The all being equal bit might be the issue, never seems to be the case for us in recent years.
1. Coaching stability. Along with Suns, the only 2 teams to enter 2024 with new coaches in place. Will be Yze's 2nd year and Newman, Ziebell also. It is tough to quantify and calculate this effect with any precision, but it should be worth a couple of extra wins on average.
2. The draw. We finished 13th last year and the way the draw is intended to work, our median double up opponent finishing position should be around 10.5th. In the event it is 2 positions tougher than that, 8.5th. Cats, who finished higher than us, and in the top 12 should have had a double up draw of 9.5th median finishing position. What they actually got was 11.8th The difference between our draw and theirs is like us both having the same draw bar one game where they play 17th and we play 3rd. So there is some significance to it. If that corrects in 2025 as it should, we get at least one extra very winnable game.
3. Umpiring. We remain 18th. We know what causes this and it is bias, there can be no doubt about it. We are a free kick a 1/4 below AFL average. The difference between our umpiring and average umpiring is a goal a game, based on the average free being from the centre circle therefore an inside 50 and about every 4th inside 50 yields a goal. A goal a game added to our score this season is another extra win.
4. Injuries. We have obviously had a massive outlier season in 2024. It is surely impossible to have a worse season and also very highly unlikely to be anywhere near as badly off. And it is not just a matter of 10 players got injured and were missing from our best team but the teams we fielded were stable from then on and able to improve as the season progressed, there has barely been any stability in the team all season. After 21 matches, 19 players have played between 5 and 14 matches. The corresponding figure for Geelong is 11 players. These are the players coming in and out of the team the most. For the blues that figure is 11 players. For Collingwood it is 16. Collingwood and Carlton are recognised as badly affected by injuries so it shows just how unstable we have been due to injury. We are seeing those 2 teams likely to finish finish at least 3-4 wins below what they were universally expected to achieve. So it is not difficult to extrapolate from that our injuries have cost us 5-6 wins minimum.
So we can see from using reasonable estimates for all these factors where our 10 extra expected wins have vanished. Hopefully we get a fair run next year and that alone will lead to big improvement.
Against that, we look likely to lose 3-4 of our best players from this season and replace them with kids from the draft. Hopefully we get a better run with these mainly uncontrollable factors though, and see some improvement that way.
1. Coaching stability. Along with Suns, the only 2 teams to enter 2024 with new coaches in place. Will be Yze's 2nd year and Newman, Ziebell also. It is tough to quantify and calculate this effect with any precision, but it should be worth a couple of extra wins on average.
2. The draw. We finished 13th last year and the way the draw is intended to work, our median double up opponent finishing position should be around 10.5th. In the event it is 2 positions tougher than that, 8.5th. Cats, who finished higher than us, and in the top 12 should have had a double up draw of 9.5th median finishing position. What they actually got was 11.8th The difference between our draw and theirs is like us both having the same draw bar one game where they play 17th and we play 3rd. So there is some significance to it. If that corrects in 2025 as it should, we get at least one extra very winnable game.
3. Umpiring. We remain 18th. We know what causes this and it is bias, there can be no doubt about it. We are a free kick a 1/4 below AFL average. The difference between our umpiring and average umpiring is a goal a game, based on the average free being from the centre circle therefore an inside 50 and about every 4th inside 50 yields a goal. A goal a game added to our score this season is another extra win.
4. Injuries. We have obviously had a massive outlier season in 2024. It is surely impossible to have a worse season and also very highly unlikely to be anywhere near as badly off. And it is not just a matter of 10 players got injured and were missing from our best team but the teams we fielded were stable from then on and able to improve as the season progressed, there has barely been any stability in the team all season. After 21 matches, 19 players have played between 5 and 14 matches. The corresponding figure for Geelong is 11 players. These are the players coming in and out of the team the most. For the blues that figure is 11 players. For Collingwood it is 16. Collingwood and Carlton are recognised as badly affected by injuries so it shows just how unstable we have been due to injury. We are seeing those 2 teams likely to finish finish at least 3-4 wins below what they were universally expected to achieve. So it is not difficult to extrapolate from that our injuries have cost us 5-6 wins minimum.
So we can see from using reasonable estimates for all these factors where our 10 extra expected wins have vanished. Hopefully we get a fair run next year and that alone will lead to big improvement.
Against that, we look likely to lose 3-4 of our best players from this season and replace them with kids from the draft. Hopefully we get a better run with these mainly uncontrollable factors though, and see some improvement that way.
