held equal teams that win are also likely to have been luckier than teams that don't---that is, more of the random factors happened to go their way. One implication of this is that the higher on the ladder a team is, the luckier they are likely to have been over the course of the season to date. As more games are completed, this luck factor should average out, leaving the strength factor to become more prominent in determining ladder position. Nonetheless, irrespective of the time of the season, the teams that are higher on the ladder are likely to have been luckier than the teams that are lower on the ladder. One of the factors that contributes to this "luckiness" is the variability inherent in goalkicking. So, if we define a "good" team as one that has won many games and is high on the ladder, then yes, we should expect them to fare relatively well when considering actual vs. expected scores.

On the other hand, one aspect of a team's strength may be their relative goalkicking accuracy. We know that some players are relatively accurate shots at goal (e.g., Tory Dickson), and others are relatively inaccurate (e.g., Aaron Naughton). If a team happens to have a greater number of accurate goalkickers, then we would expect them to exceed expected accuracy as a result of this, rather than simply due to randomness. This may be part of what makes them a successful team.

On the third hand (pay no attention to the bloke with the bleeding stump standing behind me; he was already like that), there may be a trade-off between having players in a team who are better shots for goal, and having players who excel in other areas. This means that the relative strength gained by having accurate shots on the team may be compensated for by a relative weakness in other areas of the game (e.g., marking ability, running speed, quality of post-goal celebrations). Would you rather players who can kick goals when they get the ball, but have trouble getting it, or players who have the ball on a string but can't hit the side of a barn door? In a competitive environment it would be surprising if there were a dominant option there; though certain game styles may result in relatively different preferences across different teams.

Anyway, that's my rambling two cents.
 
Came here to say exactly this. First thing we need to dump. I get it situationally but having the rule like we do where we give 5m on EVERY mark or free is stupid. We did it twice when Daniel kicked OOTF and both times instead of getting a man in where the ball went out, we retreated and gave the oppo an extra 10m space. Crazy tactic that doesn’t benefit us at all.

This is probably the most tactically frustrating thing about 2022 so far. I’d cut this before bringing in an extra ruck and that says ALOT.

Sometimes I wish (like the whole no recognised ruck, playing players out of position etc) that we would keep it simple and not pretend to be smarter than everyone else.
 
I don't know the answer to this, but I suspect it depends on what you mean by "good" and "poor" teams.

We can characterise the outcome of any game as depending on some combination of the relative strengths of the two teams playing, and random factors unrelated to their strengths. Clearly stronger teams will win more games than weaker teams, but all else held equal teams that win are also likely to have been luckier than teams that don't---that is, more of the random factors happened to go their way. One implication of this is that the higher on the ladder a team is, the luckier they are likely to have been over the course of the season to date. As more games are completed, this luck factor should average out, leaving the strength factor to become more prominent in determining ladder position. Nonetheless, irrespective of the time of the season, the teams that are higher on the ladder are likely to have been luckier than the teams that are lower on the ladder. One of the factors that contributes to this "luckiness" is the variability inherent in goalkicking. So, if we define a "good" team as one that has won many games and is high on the ladder, then yes, we should expect them to fare relatively well when considering actual vs. expected scores.

On the other hand, one aspect of a team's strength may be their relative goalkicking accuracy. We know that some players are relatively accurate shots at goal (e.g., Tory Dickson), and others are relatively inaccurate (e.g., Aaron Naughton). If a team happens to have a greater number of accurate goalkickers, then we would expect them to exceed expected accuracy as a result of this, rather than simply due to randomness. This may be part of what makes them a successful team.

On the third hand (pay no attention to the bloke with the bleeding stump standing behind me; he was already like that), there may be a trade-off between having players in a team who are better shots for goal, and having players who excel in other areas. This means that the relative strength gained by having accurate shots on the team may be compensated for by a relative weakness in other areas of the game (e.g., marking ability, running speed, quality of post-goal celebrations). Would you rather players who can kick goals when they get the ball, but have trouble getting it, or players who have the ball on a string but can't hit the side of a barn door? In a competitive environment it would be surprising if there were a dominant option there; though certain game styles may result in relatively different preferences across different teams.

Anyway, that's my rambling two cents.

Just to add my 2c to that discussion - the expected score stat would be very interesting if it took into account each individual player's expected accuracy from the specific shot. A set shot from 50m close to the boundary might be a 10-20% conversion rate for the majority of the comp, but Kennedy (WC) is probably somewhere closer to 30-50% (for example). I suspect the problem here is lack of sufficient data, but without that context it's still interesting but maybe not as instructive.

There are good set shot kicking players, and sometimes teams - WC being a good example. I'd trust the majority of their normal forward line with a 35-40m shot on an angle, and probably a few of their mids - there might be two or three on our list I'd trust with it, and just to keep the WA vibe going I don't think I'd trust any of Freo's list. So if Freo/Bulldogs/whoever had 15 set shots from a variety of angles inside 50 their expected score might be 6.8 with one OOF, whereas WC might be expected to kick 10.5.

This plays into your "third hand" point - we might have poor converters compared to WC, but is that because we've valued e.g. contested footy or handball skills from a recruitment, development and selection perspective? Maybe. It's still bloody frustrating but there's possibly some explanation there.

From a dogs perspective, maybe we beat Carlton - but they deserved their win imo because of their dominance in the first half and execution when required in the last quarter (Curnow in particular). Ultimately, and not to derail the point because this is non-dogs, we similarly can't continue to expect wins when we have obvious weaknesses in key parts of our structure and issues with execution.
 

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This is ridiculous the free ride Melbourne are getting. Every 50 50 decision is going their way. They can scrag players down and it’s never called but then they get away with anything or drag frees easily.
Tiggers got a similar sort of run with the umpires when they were on top. Given a lot of extra leeway
 
Extended to 8 more weeks out now with more surgery, so earliest return is round 10 for his FIRST game this year. You'd think both he and Saints would just draw a line under his career and move on. 15 of a possible 64 games up the end of round 2. (Meanwhile Sam Power negotiates a deal where Pies pay part of Treloar's salary.)

 
Extended to 8 more weeks out now with more surgery, so earliest return is round 10 for his FIRST game this year. You'd think both he and Saints would just draw a line under his career and move on. 15 of a possible 64 games up the end of round 2. (Meanwhile Sam Power negotiates a deal where Pies pay part of Treloar's salary.)

Could see him retired soon.
 
Spewing Ben Brown not playing, was looking forward to Bongers smashing tonight.
 
Tom MacDonald clearly been taking flopping lessons from Ben Brown.
 

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