The midfield is without doubt the most contentious area of the current squad and often seen as the greatest point of weakness in the team. But what do the numbers actually say?
Here follows some simple quantitative analysis regarding the midfield with respect to the rest of the competition.
There are a myriad of statistics that are available today in AFL that can be applied to midfield players to measure their productivity: disposals, tackles, marks, metres gained, pressure acts, score involvements, time on ground, distance covered, stoppage attendance and on and on and on.
Each can be useful in their own right, however the use of just three statistics is able to purposefully determine a midfield player’s output effectively (and they have been widely available for decades):
Take a player’s overall rank in the competition for each of these above statistics per game and combine them into one figure to determine their corresponding “midfield score”.
For example an elite player that was ranked #1 in the league for all three statistics would have midfield score of 3 (1+1+1=3), which is obviously the lowest possible outcome and thus their “midfield rank” would be #1.
Taking this further, here is a chart of the top 50 players for the 2017 season according to this means of ranking:
Top 50 midfield rankings 2017: note the gap between the top three and the rest of the competition.
Shuey is our only player in the top 25 ranked midfielders and our only other representative in the top 50 in Priddis is now retired.
Also note there is a description of the “midfield type”. This is gained by calculating the above three statistics in the method:
Positive totals are indicative of players that predominantly occupy an inside stoppage role where conversely negative totals are indicative of players that predominantly occupy an outside or receiving role in the team. Totals close to zero are indicative of complete midfielders who are capable of occupying both inside and outside roles for their team.
As expected, the majority of elite midfielders in the competition are complete players.
As for the Eagles, the composition of midfield options and rotations is almost entirely outside, especially now with the retirements of Priddis and Mitchell:
West Coast Eagles midfield rankings 2017: note the high number of outside types in the list.
For those interested, in 2016 Naitanui was our third highest ranked “midfielder” (73rd overall) and was inside dominant. Our newest acquisition B. Ah Chee was ranked 109th overall this season, in an outside dominant role for Port.
From the above it can also be noted the folly of past recruitment of flankers with a view to midfield conversion. A flanker in the midfield still plays like a flanker - they're just in the midfield and remain incapable of winning the hard ball. Simply put, if you want to draft a player to act as a hard-ball winner in the team, draft a player that has a history of playing inside and winning at stoppages.
Redden now becomes vital in that he is our sole naturally inside-playing midfielder. Gaff meanwhile is so exclusively outside-minded that he never will take that next step in his development like Duncan has at Geelong. The same can be said to a greater extent for both Jetta, Masten and I fear, Duggan.
Similarly, looking to Yeo and Sheed as saviors of our midfield failings will end in frustration - they are both too outside-minded when compared with elite midfielders at the same ages of development.
Indeed, it has been a decade now since we have had an elite midfield presence in the team:
Suffice to say the story of the last ten years of this club has been the unsuccessful search for replacements to those lost at the end of 2007.
But how do we currently compare to the rest of the competition?
Here is a chart displaying the ranked midfield options of each club, including their age and type – for both the end of season and post-trading:
2017 AFL trading period midfield composition:
Midfield Quality calculated from top three midfielders for each club averaged.
Midfield Depth calculated from top eight midfielders for each club recursive.
Note the "topping-up" of many teams with existing superior midfields during the trading period.
Retirements of Priddis and Mitchell have left very little in the way of proven depth but have allowed regeneration in terms of the age profile - across top six midfielders we are now fourth youngest after only Bulldogs, St Kilda & GWS.
Note also the ongoing mismanagement of the two Queensland clubs. Despite having arguably bottom four squads and removing Rockliff and Ablett from their respective lists, Brisbane and Gold Coast have the third and fourth oldest midfields in the AFL.
Since 2005, all but twice have the premiers been placed top four according to midfield depth at the end of the season. Only once (Hawthorn 2013) in the past 12 years have the premiers been placed outside the top four for both midfield quality and depth.
For comparison, here is the same chart at this time last year:
2016 AFL trading period midfield composition: note Richmond addressing their midfield depth deficiency which played a major role in them becoming premiers.
The 2017 chart above provides frightening concerns for the future of the club. Not only does it write off our chances for 2018, but also brings in question the following seasons as well due to how long it takes for midfield depth to build outside of trading. It also infers that the current midfield is unbalanced when compared to other teams, with too many players who are outside dominant in comparison to inside contested ball winners.
It is a personal concern that the future success or failure of the team is now almost entirely reliant upon a group with a handful of games between them and a clutch of second round picks in what is seen to be (almost unanimously apart from the club) a weaker than average draft year. This is a considerably risky strategy that has been enacted; one that I only hope does pay off.
Regardless, finding the right players and right balance of inside versus outside will take time and cause inconsistency. Inconsistent teams don’t win premierships. Finding consistency of performance is going to be a key issue for this team in order to progress towards the next flag.
If one were to play Devil’s Advocate with the above figures it would be easy to dismiss that barring exceptional circumstances, we are sliding towards the bottom four next year with finals out of the question for possibly the better part of a decade.
I personally don’t share that sentiment – the Bulldogs and Tigers have shown in the past two seasons that teams not considered as chances at the start of the season are capable of building and going all the way.
However, it cannot be denied that we are not ideally placed for a rebuild. As was demonstrated in the recent trading period, those clubs who feel close to the top are going all-in for the premiership now before the squads of St Kilda, GWS, Melbourne, Bulldogs and Collingwood become dominant. The problem that presents for West Coast is that right now our midfield is unlikely to be able to compete with the quality that Geelong, Adelaide, Port and GWS possess. Unfortunately also by the time our rebuild matures Kennedy, Naitanui, Shuey, Jetta and possibly Redden will be gone whilst the likes of the aforementioned developing lists will be at their peaks. The optimistic view is Darling and McGovern are both 25 and the removal of some older players (Masten, Jetta) that are having negligible impact upon the current midfield places us in the same field so long as we nail those draft picks next month.
The fear remains in my opinion that unless we unearth some diamonds this coming season we may be headed for a prolonged period where we are competitive enough to be in the hunt for finals but not good enough to compete for a premiership.
Here follows some simple quantitative analysis regarding the midfield with respect to the rest of the competition.
There are a myriad of statistics that are available today in AFL that can be applied to midfield players to measure their productivity: disposals, tackles, marks, metres gained, pressure acts, score involvements, time on ground, distance covered, stoppage attendance and on and on and on.
Each can be useful in their own right, however the use of just three statistics is able to purposefully determine a midfield player’s output effectively (and they have been widely available for decades):
- Contested possessions
- Clearances
- Inside forward 50m entries
Take a player’s overall rank in the competition for each of these above statistics per game and combine them into one figure to determine their corresponding “midfield score”.
For example an elite player that was ranked #1 in the league for all three statistics would have midfield score of 3 (1+1+1=3), which is obviously the lowest possible outcome and thus their “midfield rank” would be #1.
Taking this further, here is a chart of the top 50 players for the 2017 season according to this means of ranking:
Top 50 midfield rankings 2017: note the gap between the top three and the rest of the competition.
Shuey is our only player in the top 25 ranked midfielders and our only other representative in the top 50 in Priddis is now retired.
Also note there is a description of the “midfield type”. This is gained by calculating the above three statistics in the method:
Positive totals are indicative of players that predominantly occupy an inside stoppage role where conversely negative totals are indicative of players that predominantly occupy an outside or receiving role in the team. Totals close to zero are indicative of complete midfielders who are capable of occupying both inside and outside roles for their team.As expected, the majority of elite midfielders in the competition are complete players.
As for the Eagles, the composition of midfield options and rotations is almost entirely outside, especially now with the retirements of Priddis and Mitchell:
West Coast Eagles midfield rankings 2017: note the high number of outside types in the list.
For those interested, in 2016 Naitanui was our third highest ranked “midfielder” (73rd overall) and was inside dominant. Our newest acquisition B. Ah Chee was ranked 109th overall this season, in an outside dominant role for Port.
From the above it can also be noted the folly of past recruitment of flankers with a view to midfield conversion. A flanker in the midfield still plays like a flanker - they're just in the midfield and remain incapable of winning the hard ball. Simply put, if you want to draft a player to act as a hard-ball winner in the team, draft a player that has a history of playing inside and winning at stoppages.
Redden now becomes vital in that he is our sole naturally inside-playing midfielder. Gaff meanwhile is so exclusively outside-minded that he never will take that next step in his development like Duncan has at Geelong. The same can be said to a greater extent for both Jetta, Masten and I fear, Duggan.
Similarly, looking to Yeo and Sheed as saviors of our midfield failings will end in frustration - they are both too outside-minded when compared with elite midfielders at the same ages of development.
Indeed, it has been a decade now since we have had an elite midfield presence in the team:
Suffice to say the story of the last ten years of this club has been the unsuccessful search for replacements to those lost at the end of 2007.
But how do we currently compare to the rest of the competition?
Here is a chart displaying the ranked midfield options of each club, including their age and type – for both the end of season and post-trading:
2017 AFL trading period midfield composition:
Midfield Quality calculated from top three midfielders for each club averaged.
Midfield Depth calculated from top eight midfielders for each club recursive.
Note the "topping-up" of many teams with existing superior midfields during the trading period.
Retirements of Priddis and Mitchell have left very little in the way of proven depth but have allowed regeneration in terms of the age profile - across top six midfielders we are now fourth youngest after only Bulldogs, St Kilda & GWS.
Note also the ongoing mismanagement of the two Queensland clubs. Despite having arguably bottom four squads and removing Rockliff and Ablett from their respective lists, Brisbane and Gold Coast have the third and fourth oldest midfields in the AFL.
Since 2005, all but twice have the premiers been placed top four according to midfield depth at the end of the season. Only once (Hawthorn 2013) in the past 12 years have the premiers been placed outside the top four for both midfield quality and depth.
For comparison, here is the same chart at this time last year:
2016 AFL trading period midfield composition: note Richmond addressing their midfield depth deficiency which played a major role in them becoming premiers.
The 2017 chart above provides frightening concerns for the future of the club. Not only does it write off our chances for 2018, but also brings in question the following seasons as well due to how long it takes for midfield depth to build outside of trading. It also infers that the current midfield is unbalanced when compared to other teams, with too many players who are outside dominant in comparison to inside contested ball winners.
It is a personal concern that the future success or failure of the team is now almost entirely reliant upon a group with a handful of games between them and a clutch of second round picks in what is seen to be (almost unanimously apart from the club) a weaker than average draft year. This is a considerably risky strategy that has been enacted; one that I only hope does pay off.
Regardless, finding the right players and right balance of inside versus outside will take time and cause inconsistency. Inconsistent teams don’t win premierships. Finding consistency of performance is going to be a key issue for this team in order to progress towards the next flag.
If one were to play Devil’s Advocate with the above figures it would be easy to dismiss that barring exceptional circumstances, we are sliding towards the bottom four next year with finals out of the question for possibly the better part of a decade.
I personally don’t share that sentiment – the Bulldogs and Tigers have shown in the past two seasons that teams not considered as chances at the start of the season are capable of building and going all the way.
However, it cannot be denied that we are not ideally placed for a rebuild. As was demonstrated in the recent trading period, those clubs who feel close to the top are going all-in for the premiership now before the squads of St Kilda, GWS, Melbourne, Bulldogs and Collingwood become dominant. The problem that presents for West Coast is that right now our midfield is unlikely to be able to compete with the quality that Geelong, Adelaide, Port and GWS possess. Unfortunately also by the time our rebuild matures Kennedy, Naitanui, Shuey, Jetta and possibly Redden will be gone whilst the likes of the aforementioned developing lists will be at their peaks. The optimistic view is Darling and McGovern are both 25 and the removal of some older players (Masten, Jetta) that are having negligible impact upon the current midfield places us in the same field so long as we nail those draft picks next month.
The fear remains in my opinion that unless we unearth some diamonds this coming season we may be headed for a prolonged period where we are competitive enough to be in the hunt for finals but not good enough to compete for a premiership.
