Opinion Can Dustin Martin be the GOAT? (Answer: no)

[PhatBoy]

I find Stewart's last two selections perplexing to be honest. I have never looked at the 3 times he was selected prior to that, but these last two don't look right to me.

This year they did not select a second key defender to go with Darcy Moore. Sam Taylor in the 15 matches he played seemed to be the best key defender in the AFL by miles, especially when you account for him going off the ground injured early in two of those matches. Haris Andrews had a higher rating season than Stewart and Weitering also had a worthy season. How one of those 3 players wasn't picked so they could squeeze in 3 hybrid defenders is laughable. There are the bare 6 defenders picked, 1 key, 3 hybrids and 2 running defenders.

You look to the other end and there are 7 forwards selected, 3 of those specialist key forwards. So the selectors obviously think a footy team needs 3 specialist key forwards but only one specialist key defender. I would love someone to explain what exactly Conor Rozee is doing on a forward flank over Dusty. If they want to select just the players they think have had the 22 best seasons in the AFL then that is what they should do, and not worry about positions. If they want to select players based on positions played then that is what they should do, select the players who have proven best in their positions/roles. Or here is an idea, maybe do both. At one end of the ground Tom Stewart is about the 80th rated player in the AFL and is selected amongst an unnecessary 3 hybrid defenders. At the other end Shai Bolton is the 12th highest rated player in the AFL(to have played at least 15 matches) can play midfield or forward, and does not even get in the squad.

But the overall trend towards Geelong players in AA selections stretches the credibility of this AA process. The club has played roughly 6% of the eligible matches this century. And has roughly 35% of the top 20 most selected players in the AA team. Even allowing for the fact they have been the best performing home and away team in the competition in that time, something is way wrong for that to happen. Dangerfield is not near the best 3 players this century. Stewart, Hawkins, Scarlett and Enright are not near the best 20 players in the AFL this century. Selwood is not near the best 8 or so players. Ablett Jnr is probably the only one of them whose AA selections come close to accurately reflecting where he stands amongst AFL players this century. The AA selection panels are asking us to believe these are 7 of the best 20 footballers the AFL has seen this century.

The whole thing needs to be re-thought or just laughed off for what it is, a reason for 10 AFL "A" listers to get together and select their 22 favourite players in a team that would be well beaten by a properly constructed team with second ruck, pressure forward, 7 defenders, etc etc.

Lollllllllllll

 

[Meteoric Rise]

Tom Stewart seems to get you pretty ‘triggered.’

Lol, Tom Stewart and his 5 AA selections in 7 seasons gets me triggered too. Excellent footballer. But there is something shockingly wrong with the whole AA system if he takes 7 seasons to climb into the top 20 most AA selected players this century.

 

[PhatBoy]

Lol, Tom Stewart and his 5 AA selections in 7 seasons gets me triggered too. Excellent footballer. But there is something shockingly wrong with the whole AA system if he takes 7 seasons to climb into the top 20 most AA selected players this century.

There is something shockingly wrong with your intellect if you think there is a ‘system’ that has to be inherently used like a computer program to pick a merit team that never ever f**ken plays anyone each year

 

[Meteoric Rise]

There is something shockingly wrong with your intellect if you think there is a ‘system’ that has to be inherently used like a computer program to pick a merit team that never ever f**ken plays anyone each year

My intellect is so deficient I have even suggested exactly what would be done in the alternative.

 

[PhatBoy]

My intellect is so deficient I have even suggested exactly what would be done in the alternative.

Your system seems to be summed up as ‘pick and choose what criteria you want to use when you want to use it and never just watch the games closely, and wet my pants about anything Geelong related.’

 

[Elmer_Hauser]

Lol, Tom Stewart and his 5 AA selections in 7 seasons gets me triggered too. Excellent footballer. But there is something shockingly wrong with the whole AA system if he takes 7 seasons to climb into the top 20 most AA selected players this century.

Probably because there is a dearth of medium sized defenders in the game right now and has been for over 10 years now.

Stewart is a bit lucky in that regard..

 

[PhatBoy]

The next conspiracy will be that Dangerfield’s 3 AA jumpers at Adelaide were a result of his heritage

 

[Meteoric Rise]

Probably because there is a dearth of medium sized defenders in the game right now and has been for over 10 years now.

Stewart is a bit lucky in that regard..

It seems there was a surplus this year as they picked 3 of them, and left out Blakey and a player like Vlastuin(CD rate his season higher than Stewart's) did not even make the squad. There are others around, Luke Ryan, Hayden Young, Ryan Burton, Jordan Ridley, Redman, Lever, Ballard, Broad, to name a few off the top of my head who were high in the ratings this season.

 

[Meteoric Rise]

The next conspiracy will be that Dangerfield’s 3 AA jumpers at Adelaide were a result of his heritage

You are getting all defensive now. It is not an attack on Geelong. Imo the AA selection process is wrong, and Geelong players dominating the repeat selections(and I mean absolutely dominating) is a symptom of that.

 

[PhatBoy]

You are getting all defensive now. It is not an attack on Geelong. Imo the AA selection process is wrong, and Geelong players dominating the repeat selections(and I mean absolutely dominating) is a symptom of that.

How. Tell me how.

You’re whinging about individuals: Scarlett - wow, guy rated within the best 3-4 in his position across 100 years of footy makes 6 AA sides. Make an argument that he didn’t deserve any of them. Was the most feared fullback among key forwards as a lockdown player, was the prototype counter attacking fullback and an exquisite user of the ball.

Corey Enright routinely mentioned among the best players ever in his position. Shock horror, gets regularly picked for the AA team.

Tom Hawkins: Unarguably in the top 4 key forwards of he last decade and a half, and certainly the second most versatile/multi-skilled, and his longevity has superceded the others. Is it really a surprise he was picked 5 times? I can mount an argument there has been at least one season he should have made it and didn’t.

Does a player have to be in the best 8 players this century to get multiple AA jerseys? That’s interesting.

Do you think the selection panel were ever sitting around and used that criteria when naming a team?
‘Well would Joel Selwood make a top 8 players this century list?’
‘Um, there’s 22 players we have to pick, though? And it’s for 2013. Not 2000-2023.’
‘Just answer the question.’

 

[Felis catus nigrans]

Lol, Tom Stewart and his 5 AA selections in 7 seasons gets me triggered too. Excellent footballer. But there is something shockingly wrong with the whole AA system if he takes 7 seasons to climb into the top 20 most AA selected players this century.

Stewart has always been a supremely talented footballer but took a long time to be willing to put in the effort rather than throw it all away. So he made his AFL debut in his mid 20s. The Cats knew they wanted him so they didn't let him play in the VFL.

Stewart has simply been immense down back year in year out. He's been the best backman in the comp since Rance retired. He similarly (but not quite as much) stands out well ahead of the pack when you are watching the games.

Dusty has fallen victim to his own success in not making AA this season. It's been arguably as good as anyone in the comp when most elite mids have struggled for consistency but every other season like this he's been able to drag Richmond over the line when needed, this season, he hasn't (not his fault).

Stewart has had a similar season in terms of not quite being able to make it happen for Geelong but he's still been great. If other defenders haven't been able to make their case strongly enough that's their problem.

IMO AFLCA awards are the ones I put most faith in. And Dusty sits nicely with 1 regular and 3 finals awards.

 

[kidkenobi]

While at the same time, Dusty averages more brownlow votes per game than GAJ, statistically, he is the 6th best player in home and away games in history as far as when it comes to brownlow voting

You can make your own conclusions as to why, and what that means

My conclusion is that GAJ ended up playing 68 more games than Dusty has. That’s effectively 3 full H&A seasons. Including this season which hasn’t been voted on yet, it’s 88 games. So for Dusty to maintain his higher Brownlow votes per game average, he will need to average over 15 votes per season for the next 4 years (including this year).

Also, Martin is 9th on the all-time votes list, not 6th (Ablett is 1st). Danger is 3rd, and also averages more votes per game than Dusty. GOAT?

 

[Meteoric Rise]

How. Tell me how.

You’re whinging about individuals: Scarlett - wow, guy rated within the best 3-4 in his position across 100 years of footy makes 6 AA sides. Make an argument that he didn’t deserve any of them. Was the most feared fullback among key forwards as a lockdown player, was the prototype counter attacking fullback and an exquisite user of the ball.

Corey Enright routinely mentioned among the best players ever in his position. Shock horror, gets regularly picked for the AA team.

Tom Hawkins: Unarguably in the top 4 key forwards of he last decade and a half, and certainly the second most versatile/multi-skilled, and his longevity has superceded the others. Is it really a surprise he was picked 5 times? I can mount an argument there has been at least one season he should have made it and didn’t.

Does a player have to be in the best 8 players this century to get multiple AA jerseys? That’s interesting.

Do you think the selection panel were ever sitting around and used that criteria when naming a team?
‘Well would Joel Selwood make a top 8 players this century list?’
‘Um, there’s 22 players we have to pick, though? And it’s for 2013. Not 2000-2023.’
‘Just answer the question.’

Does it ever strike you as odd that Geelong have had over 1/3rd of the 5+ times AA selected players this century? I mean they have been the strongest team in home and away footy and had some great players, but not to that extent. It is an 18 team comp. 1 team has 35% of the 5+ times AA selected players, 17 teams share 65%. That is abnormal. And why it is that way is perfectly exemplified by T Stewart this year and last year. Where a Cats player is anywhere near the margin for being selected, he gets selected.

If you put our parochial differences aside, it cannot make any sense that Stewart, a quality specialist in one position, gets 5 AA selections in 7 seasons and Dustin Martin(who has proven elite by every possible measure we can locate in 2 separate positions) gets 4 AA selections in 14 seasons.

These are the objective(though no doubt flawed in their own way) player rankings of Tom Stewart in each of his AA seasons;

2018 - 250+
2019 - 450+
2021 - 100+
2022 - 35ish
2023 - 80ish

I can't be bothered going through all the years to see where he sat amongst defenders, but suffice to say he wasn't in Champion Data's AA team this season. They have rated him in the top 100 players in the AFL twice and he has 5 AA's, one where CD ranked him outside the top 450 in the AFL.

As I said in an earlier post, if they are going to pick a positional team, then it should be against pre-defined positions and the best performing players in those positions should be selected. If AA selectors are going to shoe-horn players into positions because they think they are better players, then they should just be selecting the best and most valuable 22 or 25 players or whatever number each season.

Tom Stewart is a terrific player. But 5 AA's in those 7 seasons he has played tells us very clearly this process has no credibility in determining who the best players are.

 

[PhatBoy]

Does it ever strike you as odd that Geelong have had over 1/3rd of the 5+ times AA selected players this century? I mean they have been the strongest team in home and away footy and had some great players, but not to that extent. It is an 18 team comp. 1 team has 35% of the 5+ times AA selected players, 17 teams share 65%. That is abnormal. And why it is that way is perfectly exemplified by T Stewart this year and last year. Where a Cats player is anywhere near the margin for being selected, he gets selected.

If you put our parochial differences aside, it cannot make any sense that Stewart, a quality specialist in one position, gets 5 AA selections in 7 seasons and Dustin Martin(who has proven elite by every possible measure we can locate in 2 separate positions) gets 4 AA selections in 14 seasons.

These are the objective(though no doubt flawed in their own way) player rankings of Tom Stewart in each of his AA seasons;

2018 - 250+
2019 - 450+
2021 - 100+
2022 - 35ish
2023 - 80ish

I can't be bothered going through all the years to see where he sat amongst defenders, but suffice to say he wasn't in Champion Data's AA team this season. They have rated him in the top 100 players in the AFl twice and he has 5 AA's, one where CD ranked him outside the top 450 in the AFL.

As I said in an earlier post, if they are going to pick a positional team, then it should be against pre-defined positions and the best performing players in those positions should be selected. If AA selectors are going to shoe-horn players into positions because they think they are better players, then they should just be selecting the best and most valuable 22 or 25 players or whatever number each season.

Tom Stewart is a terrific player. But 5 AA's in those 7 seasons he has played tells us very clearly this process has no credibility in determining who the best players are.

No, it doesn’t.

 

[Meteoric Rise]

No, it doesn’t.

That says it all then. Because it is a highly unexpected distribution of AA selections where 1 of 18 teams has 6 of the top 18 or so most selected players. If Geelong had absolutely dominated the competition year in year out then it may make better sense, but they haven't.

 

[STPer18]

Ablett had the four AAs when he left Geelong, the same amount Dusty has when he leaves Richmond. The question fans all around the country want to know is if he can do what G. Ablett Jnr did and rack up another four at the Gold Coast? Exciting times ahead!

 

[Meteoric Rise]

Ablett had the four AAs when he left Geelong, the same amount Dusty has when he leaves Richmond. The question fans all around the country want to know is if he can do what G. Ablett Jnr did and rack up another four at the Gold Coast? Exciting times ahead!

I only don't put you on ignore because you seem happily shallow. Good thing to be.

 

[PhatBoy]

That says it all then. Because it is a highly unexpected distribution of AA selections where 1 of 18 teams has 6 of the top 18 or so most selected players. If Geelong had absolutely dominated the competition year in year out then it may make better sense, but they haven't.

Well if something is unexpected there can only ever be one explanation:

Corruption.

Same as the reason Geelong has won more games than anyone else.

The game as a whole should be a dispassionate cavalcade of 18 teams with identical records over an extended period with acknowledgements awarded accordingly.

 

[Triggering Tiger]

What a champ!

 

[blaisee]

My conclusion is that GAJ ended up playing 68 more games than Dusty has. That’s effectively 3 full H&A seasons. Including this season which hasn’t been voted on yet, it’s 88 games. So for Dusty to maintain his higher Brownlow votes per game average, he will need to average over 15 votes per season for the next 4 years (including this year).

Also, Martin is 9th on the all-time votes list, not 6th (Ablett is 1st). Danger is 3rd, and also averages more votes per game than Dusty. GOAT?

it must be a thing with Geelong fans, a coping mechanism that kicks in, to deliberately ignore facts that do not suit them, and misrepresent other facts as well to suit an argument, that no rational person would agree with

Whatever floats your boat is cool with me

Just to finish this point though

AFL Tables - Brownlow Medal Career Totals

You are right on one thing, as I did go on my memory, and not the data I understated Dusty's achievements so thank you for sending me back to the data to clear up any confusion

By Brownlow night this year, Dustin Martin will be the 5th best vote getter in history, not the 6th, and he will have the best average votes per game than any player in the top 10, so he gets more votes per game than any other player in history .

And as we know, the brownlow is a home and away award, awarded by the umpires.

Yet somehow, Dustin Martin only has 4 AA jumpers, while GAJ has 8, pretty much playing the same position, just that GAJ did not play it as well, both in home and away games, finals, and grand finals, as judged by the coaches, the umpires, and the norm smith medal voters, and that resulted in dusty having a superior, home and away winning %, a superior finals winning %, and a superior grand final winning %.

Now as I said, you can all come to your own conclusions as to why that is the case.

And I am not even going to venture into their finals records, which as we all know, is not even a contest .

 

[Corn Cobbers]

What a champ!

View attachment 1790926

Good player but with only 4 AAs, no GOAT, not even close

 

[Meteoric Rise]

Stewart has always been a supremely talented footballer but took a long time to be willing to put in the effort rather than throw it all away. So he made his AFL debut in his mid 20s. The Cats knew they wanted him so they didn't let him play in the VFL.

Stewart has simply been immense down back year in year out. He's been the best backman in the comp since Rance retired. He similarly (but not quite as much) stands out well ahead of the pack when you are watching the games.

Dusty has fallen victim to his own success in not making AA this season. It's been arguably as good as anyone in the comp when most elite mids have struggled for consistency but every other season like this he's been able to drag Richmond over the line when needed, this season, he hasn't (not his fault).

Stewart has had a similar season in terms of not quite being able to make it happen for Geelong but he's still been great. If other defenders haven't been able to make their case strongly enough that's their problem.

IMO AFLCA awards are the ones I put most faith in. And Dusty sits nicely with 1 regular and 3 finals awards.

Stewart is a tremendous player, but he is more like about the 100th best AFL player this century, and I am pretty sure he is number 1 for AA selections per season played. So he is one of many anomalies the AA process throws up. But he is a very major anomaly. His finals record is not especially great, which is another pointer as to where he really sits in the overall scheme of things.

I have seen him compete for the ball against Dusty on plenty of occasions, and Dusty normally has his measure. There is something seriously wrong when Stewart is AA in over 70% of his seasons and Dusty is AA in about 40% of his seasons from the same age.

 

[Triggering Tiger]

Good player but with only 4 AAs, no GOAT, not even close

Only player to win three norm smith's, the GOAT and then some!

 

[PhatBoy]

it must be a thing with Geelong fans, a coping mechanism that kicks in, to deliberately ignore facts that do not suit them, and misrepresent other facts as well to suit an argument, that no rational person would agree with

Whatever floats your boat is cool with me

Just to finish this point though

AFL Tables - Brownlow Medal Career Totals

You are right on one thing, as I did go on my memory, and not the data I understated Dusty's achievements so thank you for sending me back to the data to clear up any confusion

By Brownlow night this year, Dustin Martin will be the 5th best vote getter in history, not the 6th, and he will have the best average votes per game than any player in the top 10, so he gets more votes per game than any other player in history .

And as we know, the brownlow is a home and away award, awarded by the umpires.

Yet somehow, Dustin Martin only has 4 AA jumpers, while GAJ has 8, pretty much playing the same position, just that GAJ did not play it as well, both in home and away games, finals, and grand finals, as judged by the coaches, the umpires, and the norm smith medal voters, and that resulted in dusty having a superior, home and away winning %, a superior finals winning %, and a superior grand final winning %.

Now as I said, you can all come to your own conclusions as to why that is the case.

And I am not even going to venture into their finals records, which as we all know, is not even a contest .

You getting data wrong?

NO WAY!!!

 

[blaisee]

Does it ever strike you as odd that Geelong have had over 1/3rd of the 5+ times AA selected players this century? I mean they have been the strongest team in home and away footy and had some great players, but not to that extent. It is an 18 team comp. 1 team has 35% of the 5+ times AA selected players, 17 teams share 65%. That is abnormal. And why it is that way is perfectly exemplified by T Stewart this year and last year. Where a Cats player is anywhere near the margin for being selected, he gets selected.

If you put our parochial differences aside, it cannot make any sense that Stewart, a quality specialist in one position, gets 5 AA selections in 7 seasons and Dustin Martin(who has proven elite by every possible measure we can locate in 2 separate positions) gets 4 AA selections in 14 seasons.

These are the objective(though no doubt flawed in their own way) player rankings of Tom Stewart in each of his AA seasons;

2018 - 250+
2019 - 450+
2021 - 100+
2022 - 35ish
2023 - 80ish

I can't be bothered going through all the years to see where he sat amongst defenders, but suffice to say he wasn't in Champion Data's AA team this season. They have rated him in the top 100 players in the AFl twice and he has 5 AA's, one where CD ranked him outside the top 450 in the AFL.

As I said in an earlier post, if they are going to pick a positional team, then it should be against pre-defined positions and the best performing players in those positions should be selected. If AA selectors are going to shoe-horn players into positions because they think they are better players, then they should just be selecting the best and most valuable 22 or 25 players or whatever number each season.

Tom Stewart is a terrific player. But 5 AA's in those 7 seasons he has played tells us very clearly this process has no credibility in determining who the best players are.

spot on, they should rename the the AA awards to the, Geelong players lifetime appreciation night

Problem is, you have corporate suits, media perfumers, shock jocks and sycophants determining and impacting players wages