Rumour Future of the club (Bevo, board, assistant coaches, football department)

[Lex22]

Can anyone please assist me in reminding me of an incident where former port players organised flights, accom and tickets to Perth for the GF prior to the 2021 Prelim where the dogs had done laps of Australia and Port were slightly cocky and believed they were already in the Granny?

 

[Lex22]

All I'll say is Port managed to make a Prelim with a bottom 6 as bad as ours.

Maybe time to throw that excuse out the window.

The commentary around our bottom 4-6 is well overplayed.

We lost vs the Hawks because just about all of our best players didn’t turn it up.

VDM shits me as much as the next Dogs fan, but putting that on him, McNeil etc is foolish.

VDM was actually not bad early in that game too.

 

[SweatOnMySkin]

All I'll say is Port managed to make a Prelim with a bottom 6 as bad as ours.

Maybe time to throw that excuse out the window.

amazing what not choking your chance at top 4 every year can do for you

 

[threenewpadlocks]

There’s an argument that we’re in a similar position - looks like a great list but an aging midfield coupled with a great (or potentially great) KPP group.

Difficult to marry them up tbf, but regardless I’d rather be coached by Kingsley than Bevo right now. The lack of opposition research and/or coaching is significant.

I wouldn't. Giant's H&A position got them to a much better position than their raw form suggested. Lots of narrow wins against bad teams kicking inaccurately. We beat them comfortably before finals in a way that nobody thought was us playing a level above or them playing a level below their form heading into it.

 

[TiAn_]

There’s an excuse every single year, we’ve heard them all, some multiple times. At the end of the day it’s not unrealistic to expect a side with the talent we have at our disposal to actually play consistent enough footy to scrape into the top 4, or at least win an EF when favourite. Choking or no-showing in multiple key games and finals every single year shouldn’t be acceptable.

Given how 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024 played out (and even the last three games of 2021), I just don’t have faith any more that Bev can extract the consistency of performance needed to win a flag. I will be delighted if he corrects that in 2025 and we fall short swinging in a PF or a GF, but I just have seen too much contradictory evidence over the last 5-6-7-8 years to honestly believe it’ll happen at this point. It then becomes a question of what is good enough. I wonder how the decision makers at the club feel.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

There’s an excuse every single year, we’ve heard them all, some multiple times. At the end of the day it’s not unrealistic to expect a side with the talent we have at our disposal to actually play consistent enough footy to scrape into the top 4, or at least win an EF when favourite. Choking or no-showing in multiple key games and finals every single year shouldn’t be acceptable.

Given how 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024 played out (and even the last three games of 2021), I just don’t have faith any more that Bev can extract the consistency of performance needed to win a flag. I will be delighted if he corrects that in 2025 and we fall short swinging in a PF or a GF, but I just have seen too much contradictory evidence over the last 5-6-7-8 years to honestly believe it’ll happen at this point. It then becomes a question of what is good enough. I wonder how the decision makers at the club feel.

This is a genuine question and not meant to be an attack/me being belligerent (which I suppose I often am).

If you're not confident that Bevo can do it, are there other coaches, that you can be confident, that it is true of? If you're not naming specific names, what chance would you give our new hire generally (say an untested coach) to reach the levels you speak of?

 

[Munnez]

They've got a decent amount of young talent still improving. Taylor is only 25, Green, Callaghan, Cadman all showing plenty. Decent group of smalls

Think we need to add a speedy small up front like a Daniels from GWS. Or a HHF with dash that can develop into a mid down the track

 

[yebach]

This is a genuine question and not meant to be an attack/me being belligerent (which I suppose I often am).

If you're not confident that Bevo can do it, are there other coaches, that you can be confident, that it is true of? If you're not naming specific names, what chance would you give our new hire generally (say an untested coach) to reach the levels you speak of?

Also, this isn't an attack. You basically have a know quantity in Bev. And you're happy to continue with the same results and that seems to be enough for some on here.
Then your asking us to identify a coach in waiting that will win us a flag. If I could do that I'd use my powers to win the Lottery.
There would have been people at Collingwood that would have steadfastly supported Buckley, as you do with Bevo. There are competent coaches out there. It's up to the club to find them.
My personal belief is that Bevo isn't in the top 6 of coaches for tactical nous. Very hard to win flags or finish top 4 when you have to rely purely on talent and luck to win games.

 

[Dogs_r_barking]

The thing that gets me, is people keen to get rid of Bevo and bring in an untried coach, they point to Kingsley as proof, but his team just lost two finals where they lead by a huge margin at some stage.

Yes McCrae got Collingwood a flag, but they didn’t make finals this year, Mitchel has been around while Hawthorn rebuild.

Apart from Scott at Geelong and Horse at Sydney (both have been there longer than Bevo has been at the dogs), who is a safe coach?

 

[threenewpadlocks]

My personal belief is that Bevo isn't in the top 6 of coaches for tactical nous. Very hard to win flags or finish top 4 when you have to rely purely on talent and luck to win games.

I would disagree with this belief (or even if it's at the edge, it's overcome by the fact that Bevo should be given a bit of credit for the "good list" that everyone attributes to everyone at the club except Bevo, for some reason).

And you're happy to continue with the same results and that seems to be enough for some on here.

Mainly because I'm not an absolutist when it comes to results. Obviously, winning is better than losing. But the distinction isn't so great, when it represents something for how good a team might be into the future, when the best way of measuring that is by taking a holistic approach about how well a team performed overall across a large sample of games.

If two teams met each other in an elimination final. One team won 12 games by 1 point and lost 11 games by 60 points. Another team won 12 games by 60 points and lost 11 games by 1 point. People are acting as if because both teams won 12 games, they're roughly as likely to win the respective finals game. That's clearly not the case and it's far more likely that they were just unlucky on the side of losing close games that they would win some over the long run (the rare but not impossible flipping Heads on a coin 11 times in a row). It's an extreme example but I think a lot of that principle holds true for Bevo - being absolutist about "look, we've lost x elimination finals" or "failed to finish top 4" doesn't approach it with the complexity it deserves.

Then your asking us to identify a coach in waiting that will win us a flag. If I could do that I'd use my powers to win the Lottery.

There are many sincere posts on this thread that are assuming that we would be more likely to win a flag hiring a new coach than we would with Bevo, even without the need to identify that person specifically. That's the whole premise of questioning Bevo's suitability in the first place, why the thread was created.

There would have been people at Collingwood that would have steadfastly supported Buckley, as you do with Bevo.

Buckley went 4-9 in the season that he was sacked and the biggest margins of the four wins was only a 21-point margin. I've said numerous times, I wouldn't support Bevo if our on-field results are comparable to that. They never have been. Even isolating out the worst 21-period encompassing the end of last year and the first 8 games of this year, we were 8-13 while scoring more points than conceding (so an effective percentage of over 100% in those 21 games). We had an easy draw across those games, so it's not exact, but it never got as woeful as many of the examples like Buckley and others like to point out.

There are competent coaches out there. It's up to the club to find them.

Assuming you take this to mean that they went out and got McRae, I'm a little bit sceptical that he's self-evidently a better coach, even taking the flag for what it is. They were incredibly lucky that they won so many close games, and their three finals wins totalled 12 points better than their opposition. Needless to say, if you were to score 12 more points than opponents across a three-game span, most likely you only win two of those games and are a reasonable chance to win just one. They weren't a substantially better team each week subsequently on the fact that they won those games narrowly. If they were, the betting markets would have installed them as stronger favourites for each game. They didn't.

To this point, across his career, his percentage across all games is 110.4%. Beveridge's is 108.2%, but it's also 113.2% since 2019, when people accept we got out of our "mini re-build" and it's probably a fair assessment of Bevo's coaching chops in his second iteration post-Flag and post-Boyd/Morris/Picken era "leaders on the field" type division of credit.

 

[yebach]

I would disagree with this belief (or even if it's at the edge, it's overcome by the fact that Bevo should be given a bit of credit for the "good list" that everyone attributes to everyone at the club except Bevo, for some reason).


Mainly because I'm not an absolutist when it comes to results. Obviously, winning is better than losing. But the distinction isn't so great, when it represents something for how good a team might be into the future, when the best way of measuring that is by taking a holistic approach about how well a team performed overall across a large sample of games.

If two teams met each other in an elimination final. One team won 12 games by 1 point and lost 11 games by 60 points. Another team won 12 games by 60 points and lost 11 games by 1 point. People are acting as if because both teams won 12 games, they're roughly as likely to win the respective finals game. That's clearly not the case and it's far more likely that they were just unlucky on the side of losing close games that they would win some over the long run (the rare but not impossible flipping Heads on a coin 11 times in a row). It's an extreme example but I think a lot of that principle holds true for Bevo - being absolutist about "look, we've lost x elimination finals" or "failed to finish top 4" doesn't approach it with the complexity it deserves.


There are many sincere posts on this thread that are assuming that we would be more likely to win a flag hiring a new coach than we would with Bevo, even without the need to identify that person specifically. That's the whole premise of questioning Bevo's suitability in the first place, why the thread was created.


Buckley went 4-9 in the season that he was sacked and the biggest margins of the four wins was only a 21-point margin. I've said numerous times, I wouldn't support Bevo if our on-field results are comparable to that. They never have been. Even isolating out the worst 21-period encompassing the end of last year and the first 8 games of this year, we were 8-13 while scoring more points than conceding (so an effective percentage of over 100% in those 21 games). We had an easy draw across those games, so it's not exact, but it never got as woeful as many of the examples like Buckley and others like to point out.


Assuming you take this to mean that they went out and got McRae, I'm a little bit sceptical that he's self-evidently a better coach, even taking the flag for what it is. They were incredibly lucky that they won so many close games, and their three finals wins totalled 12 points better than their opposition. Needless to say, if you were to score 12 more points than opponents across a three-game span, most likely you only win two of those games and are a reasonable chance to win just one. They weren't a substantially better team each week subsequently on the fact that they won those games narrowly. If they were, the betting markets would have installed them as stronger favourites for each game. They didn't.

To this point, across his career, his percentage across all games is 110.4%. Beveridge's is 108.2%, but it's also 113.2% since 2019, when people accept we got out of our "mini re-build" and it's probably a fair assessment of Bevo's coaching chops in his second iteration post-Flag and post-Boyd/Morris/Picken era "leaders on the field" type division of credit.

You can use statistics to paint any picture you like.
If you watched those Collingwood wins you'd say luck had little to do with it. His tactics gave his team the best chance to win.
Conversely watch our finals losses across his tenure and Bevo's tactics were non existent. There's a reason he looks clueless in the coaches box when the opposition starts to dominate.

 

[AFLinsight2023]

All I'll say is Port managed to make a Prelim with a bottom 6 as bad as ours.

Maybe time to throw that excuse out the window.

Port played Syd, Geel and GWS once during H&A season. Dogs played them all twice.

Port played a combined 8 matches against top 8 sides, Dogs played 7 against the top 4 alone. Similar story with the Cats, they went 0/3 in their three matchups with top 4 sides, Dogs went 4/3 from 7 attempts.

Reality is that the Power, Cats, Lions (also only 8 combined matchups against top 8 sides) and Hawks (half of their 14 victories came against bottom 4 sides) got a piss easy schedule whilst teams like the Dogs, Blues (also 7 matchups against top 4 sides) and Pies (12 matchups against top 8 teams) got reamed.

My bet is that the Power get nowhere near a Prelim without that softer fixture. Sometimes it really does come down to the luck of the draw.

 

[Dogs_R_Us]

Sometimes it really does come down to the luck of the draw.

Except it's not a "draw". The fix is in!

 

[TiAn_]

This is a genuine question and not meant to be an attack/me being belligerent (which I suppose I often am).

If you're not confident that Bevo can do it, are there other coaches, that you can be confident, that it is true of? If you're not naming specific names, what chance would you give our new hire generally (say an untested coach) to reach the levels you speak of?

That’s not really the point though. I don’t need to collate a list of alternative candidates (what would you or I know about assistant coaches?) to justify my opinion that the last 5+ years have been varying levels of didappointing in some quite repetitive ways and that my belief is next year is much more likely to be the same than any different.

This year once again we started the season poorly, had a random crap game every 4 weeks or so, missed top 4 and were a no-show in a final. Wash, rinse, repeat. Maybe next year will be the one that’s different, I just can’t see much reason to expect that. And I wonder what the club’s expectations are.

 

[Snarls Barkley]

Port played Syd, Geel and GWS once during H&A season. Dogs played them all twice.

Port played a combined 8 matches against top 8 sides, Dogs played 7 against the top 4 alone. Similar story with the Cats, they went 0/3 in their three matchups with top 4 sides, Dogs went 4/3 from 7 attempts.

Reality is that the Power, Cats, Lions (also only 8 combined matchups against top 8 sides) and Hawks (half of their 14 victories came against bottom 4 sides) got a piss easy schedule whilst teams like the Dogs, Blues (also 7 matchups against top 4 sides) and Pies (12 matchups against top 8 teams) got reamed.

My bet is that the Power get nowhere near a Prelim without that softer fixture. Sometimes it really does come down to the luck of the draw.

Surely we can only blame the double up games if we lose to them? We went 7-3 in the double up games (should've been 8 but we shat the bed in Gather Round), went 5-0 in the second games against our doubling opponents.

 

[Freshwater]

SEN ratings today from last nights game. That’s two huge finals in a row from Jordan Sweet. Good players play good in finals! Bevo for whatever reason doesn’t rate tap ruckman. He has struggled since and before 3rd man up got banned with ruckman performing brickwork. The start of our rot 2 weeks ago against Hawthorn was unquestionably Tim English. We need to get better in the ruck, blind Freddy can see this, can Luke Beverage?

 

[Proffessor]

The commentary around our bottom 4-6 is well overplayed.

We lost vs the Hawks because just about all of our best players didn’t turn it up.

VDM shits me as much as the next Dogs fan, but putting that on him, McNeil etc is foolish.

VDM was actually not bad early in that game too.

A quick look at last night's statistics is interesting.

The Swans had just 4 players who had less than 10 disposals. One of them was the sub and another was Tom Papley who kicked 3 goals. BTW Port had 9 players with less than 10 disposals.

We need a more even team contribution, and to achieve that we need a greater contribution from our bottom handful of players. Either they need to improve or be replaced.

This preseason I think we need to put a lot of emphasis on developing players, so that they are capable of more than just filling space, chasing and contributing a handful of possessions.

Teach guys like Vandermeer, Gallagher, etc. to both get more of the ball and do more with it. Teach Sanders to play at AFL level like he does at VFL level. Teach Weightman, how to contribute when his normal game is being stifled, (e.g. to actually play like a crumbing forward at times). Bont, Treloar and co. can't do it all.

It's a team game, and we need to spread the load to make ourselves tougher to beat.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

That’s not really the point though. I don’t need to collate a list of alternative candidates (what would you or I know about assistant coaches?) to justify my opinion that the last 5+ years have been varying levels of didappointing in some quite repetitive ways and that my belief is next year is much more likely to be the same than any different.

This year once again we started the season poorly, had a random crap game every 4 weeks or so, missed top 4 and were a no-show in a final. Wash, rinse, repeat. Maybe next year will be the one that’s different, I just can’t see much reason to expect that. And I wonder what the club’s expectations are.

I think we're using two different measuring sticks here.

I want to try and maximise the chance that we have of winning flags over the long run. A good way of predicting that is to try and measure team form at a given point in time. Good teams now are more likely to win the following season's flag.

Going by the post, above, you want to avoid the "feeling" of "disappointment". You feel that disappointment stack upon itself when you feel like a given year doesn't improve on the year before. I'm arguing that it objectively did. We can measure it by the results themselves. We won more games to end last year.

Personally, I can't frame the fact that we are heading into an off-season and our chance of winning a flag in the subsequent season as being identical to 2020, 2022 and 2023, simply because we played much better football in the past season, measured by the simple fact of better points for and better points against representing better form in the most recent games.

That's it. I am more hopeful for 2025 now than I was hopeful for 2021 at the end of 2020, hopeful for 2023 at the end of 2022, and hopeful for 2024 than I was at the end of 2023.

I find it strange how you can find identical disappointment this season - and make equivalent this season to lasts - when we won 11 of the last 16 games we played, which was not true of the final 16 games we played in any of the same seasons that you suggested.

 

[Whoyagot]

On the sweet vs English stuff - I feel the biggest source of supporter angst is in the fact that English’s poor competitive showings were never challenged by the coach within the home and away season.

If English had a poor game you knew he was not going to be dropped. I think Bevo and our coaches have put too many eggs in the Chilli basket and weren’t as open to challenging him to find stronger form.

Yes he was able to bounce back but I think not dropping him more often and utilising Sweet or even Lobb as a more consistent backup as cost us now. We’re all in on English for the next 5 years.

 

[TiAn_]

I think we're using two different measuring sticks here.

I want to try and maximise the chance that we have of winning flags over the long run. A good way of predicting that is to try and measure team form at a given point in time. Good teams now are more likely to win the following season's flag.

Going by the post, above, you want to avoid the "feeling" of "disappointment". You feel that disappointment stack upon itself when you feel like a given year doesn't improve on the year before. I'm arguing that it objectively did. We can measure it by the results themselves. We won more games to end last year.

Personally, I can't frame the fact that we are heading into an off-season and our chance of winning a flag in the subsequent season as being identical to 2020, 2022 and 2023, simply because we played much better football in the past season, measured by the simple fact of better points for and better points against representing better form in the most recent games.

That's it. I am more hopeful for 2025 now than I was hopeful for 2021 at the end of 2020, hopeful for 2023 at the end of 2022, and hopeful for 2024 than I was at the end of 2023.

I find it strange how you can find identical disappointment this season - and make equivalent this season to lasts - when we won 11 of the last 16 games we played, which was not true of the final 16 games we played in any of the same seasons that you suggested.

What’s the best way to maximise your chances of winning a flag? I suspect having the top 4 double chance and/or playing at or close to your best in week 1 of the finals would be the top 2. We failed on both fronts, again.

I get that you love percentage (yep, I thought pumping the 3 worst teams by 90+ was fun too), and that Bev had the side mostly in form in the second half of the season. Great, for me good form in one half of the season or the other just reinforces that we were once again inconsistent. The fact that mostly good latter season form and a 11-5 stretch culminated in yet another finish outside the top 4 and a really poor effort in a EF just reinforces my view.

If anything, failing to make the top 4 and to beat a team below us in our final when we had the second highest percentage shines a light on how little materially changed. I simply have more reason to believe next season will follow a similar path to the preceding years than turn out otherwise.

 

[Claudonious]

Port played Syd, Geel and GWS once during H&A season. Dogs played them all twice.

Port played a combined 8 matches against top 8 sides, Dogs played 7 against the top 4 alone. Similar story with the Cats, they went 0/3 in their three matchups with top 4 sides, Dogs went 4/3 from 7 attempts.

Reality is that the Power, Cats, Lions (also only 8 combined matchups against top 8 sides) and Hawks (half of their 14 victories came against bottom 4 sides) got a piss easy schedule whilst teams like the Dogs, Blues (also 7 matchups against top 4 sides) and Pies (12 matchups against top 8 teams) got reamed.

My bet is that the Power get nowhere near a Prelim without that softer fixture. Sometimes it really does come down to the luck of the draw.

When you end up a game out of top 4 , the draw is very relevant . It’s the difference between being called a good coach or tactically inept by the big footy experts.


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[threenewpadlocks]

I suspect having the top 4 double chance and/or playing at or close to your best in week 1 of the finals would be the top 2. We failed on both fronts, again.

But you can only control what you can control. Beveridge intended at the start of the season to coach in such a way that would a) hopefully be one of the best four best teams in the season overall and b) play better football heading into finals than at the start of the season. I would argue that he, in a way, actually successfully achieved those things.

It goes to my point above - is a team that failed to make the top 4 double chance because they win 14 games by 60 points and lose 9 games by 1 point, a "failure" - or would you accept there's an element of bad luck in such an outcome? There's a similar (to a less extreme point, obviously), nature of how our season unfolded.

I think he succeeded at both - we had the second best percentage by the end of the season (even accepting that running up the score against bad teams is not worth an equal amount, but it's not worth nothing), and we were clearly a better team after starting 3-5 and we finished the season with a big win against another good team in GWS.

Did GWS "succeed" and we "fail" because they finished higher than us on the ladder, even though, to get to that point involved a whole bunch of luck with a combination of narrow wins and opposition players kicking set shots inaccurately? I would argue that the games just broke their way, but they were not one of the best four teams across the season, nor did they bring good form into the finals.

Come finals, we played an away game against another top 3 team. Sometimes across a single game you underperform and that happens, but it's more likely to happen just to the bad luck of what the matchup entailed. Sydney have made it to the Grand Final without even proving that they've played better football than us over the last 10 weeks - because they were able to avoid teams with top-4 form (Dogs, Hawks, Lions and Geelong) and played both their finals at home, across the two games they played. Understanding and correctly factoring these things is how people successfully predict future sports results through methods like trying to outtip media pundits or gamble or set odds on match results.

The definition of luck is that it is inherently out of Bevo's control and it's unfair to attribute back luck to him.

I get that you love percentage (yep, I thought pumping the 3 worst teams by 90+ was fun too),

I'm not going to pretend that the extra goal you kick to bring the margin from 84 to 90 is the same as an extra goal you kick to bring the margin from 4 to 10, but it's also not completely worthless, and does have predictive value for the future.

Great, for me good form in one half of the season or the other just reinforces that we were once again inconsistent.

Or, it can be read as a good coach adjusting tactically part-way through the season to improve the team, like good coaches do.

The fact that mostly good latter season form and a 11-5 stretch culminated in yet another finish outside the top 4 and a really poor effort in a EF just reinforces my view.

To repeat myself - to make fair assessments, we have to look at these things with appropriate complexity, and have to factor in various elements such as luck vs. what can be controlled etc.

It's an extreme example but I think a lot of that principle holds true for Bevo - being absolutist about "look, we've lost x elimination finals" or "failed to finish top 4" doesn't approach it with the complexity it deserves.

Luck in sports can manifest itself in different ways - fairness of umpiring, scheduling and timing of when you come up against opposition in good/bad form, opposition accuracy in goalkicking, and importantly, how you distribute your good performances across a game to game basis. We know this to be true because people have been constantly refining assessing team quality for the purposes of gambling markets to attempt to predict future results (or just out of interest), the Squiggle board on the main thread and the associated website with all its discussions and blogs is a good starting point for this.

To summarise all of this, yes, it can be a bit unlucky that the team that finished with the second-best percentage on the season finished sixth on the ladder, with that luck manifested itself with an unusually hard elimination final matchup (playing a team that was carrying top-3 form into 7th position in the ladder with a distinct home ground disadvantage).

light on how little materially changed. I simply have more reason to believe next season will follow a similar path to the preceding years than turn out otherwise.

And if you were to take these feelings generally and enter into a tipping competition, you would prove yourself to be worse at predicting the future than the general understanding that a team with the second-best percentage is, actually, more likely to win future games.

For instance, the human interpretation through expert tips by journalists who are paid to cover football and watch football every week:

AFL Expert Tipsters | Footy Tips & AFL Tipping | The Age

Get the latest AFL 2024 season match tips and round by round predictions from our expert tipsters.

www.theage.com.au

And statistical models that rate teams largely on the basis of points for and against, and try to correct for luck through things like kicking accurately for goal:

Leaderboard - Squiggle

squiggle.com.au

The latter wins hands down by a significant margin.

 

[AFLinsight2023]

When you end up a game out of top 4 , the draw is very relevant . It’s the difference between being called a good coach or tactically inept by the big footy experts.


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

If only it was just big footy...the usual suspects in the media like to use that narrative as well. The unevenness of the draw is so relevant to each team's performance and I don't understand why it's not more heavily analysed/scrutinised.

Take a look at last year's Grand Finalists. Lions get 8 matches against top 8 and go 3/5. Pies get 12 matchups and go 6/6. Not only does it mean that the Lions get 4 less games against better opposition, they also get 4 extra games to beat up Bottom 10 teams which they did, going 11/1/3 from 15 matchups.

So are Brisbane really a better side then Collingwood? Or did they just get a much easier draw? If their schedules were reversed would the Lions have missed the 8 and would the Pies be about to compete for a GF berth?

Some might call it excuses, I just think it's valid reasoning.

 

[Randomthoughts]

What’s the best way to maximise your chances of winning a flag? I suspect having the top 4 double chance and/or playing at or close to your best in week 1 of the finals would be the top 2. We failed on both fronts, again.

I get that you love percentage (yep, I thought pumping the 3 worst teams by 90+ was fun too), and that Bev had the side mostly in form in the second half of the season. Great, for me good form in one half of the season or the other just reinforces that we were once again inconsistent. The fact that mostly good latter season form and a 11-5 stretch culminated in yet another finish outside the top 4 and a really poor effort in a EF just reinforces my view.

If anything, failing to make the top 4 and to beat a team below us in our final when we had the second highest percentage shines a light on how little materially changed. I simply have more reason to believe next season will follow a similar path to the preceding years than turn out otherwise.

I find it difficult to feel that nest year will be any different to this and the many other years since 2016 and share many of your views .
While we have starting list deficiency’s a lot of other teams do too . We were not the only team just to miss out on the top 4 this year .
My feels is that a coaching and strategy change is where we are at but that’s just my opinion. Bevo has made a fool of me before . I would prefer he would leave now but accept that there’s at least 12 to 24 mths to go before that happens .

 

[TiAn_]

But you can only control what you can control. Beveridge intended at the start of the season to coach in such a way that would a) hopefully be one of the best four best teams in the season overall and b) play better football heading into finals than at the start of the season. I would argue that he, in a way, actually successfully achieved those things.

It goes to my point above - is a team that failed to make the top 4 double chance because they win 14 games by 60 points and lose 9 games by 1 point, a "failure" - or would you accept there's an element of bad luck in such an outcome? There's a similar (to a less extreme point, obviously), nature of how our season unfolded.

I think he succeeded at both - we had the second best percentage by the end of the season (even accepting that running up the score against bad teams is not worth an equal amount, but it's not worth nothing), and we were clearly a better team after starting 3-5 and we finished the season with a big win against another good team in GWS.

Did GWS "succeed" and we "fail" because they finished higher than us on the ladder, even though, to get to that point involved a whole bunch of luck with a combination of narrow wins and opposition players kicking set shots inaccurately? I would argue that the games just broke their way, but they were not one of the best four teams across the season, nor did they bring good form into the finals.

Come finals, we played an away game against another top 3 team. Sometimes across a single game you underperform and that happens, but it's more likely to happen just to the bad luck of what the matchup entailed. Sydney have made it to the Grand Final without even proving that they've played better football than us over the last 10 weeks - because they were able to avoid teams with top-4 form (Dogs, Hawks, Lions and Geelong) and played both their finals at home, across the two games they played. Understanding and correctly factoring these things is how people successfully predict future sports results through methods like trying to outtip media pundits or gamble or set odds on match results.

The definition of luck is that it is inherently out of Bevo's control and it's unfair to attribute back luck to him.

I'm not going to pretend that the extra goal you kick to bring the margin from 84 to 90 is the same as an extra goal you kick to bring the margin from 4 to 10, but it's also not completely worthless, and does have predictive value for the future.


Or, it can be read as a good coach adjusting tactically part-way through the season to improve the team, like good coaches do.

To repeat myself - to make fair assessments, we have to look at these things with appropriate complexity, and have to factor in various elements such as luck vs. what can be controlled etc.


Luck in sports can manifest itself in different ways - fairness of umpiring, scheduling and timing of when you come up against opposition in good/bad form, opposition accuracy in goalkicking, and importantly, how you distribute your good performances across a game to game basis. We know this to be true because people have been constantly refining assessing team quality for the purposes of gambling markets to attempt to predict future results (or just out of interest), the Squiggle board on the main thread and the associated website with all its discussions and blogs is a good starting point for this.

To summarise all of this, yes, it can be a bit unlucky that the team that finished with the second-best percentage on the season finished sixth on the ladder, with that luck manifested itself with an unusually hard elimination final matchup (playing a team that was carrying top-3 form into 7th position in the ladder with a distinct home ground disadvantage).

And if you were to take these feelings generally and enter into a tipping competition, you would prove yourself to be worse at predicting the future than the general understanding that a team with the second-best percentage is, actually, more likely to win future games.

For instance, the human interpretation through expert tips by journalists who are paid to cover football and watch football every week:

AFL Expert Tipsters | Footy Tips & AFL Tipping | The Age

Get the latest AFL 2024 season match tips and round by round predictions from our expert tipsters.

www.theage.com.au

And statistical models that rate teams largely on the basis of points for and against, and try to correct for luck through things like kicking accurately for goal:

Leaderboard - Squiggle

squiggle.com.au

The latter wins hands down by a significant margin.

Yeah, I understand your arguments, we were just horribly unlucky yet again (although the Hawks being drawn against the Squiggle’s flag favourites in an EF somehow overcame their “bad luck”), our under-achieving in actual ladder position and finals result according to the statistical models this year was actually less important than what the statistical models said and actually it’s our percentage and not the actual wins and losses that matter when looking forward. I just think they’re all glass half full, Pollyanna-esque excusing of some clear negative trends across 5+ seasons now and I doubt next year will be any different