Analysis Good, Bad and Not Much Ugly

[NSolis]

Age profile is far less relevant than many think. Out of the 9 games - 7 of the teams that won were younger in both Age and Average games.

Adelaide - 24.6 average age, 76.6 games v Brisbane - 26.10 average age, 132.6 games
Fremantle - 24.4 average age, 75.4 games Beat Melbourne - 26.1 years, 118.3 games
Port - 24.11 average age, 81.0 games Beat Richmond - 26.10 average age, 119.3 games
Gold Coast - 24.11 average age, 78.2 games beat Bulldogs - 26.1 average age, 102.7 games
Essendon - 24.11 average age, 79.5 games beat WC - 25.1 average age, 87.3 games
GWS - 24.11 average age, 74.9 games beat Geelong -26.11 average age, 120.3 games
Hawthorn - 24.1 average age, 67.2 games beat St.Kilda - 25.6 average age, 94.4 games

Where's this data from, out of curiosity? 5 teams who won with an average age profile of 24.1 and 5 losing sides with an average age of 26.1 seems kinda weird. Games played list seems accurate, but about 5 of those results were upsets.

The significance of age/experience profile is just that it tracks pretty close to the ladder, with older teams generally towards the top. For example last year all the teams in the top half of the list age ranking won 10+ games except West Coast, while the 5 youngest lists all missed the eight. The younger outliers who did well (Collingwood, Fremantle, Brisbane) all looked like rising threats for the coming years and the older lists that did poorly (West Coast, GWS) looked in need of a refresh.

Lots of reasons for this obviously and it's not necessarily that age profile causes losses, it's also that teams that are losing often ditch their experienced players and try and rebuild. But if you just tipped the older team to win most of the time you'd do decently well.

 

[Pugsley]

Very very good
Rankine and Rachele goals!

The Rachele celebration. Was watching it with my 12 yo via Facetime. He said the name of the soccer player that does it.
He called Zorko a butthead when he eye gouged Pedlar.

 

[Klug]

Weather , timeslot, last weeks form maybe

Footy crowds havent been the same since Covid..

Covid forced everyone to get a Kayo subscription and watch from home.. as there were no crowds allowed.

Alot of these supporters havent returned to the “live at the ground” experience.. they realised that they can watch live (with no telecast delays) in the comfort of their own homes with their own supply of beer, food etc.. and not get robbed blind.. and not have to fight traffic on roads and crowds on public transport.

Crowds have returned to games in Melbourne largely, and Port crowds are strong post Covid.

It seems to be something that has affected the Crows more than other clubs.

I would be fascinated to see the average age of club membership, as I believe the Crows members would be the oldest in competition (along with Melbourne for MCC reasons!).

Older members = more likely to stay at home on night/cold/wet games, more likely to have health concerns about covid risks too.

 

[hippyhippy]

Worrell had a very good first game back, hopefully will see much more improvement.

McHenry.. I have always thought that he is not afl standard... But I'm starting to change my mind. He can have a spot in the right team. Ie a team that has 6 quality forwards. His position is not a forward because he doesn't have the skill for it. However I can see him being like kaeys... Just a hard worker. He really is fighting for a spot against Murphy who has been decent lately

Jones continues his breakout season. Playing the footy everyone was expecting of him.

Early 1st QTR and the 3rd QTR we were very lucky with their inaccuracy. Thought we were really dominated. Sometimes we have problems getting the ball out of the defensive half and just kicking it out blindly.

 

[AFC979810]

Where's this data from, out of curiosity? 5 teams who won with an average age profile of 24.1 and 5 losing sides with an average age of 26.1 seems kinda weird. Games played list seems accurate, but about 5 of those results were upsets.

The significance of age/experience profile is just that it tracks pretty close to the ladder, with older teams generally towards the top. For example last year all the teams in the top half of the list age ranking won 10+ games except West Coast, while the 5 youngest lists all missed the eight. The younger outliers who did well (Collingwood, Fremantle, Brisbane) all looked like rising threats for the coming years and the older lists that did poorly (West Coast, GWS) looked in need of a refresh.

Lots of reasons for this obviously and it's not necessarily that age profile causes losses, it's also that teams that are losing often ditch their experienced players and try and rebuild. But if you just tipped the older team to win most of the time you'd do decently well.

Footywire.

 

[jo172]

Crowds have returned to games in Melbourne largely, and Port crowds are strong post Covid.

It seems to be something that has affected the Crows more than other clubs.

I would be fascinated to see the average age of club membership, as I believe the Crows members would be the oldest in competition (along with Melbourne for MCC reasons!).

Older members = more likely to stay at home on night/cold/wet games, more likely to have health concerns about covid risks too.

Has to be a strong correlation in terms of timeslots as well.

When the rain came through at 3:00 pm yesterday being at the footy on a Sunday night would be the last thing many would want.

Note our only home game which has been a night slot this year we got 47,395 to (albeit who knows the gather round factor)

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

Can we **** this grub off? Stain on the competition

 

[arrowman]

I was thinking that their 1.9 might have been 5.5 or 6.4 on a dry deck, but that's unfair on our defensive unit and floaters like Keays who worked very hard that quarter. I think the 1.9 had a lot to do with the pressure they were under, which caused a lot of hurried kicks and miskicks. Our defence just kept at them, like a terrier.

Agreed. And by the end of the game, the difference in scoring shots was just 3. That's not enough to talk about "we were lucky they kicked so badly".

 

[Geoffa32]

View attachment 1699570

Can we **** this grub off? Stain on the competition

Any talk of him being suspended?

On SM-A325F using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[NSolis]

I loved Fog's physicality yesterday. Making sure the opposition knew he was there.

Modest game, but one thing he's doing better than in 2021/early 2022 is presenting up the field as an option, was pretty important in that respect yesterday. He was also pretty influential grabbing ground balls in the forward 50 - his best play for the game was setting up Walker's first goal where he grabbed the ball in a 1 on 4 and handballed over the top to Rankine. He also set up McHenry's goal with a ground ball in the pocket and won his free kick for his goal crumbing a pack.

Definitely not dominating but it was a good enough sort of game in tough conditions for key forwards.

 

[Houston]

We handled the conditions better than Brisbane.

That's another milestone.

Although we still didn't have as much run and carry as I'd like, although Pedlars run down the wing was really good and exactly what I'm looking for, our movement forward seemed to adapt to the conditions quicker than Brisbane.

Brisbane seemed to still be trying to play perfect football at times and it was a very slippery ball.

We adjusted when we needed to, which is a good sign.

I thought Pedlar was going to have a Brad Crouch esque addition to his highlight reel there. Worked hard and kept running after the pass.
Good to see him healthy and clearly a lot fitter.

 

[Betts are off]

Disagree. He is looking more like Fog of early 2022 than Fog of mid-late 2022. His benefit is to the team is to take marks and kick goals.

He is playing from behind a lot more and doesn't have the same swagger.

Nah, not for me. He's getting to so many contests and impacting them, even when out of position. That was never a trait of his prior to his breakout (quite the opposite in fact).

I think he's just played against 5 exceptionally good defensive teams in succession (literally the top 4 defenses and Geelong in Geelong), who have done well to curb his goal scoring output.

But he's doing a mountain of pack crashing and physical work that no-one else in our team does. I'm not in the bit least worried, he'll kick plenty of goals for us in the latter half.

 

[maxlilly]

Modest game, but one thing he's doing better than in 2021/early 2022 is presenting up the field as an option, was pretty important in that respect yesterday. He was also pretty influential grabbing ground balls in the forward 50 - his best play for the game was setting up Walker's first goal where he grabbed the ball in a 1 on 4 and handballed over the top to Rankine. He also set up McHenry's goal with a ground ball in the pocket and won his free kick for his goal crumbing a pack.

Definitely not dominating but it was a good enough sort of game in tough conditions for key forwards.

Spot on, showing how he can still contribute even when it's not all marks and goals
He's becoming a more complete player

 

[Pugsley]

Crowds have returned to games in Melbourne largely, and Port crowds are strong post Covid.

It seems to be something that has affected the Crows more than other clubs.

I would be fascinated to see the average age of club membership, as I believe the Crows members would be the oldest in competition (along with Melbourne for MCC reasons!).

Older members = more likely to stay at home on night/cold/wet games, more likely to have health concerns about covid risks too.

But we have new variants

 

[PeterSalt]

Just watched Fagan's post game press conference. Bit of shame 1 of journo's started asking him about Jason Burt and the recent articles over the Hawthorn racism review.

 

[Mostyn]

What about the fact most of those average games are weighted into 4 players most weeks for us - Tex, Sloane, Laird & Smith? A deeper dive is required to truly make this point. There's no doubt sides like Collingwood get inflated because of guys like Pendelbury & Sidebottom too so it's not unique to us but to really use these stats you need to further break it down.

I think I heard yesterday Adelaide had 12 players with under 60 games which generally speaking you don't win matches like that with a balance like that. In our case AO probably the great equalizer.

I think pointing to a round where underdogs got up in almost every game is not the killer point they think it is. A sample size of one isn't really evidence.

 

[Golumless]

How this for timing - I was reading this as we announced Worrell's re-signing

Worrell signs contract extension

The young Crow is staying at West Lakes

www.afc.com.au

Ha. If only my poor choice of words could get more players to sign on.

 

[MarcusP2]

Pretty much agree with everything you have said. Jones was good against the Dogs away though, so hoping he's getting better at that.

The umpiring is consistently horrible. It's not so much biased as just poor quality. There are reasons for that.
1. The AFL have made it nearly impossible to umpire thanks to the rule changes. The crowd goes ballistic for holding the ball, but the umpire (correctly) calls 'made an attempt' which is actually now the rule. You don't have to dispose correctly when tackled, you just have to make an attempt. It's awful.
2. The AFL have encouraged players to play for free kicks. They need to stamp out the acting and they need to penalise players that are instigating the contact.
3. The umpires are always positioned incorrectly. You have 4 umpires, you should always have an overlap so there is an umpire on either side of the contest. They don't and it's so incredibly dumb.

The rule has always been (since prior opportunity was introduced in the 80s):
1. If you have prior opportunity, you need to dispose legally immediately.
2. If you don't have prior, you need to attempt to dispose of legally (hence the decades of ground humping when tackled). But this isn't 'immediately', it's 'within a reasonable time'.

What changes game to game is the meaning of

• prior opportunity
• immediately/reasonable time (hence references to being 'spun 360 = HTB')
• genuine attempt

'There remains no explicit definition within the rules for a "reasonable time" to dispose of the ball, nor for a "genuine attempt" to dispose of the ball, and so these remain fully at the discretion of the umpire and at the direction of the umpiring coaches.'

 

[Mutineer]

Just watched Fagan's post game press conference. Bit of shame 1 of journo's started asking him about Jason Burt and the recent articles over the Hawthorn racism review.

And it wasn't cockrooch either.....

 

[cmndstab]

We beat Brisbane round 18 2018

Cameron wasn't playing in that game, So first time we've defeated Cameron, First time Keays defeated Brisbane

Whoops! I even checked that one Cheers for the correction.

Age profile is far less relevant than many think. Out of the 9 games - 7 of the teams that won were younger in both Age and Average games.

Adelaide - 24.6 average age, 76.6 games v Brisbane - 26.10 average age, 132.6 games
Fremantle - 24.4 average age, 75.4 games Beat Melbourne - 26.1 years, 118.3 games
Port - 24.11 average age, 81.0 games Beat Richmond - 26.10 average age, 119.3 games
Gold Coast - 24.11 average age, 78.2 games beat Bulldogs - 26.1 average age, 102.7 games
Essendon - 24.11 average age, 79.5 games beat WC - 25.1 average age, 87.3 games
GWS - 24.11 average age, 74.9 games beat Geelong -26.11 average age, 120.3 games
Hawthorn - 24.1 average age, 67.2 games beat St.Kilda - 25.6 average age, 94.4 games

I assume this is mean average age and games played, but median average is probably more relevant. Having 19 players with under 100 games (plus Keays with 101 games) but 3 with over 200 games is pretty odd and throws the mean off significantly.

In terms of median games played, the Crows were the third-least experienced this weekend (albeit the other two also had wins).

Hawthorn 41 (win)
GWS 53 (win)
Adelaide 59 (win)
West Coast 62 (loss)
North Melbourne 66 (loss)
Essendon 68 (win)
Fremantle 69 (win)
Port Adelaide 79 (win)
Sydney 80 (win)
Gold Coast 83 (win)
Carlton 95 (loss)
St Kilda 96 (loss)
Western Bulldogs 96 (loss)
Geelong 98 (loss)
Collingwood 100 (win)
Richmond 105 (loss)
Brisbane 130 (loss)
Melbourne 143 (loss)

 

[Betts are off]

Just watched Fagan's post game press conference. Bit of shame 1 of journo's started asking him about Jason Burt and the recent articles over the Hawthorn racism review.

I thought he handled it reasonably well. I liked how he mentioned that he's probably able to compart-mentalise it due to the fact that his conscious being clear.

Having said that blind freddie could see the toll its taking on him. He deflated the moment it was mentioned.

 

[Betts are off]

Ha. If only my poor choice of words could get more players to sign on.

NOICE!!!!!!

 

[VictorianCrow85]

One of the most pleasing things from yesterday was Rachele. Not the amount of touches but composure & setting Soligo up late...

One of the areas of his game some of us have been critical of. The coach is aware of it, he's aware of it, he'll get better.



But rather than go for the glory himself, he decided to find housemate Jake Soligo in what he thought was a better position.

Soligo kicked the goal and the Crows had their 15-point lead back.

Nicks couldn’t hide his happiness at Rachele’s act when asked about it.

“You are starting to see the things that I like too,” he said.

“We love that.

“That is even more pleasing than the goal, I’m glad you noticed it and I’m sure our supporters have to.

“For a young kid to learn so quickly that it is about team, and he loves team.

“He loves to celebrate, his passion for the game.

“Both he and Izak have worked on that to bring others into the game and I thought that was outstanding and a real key moment of the game.”

“I definitely was but Jake has given me a few over my career so I thought I should repay him and do the team thing but I was definitely tempted to go for the snap,” he said.

“That is something I have really worked on this year, my composure inside 50.

“Watching back on the vision from last year there were times where I blew away goals and this year I want to make my opportunities count.”

 

[Mutineer]

How this for timing - I was reading this as we announced Worrell's re-signing

Worrell signs contract extension

The young Crow is staying at West Lakes

www.afc.com.au

Never ever any doubt it was just a matter of course before it got done with the glowing reports emanating from the coaches and Burgess.

 

[Mutineer]

Exactly, I said it earlier on but the guy’s movement through the middle of the ground alone has immensely helped us, always looking to open things up. Seems to fend off pretty well, as well, has a strong core

Probably gets another 2 or 3 votes last night

What more does Rory Laird need to do for this board to acknowledge he's an A grader?