Justnetime
Team Captain
- May 18, 2021
- 521
- 1,047
- AFL Club
- Carlton
you make your argument well with sound evidence, however when you look at the names at the top of this List I think you can put to bed the theory that free kicks against = poor AFL IQ
Most Free Kicks Against | 2021 AFL Statistics
Who has given away the most free kicks in AFL 2021?www.zerohanger.com
Its not about free kicks against. It’s about the ratio difference between free kicks for and free kicks against.
Example. Cripps on footy wire had something like 2.3 frees for and 2.2 frees against. A plus .1 net positive. And this despite he plays a much much harder position than Cottrell. Clayton Oliver has a -.1 differential. But shows his aggressiveness again in a very hard role where his role is to lay down the law physically Amongst other things.
Cottrell has a differential of -.4. A terrible differential league wide and puts him in the category of lumbering ruckman. Cottrell doesn’t have the luxury of inside midfielder to protect his horrible stat.
Why I’ve used the ratio between the two is you can say you can be smart to earn free kicks (selwood), and you can be stupid to lose free kicks. The stat can be clouded by position like inside mid, negating roles and a player asked to be aggressive.
Another point for debate is that Cottrell in his games is always top in ground covered due to his elite running. Despite that he can’t find the ball like his counterpart runner in Walsh. He can’t use his running advantage to run to the right spots to actually get a kick. What do you call that? He averaged low possessions. He is getting lost. The only reprieve on this latter bit is of coaches asked him to lock down on defensive running as his sole objective. Would be a stupid objective in todays game.