Analysis Some data on Crows avg games experience from 23/24

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You’re missing the point, a few of our experienced players shat the bed, which of our kids did?

There’s no point in having experience if it’s no good, I’d prefer to have talented kids who keep their composure like Max and Nank did.

Thats why this whole thread and your reliance on stats is nonsense
 

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He is only 24 now and hasn’t played for 2 seasons. So he was 21-22 when playing - still a kid in AFL terms. Plenty of draftees play their first games when either 20 or 21


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In general, sure, specifically to him, no. He was a finished package. And the fact that he was no different after 2 years and a heap of games is the proof.
 
You’re missing the point, a few of our experienced players shat the bed, which of our kids did?

There’s no point in having experience if it’s no good, I’d prefer to have talented kids who keep their composure like Max and Nank did.

Thats why this whole thread and your reliance on stats is nonsense
snarl, snarl, snarl :roflv1::roflv1:

Did stats root your missus? You seem to have an excessive dislike of them.

No one shat the bed ya fool. We lost by 4 points against last years premiers who haven't lost in the last 6 games, playing away. At a minimum everyone was serviceable, a lot of our players played very good, we just didn't get the result. A couple of players were down a bit.

Last week Nank and Keane were terrible. You can't expect everyone to play well all the time, in any game a couple are going to be down.
 
snarl, snarl, snarl :roflv1::roflv1:

Did stats root your missus? You seem to have an excessive dislike of them.

No one shat the bed ya fool. We lost by 4 points against last years premiers who haven't lost in the last 6 games, playing away. At a minimum everyone was serviceable, a lot of our players played very good, we just didn't get the result. A couple of players were down a bit.

Last week Nank and Keane were terrible. You can't expect everyone to play well all the time, in any game a couple are going to be down.
Lol, you’re opening lines were quite amusing.

Really? ROB shank kick, Keays running into open goal, late snap that cost us the game, Laird and Crouch handball happy.

The thing you’re continuing to miss, unless the experienced players are good, they are of no more than value than decent kids.
 
How do young players get games added to their games tally?
This IS the key issue.

If we are serious about fast tracking to being premiership contenders, we just must get games into our best young talent asap... rather than prioritising players with little upside or cooked veterans.

We are wasting this year. Likely to miss finals & not making the most of getting games into younger players.

It's beyond dumb & club leadership should instruct Nicks to prioritise younger talent for making finals next season... or just sack him given he is not going to outcoach the best on game day.
 
Everyone missed the most important point from the OP so it looks like I'll have to spell it out for you (I even gave you a clue by the way I divided up that table).

In general a more experienced team beats a less experienced team, however, if you want to assess a team to see if its punching above its average games played weight then the degree to which an inexperienced team is beating more experienced is a good indicator.

As I showed in the table in the OP, we have a good record against teams we are more experienced than AND teams that are up to 20 games more experienced than us. This is a good sign we have a good team developing.

Here is a graph of the ladder as of yesterday against average games played by each team in round 9View attachment 1993186

Any team that's to the left/below the line is punching above its weight, any team to the right/above the line is punching below its weight.

Crows are the big blue dot. Teams we've played are black dots, teams we're yet to play are blue dots.



Given the top teams are typically about 115 games experience, given we perform well against sides that we are with 20 games of experience of, given that 115-20 is 95, given we're currently at about 85 games of experience and given that we have 14 games to go and increase about 0.7 games of average experience per round, by the end of this season we should be at about 95 games of experience and far better placed from an experience perspective to keep right up with the top teams (assuming we don't blend in a heap of youth (by choice or by injury forcing it)).

I could actually make an argument that our average games figure over does our experience level (and therefore we are punching even further above our weight) and that we would actually be better off looking at the count of players less than 100 games, but that's a job for another time.
.
Here's the data table that made up the graph FYI

View attachment 1993197
Thanks for this. I think alongside all the general negativity about the performance of the team it is worth keeping in mind that it's a young group and there's plenty of scope for natural improvement in the players we have. This is a good data point on that topic. Not to say there's nothing to criticise of course, but the fact that we are in the bottom third of the league for age/experience is a factor that should be taken into account when evaluating where we are at.

Compared to last year our results are somewhat worse but I do think our better performances are less reliant on the older cohort, specifically Walker, Smith and Laird all of whom are down from last year while guys like Soligo, Rankine, Rachele and Worrell have improved. And I think it's positive that we are competitive every week.

One thing this really shows is how much we would benefit from a couple of quality mid-career free agent recruits. Such a massive gap in that 100-200 game range.
 
Are we moving up?

2020 > 2021 > 2022 > 2023 > 2024

Are we getting older and more experienced each season? Or are we holding ground to a degree?
Good question. I wasn't sure so checked a few games each season to see. Random games are random obviously but I think this is better than just looking at the list, since who we are selecting is more relevant.

I've posted the details below but the bottom line is I'd say we peaked in terms of youth and inexperience in 2022. We gradually shed experience in 2020 and 2021 and have gradually gained it since 2022 began. By round 1 that year we had a fairly similar first team to what we'd pick today and had gotten rid of most of our older players from the 2017 era, but our young players were younger and more inexperienced. I think we often had the youngest team of the round that year, whereas these days we are usually around 3rd or 4th youngest. We've kept a fairly stable group since then with only incremental changes.

Just for reference in 2019 round 23 we had an average age of 27 years, 2 months with 136.6 games average experience. During 2019 the team included Douglas, Gibbs, Talia, Greenwood, Mackay, Jenkins, Jacobs and Betts among a bunch of players that would be gone in the next couple of years.

2020:
Rd 1: 25 years, 4 months / 94.0 games. At this point we still have guys like Lynch, Talia, Mackay and Gibbs in the team, have added some regulars under Nicks like ROB, and will pick Keays soon. Not that much youth. Later on in the year we'll be playing McHenry, Murphy, Jones, Sholl, MacAdam and McPherson so there's a bit of turnover but we don't get hugely younger.
Rd 10: 24 years, 4 months / 74.1 games.
Rd 18: 25 years, 7 months / 96.9 games.

2021:
Rd 1: 24 years, 8 months / 66.2 games. Way less experienced obviously. We've added Rowe, Frampton, Butts, Berry and Hamill, later in the year we'll see Thilthorpe. Still have Lynch, Mackay plays a bit this year too.
Rd 10: 24 years, 6 months / 75.7 games.
Rd 20: 24 years, 11 months / 85.3 games.

2022:
Rd 1: 23 years, 10 months / 58.9 games. No senior players who aren't still playing for us except Sloane. We've got Rachele, Soligo, Dawson and Murray now, team is much closer to today's mix. With everyone fit we'd probably pick around 14 to 16 of the same players today.
Rd 10: 24 years, 0 months / 63.6 games.
Rd 20: 24 years, 1 months / 65.5 games.

2023:
Rd 1: 24 years, 11 months / 75.7 games.
Rd 10: 24 years, 3 months / 72.9 games.
Rd 20: 25 years, 4 months / 91.0 games. Main reason this one is more experienced is the return of Crouch, as we now have 7 100+ gamers for the first time in a while.

2024:
Rd 1: 24 years, 11 months / 76.5 games. No Walker for this one so it's a little lower than normal. Round 2 is a bit more representative of what we've fielded this year at 25 years, 6 months and 88.7 games.
Rd 10: 25 years, 5 months / 92.5 games.
 
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Thanks for this. I think alongside all the general negativity about the performance of the team it is worth keeping in mind that it's a young group and there's plenty of scope for natural improvement in the players we have. This is a good data point on that topic. Not to say there's nothing to criticise of course, but the fact that we are in the bottom third of the league for age/experience is a factor that should be taken into account when evaluating where we are at.

Compared to last year our results are somewhat worse but I do think our better performances are less reliant on the older cohort, specifically Walker, Smith and Laird all of whom are down from last year while guys like Soligo, Rankine, Rachele and Worrell have improved. And I think it's positive that we are competitive every week.

One thing this really shows is how much we would benefit from a couple of quality mid-career free agent recruits. Such a massive gap in that 100-200 game range.

Youre welcome.

It seems to me that we took some risks offloading Doedee, McAdam and delisting Hately etc, with fingers crossed we'd be good with experience to start off this year, then we lost Sloane and TT and Tex was a bit sore at the start and that put us back to square one.

I have also begun to think that offseasons are bad for us, we play a one of a kind gameplan compared to every other team, so we don't really get any value playing against ourselves and then we start playing against genuine oppo with their gameplans and we so aren't ready for it.

Add that we arent a strong aerial side but our gameplan is helped massively if we can be good in the air and to lose our best aerial player in TT, along with having already lost our second best in Murray (and now losing Worrell who's in the top couple) and this hasn't helped.

Lastly, turns out our draw wasn't great for a good start off either. We played most of the strong and experienced ones first up.

The lads seem to have kept their confidence up and been performing ok recently, I just hope they keep that up with the next few teams and we get some wins and some confidence and see where that takes us.
 
This IS the key issue.

If we are serious about fast tracking to being premiership contenders, we just must get games into our best young talent asap... rather than prioritising players with little upside or cooked veterans.

We are wasting this year. Likely to miss finals & not making the most of getting games into younger players.

It's beyond dumb & club leadership should instruct Nicks to prioritise younger talent for making finals next season... or just sack him given he is not going to outcoach the best on game day.
Ok, so GC and GWS were forced to play youth from the get go. If its as simple as playing those guys, where's all their premierships?

You've all heard the coaches all across the league say there's no value derived if you can't even get some sort of system going in your game (aka you're getting flogged), you learn nothing in those games.

You have to balance things, youth with some sort of system being achieved. We're already one of the least experienced teams in the comp, you really wanna bring in more youth rather than put the hard word (figuratively) on a bunch of potential fringe guys still on the list on 40-70 games and say produce or be delisted?
 

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Ok, so GC and GWS were forced to play youth from the get go. If its as simple as playing those guys, where's all their premierships?

You've all heard the coaches all across the league say there's no value derived if you can't even get some sort of system going in your game (aka you're getting flogged), you learn nothing in those games.

You have to balance things, youth with some sort of system being achieved. We're already one of the least experienced teams in the comp, you really wanna bring in more youth rather than put the hard word (figuratively) on a bunch of potential fringe guys still on the list on 40-70 games and say produce or be delisted?
Yes
 
Ok, so GC and GWS were forced to play youth from the get go. If its as simple as playing those guys, where's all their premierships?

You've all heard the coaches all across the league say there's no value derived if you can't even get some sort of system going in your game (aka you're getting flogged), you learn nothing in those games.

You have to balance things, youth with some sort of system being achieved. We're already one of the least experienced teams in the comp, you really wanna bring in more youth rather than put the hard word (figuratively) on a bunch of potential fringe guys still on the list on 40-70 games and say produce or be delisted?
I'm not saying get rid of all our experienced players & solely play youth.
We still play a core of experienced players, most of whom are still performing at a decent level.

I'm saying don't play (much) those with a limited future.
Smith should not be playing most games as performances have been poor & towards end of his career.
Murphy & McHenry don't have high upside so should only play if we have many experienced players out injured.

Would we lose much by playing the likes of Curtin, Ryan, Schoenberg, Berry, Dowling, Taylor, etc instead?
 
Something I had a look at this morning which may be of interest and relevant to the thread:

Obviously we have a big gap in our list with experienced, mid-career players, and we should be looking to pick up some more players like this through free agency if possible. I had a look to see how unusual this list gap is compared to other teams. Most good players play their best football in their late 20s when they've played 100+ games. This is the most successful list profile range but also if you look at something like the All Australian team, it's pretty much all players who are 25-30 with 100+ games, and players who don't fit that profile are generally of a specific type (young midfielders and older key forwards in recent years).

For example over the last three years about 75% of players selected in the AA team are 25-30, and almost all have also played 100 games since they've been good enough to get selected their whole career. The only exceptions on the older end are key forwards (Hawkins and Walker), and each year there's a few players under 25 who make it, mostly midfielders and wingers (Gulden, Rozee, Butters, Daicos, Serong and Walsh are recent examples). The only key position players under 25 to make it in the last 3 years are McKay in 2021 and Sam Taylor in 2022, and Stengle made it as a small forward. Curnow and Larkey have made it while meeting the age range requirement but just short of 100 games (90ish).

Adelaide have 6 players in this 25-30, 100+ games bracket on the list: Laird, Crouch, O'Brien, Keays, Dawson and Murphy, plus there's Milera with 99 games. At the start of last year it was only Laird and Crouch, which was an insane outlier. We've come up to the pack a bit in the last 12 months but as of right now this is still the lowest in the league. We have 11 players on the list in the 25-30 age range in total, which is also the lowest in the league (Bulldogs are next lowest with 12, Carlton have 23).

Here's the 'players 25-30 with 100+ games experience' ladder:
16 - St. Kilda
14 - Carlton
12 - Melbourne, Brisbane
11 - Essendon, Collingwood
10 - Gold Coast, Richmond
9 - Port Adelaide, Sydney
8 - West Coast, Fremantle, GWS, Geelong, North Melbourne
7 - Hawthorn, Western Bulldogs
6 - Adelaide

Loose relationship to team success, but some interesting outliers: St. Kilda who have an insanely high number, Sydney who are low relative how good they are, and I think Richmond who are due a rebuild. Most of the contending sides have a good number in this range, or are Geelong where everyone is old.
 
Something I had a look at this morning which may be of interest and relevant to the thread:

Obviously we have a big gap in our list with experienced, mid-career players, and we should be looking to pick up some more players like this through free agency if possible. I had a look to see how unusual this list gap is compared to other teams. Most good players play their best football in their late 20s when they've played 100+ games. This is the most successful list profile range but also if you look at something like the All Australian team, it's pretty much all players who are 25-30 with 100+ games, and players who don't fit that profile are generally of a specific type (young midfielders and older key forwards in recent years).

For example over the last three years about 75% of players selected in the AA team are 25-30, and almost all have also played 100 games since they've been good enough to get selected their whole career. The only exceptions on the older end are key forwards (Hawkins and Walker), and each year there's a few players under 25 who make it, mostly midfielders and wingers (Gulden, Rozee, Butters, Daicos, Serong and Walsh are recent examples). The only key position players under 25 to make it in the last 3 years are McKay in 2021 and Sam Taylor in 2022, and Stengle made it as a small forward. Curnow and Larkey have made it while meeting the age range requirement but just short of 100 games (90ish).

Adelaide have 6 players in this 25-30, 100+ games bracket on the list: Laird, Crouch, O'Brien, Keays, Dawson and Murphy, plus there's Milera with 99 games. At the start of last year it was only Laird and Crouch, which was an insane outlier. We've come up to the pack a bit in the last 12 months but as of right now this is still the lowest in the league. We have 11 players on the list in the 25-30 age range in total, which is also the lowest in the league (Bulldogs are next lowest with 12, Carlton have 23).

Here's the 'players 25-30 with 100+ games experience' ladder:
16 - St. Kilda
14 - Carlton
12 - Melbourne, Brisbane
11 - Essendon, Collingwood
10 - Gold Coast, Richmond
9 - Port Adelaide, Sydney
8 - West Coast, Fremantle, GWS, Geelong, North Melbourne
7 - Hawthorn, Western Bulldogs
6 - Adelaide

Loose relationship to team success, but some interesting outliers: St. Kilda who have an insanely high number, Sydney who are low relative how good they are, and I think Richmond who are due a rebuild. Most of the contending sides have a good number in this range, or are Geelong where everyone is old.

I think 50+ games is the key indicator. 100 games is 5 full seasons. A player who has played 50 games should have graduated from apprentice by then. But What is interesting as Scorpus pointed out, maybe its the games not selected during key development stages that play a bigger part.
 
I could see 70 or 80 games as the threshold rather than 100, but I think what you are after is players who are in the prime age bracket for AFL performance and have also played enough games to be done with the 'learning' phase of their career and are ready to be prime contributors. You need a good portion of your list to be players like that to be a contender.

For the most part players who are on AFL lists at 25+ without playing close to 100 games aren't going to be hugely influential players unless they have a serious injury history they have recovered from, like say a Charlie Curnow. They will be depth or mature age rookies or similar. For the Crows it's Strachan (5 games), Burgess (40 games), Milera (99 games - injuries obviously), Himmelberg (45 games) and Hinge (53 games) that fit the bracket. Milera and Hinge are the only two players on that list who would be potentially best 22 for us and are the only two who I think will eventually play 100 AFL games. Maybe Himmelberg.
 
Hello Friends,
Time for a bit of an update.

So I thought I might check just how inexperienced we've been again. I thought we might be 3rd or 4th least experienced but after checking it seems we could make a claim on being the second least experienced team in the comp. Kangaroos clearly the least experienced but they've trended up in the last 10 games or so to sit in the low 80's. Hawks, GC and us all have a play on who is the second least experienced. Hawks had a real low blip early on but since have trended up and have been steady on 95 games, GC started off over 100, but then have had a lot of time in the 80's.

Our team we put out this week will be low 80's.
When we played Syd that was our least experienced team of the year at 63 games average experience, that's early 2024 Kangaroos or early days GWS and GC level. We have had the youngest team of the round twice, last round versus Syd and the one prior versus Richmond.

afl 1.JPG

The oldest team we can field this round is 97.7 games experience, might be just able to reach 100 games by the end of the year but I doubt it in practice.

If you have Laird and Tex but not Smith in the team it will be about 80 games experience, if you lose one of Tex or Laird and dont play too many rookies it will be about 70 games, if you lose one of Laird or Tex and play say Taylor, Dowling, Curtin and Cook then you will be at 60 games, if Smith comes in plus the usual suspects we'll be at about 90 games of experience.

Some of this might explain why Nicks is been given a bit more leeway than the average bigfooty Adelaider would like.


I also think when the review talks about list management changes, I don't think that means sack Hamish like a lot of you want it to be, I think it means more like, someone had to be aware that at the end of last season, when we let Doedee and McAdam go (well we weren't stopping McAdam) and cut Hately and Tyler Brown and decided to draft 3 players, that we were opening ourselves up to being very inexperienced this year, especially with a few things going wrong, like injuries to a good player or two. Someone had to have Ok'd that and I'm not so sure in hindsight it was such a good call.
 
Here's an update on the experience differential between us and our oppo for 23 and 24 so far:

afl3.JPG

That sydney game differential was so large I had to make a new category in my spreadsheet (over 60).
 
Lol, you’re opening lines were quite amusing.

Really? ROB shank kick, Keays running into open goal, late snap that cost us the game, Laird and Crouch handball happy.

The thing you’re continuing to miss, unless the experienced players are good, they are of no more than value than decent kids.
Nicks was terrible for leaving Keane there! That you missed derrr 2. Nanks was farrrrrrr better than Murphy...always is....they all are usually Keays has been atrocious for a while his kicking is high school at best along with Laird and ROB's kicking skills.
 
Doesn't look like much of a correlation between experience and wins

View attachment 2032742

Top 5 most experienced teams: 1 win, 4 losses
Top 5 least experienced teams: 1 win, 4 losses
Yer, pretty hard to derive much from just looking at us alone.

You need to look at the experience differential as well, what we are up against. We've only been the most experienced team once this season against Kangs which we won handily. 2 other times we were almost equal in experience, Freo and Rich and lost both, badly in the case of Freo. These are black marks against us. Yet other times we've beaten or drawn with teams a lot more experienced than us, if you are gonna count the losses to similarly experienced teams as black marks then you have to give kudos for these ones.

Maybe as the rest of this season progresses we might be able to pick up a pattern. As I've said elsewhere I think it really hurt having two of our best marking players in TT and NM out. Hopefully those guys can come back in and help us out.
 

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Analysis Some data on Crows avg games experience from 23/24

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