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AFLW 2024 - Round 10 - Chat, game threads, injury lists, team lineups and more.
Rumour Future of the club (Bevo, board, assistant coaches, football department)
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threenewpadlocks
Brownlow Medallist
I'm also not denying that Bevo couldn't have done better, that the 3-5 start has to be factored into not making top 4 (for much of the same reason Swans are rightfully top of the ladder with home finals on the basis of outstanding performances in those same opening rounds), or that we were rightfully favourites against Hawks and shat the bed - but you do underperform singles games sometimes, and it wasn't as if the Brisbane or Port losses prevented us from winning subsequent matches against other teams just as good as them as we did against the other three teams in the top 4 in the back end of the year.
What are we trying to achieve here, though? Are we looking forward to our chances of future success (by using past results as a guide to how likely that is), or are we looking backward sacking Bevo for the "punishment" of not being so successful, that he should have remained in the top 4, even with bad luck (even though I would argue that even making finals is success of sorts, I understand the perception that getting knocked out in finals in first week and missing out by losing key games can be frustrating as has been the case 5 of the last 6 years.
I can't argue with anyone's feelings to the reality that we didn't finish top 4 and we didn't get to enjoy finals wins (obviously), nor can I argue with the feelings of the way our season has ended 5 of the last 6 years.
People want to lash out at something and it's hard for human nature to accept that we're not masters of our own destiny and some things remain out of our control, though.
But in terms of suitability to try and win a flag next year, I think Bevo did enough to prove that he's likely better than the alternate of hiring a new coach, given all my posts above, given we played generally good football.
I would hope that people tasked with understanding that, such as the board and senior football department stuff, would not be driven by the human need for answers and consider all of that.
I'm in the time for change camp but you've nailed it here. The last 12 weeks have earnt Bevo the chance to see at least the next season out.
Nah, it’s not lashing out. It’s not a punishment. I never said to sack Bevo ahead of next year. It’s about looking honestly at a known quantity, good and bad. I said based on the last half a dozen years my expectation is more of the same outcomes and I wonder what the club expects and what it’s satisfied with.
Contrary to your view, I hope they’re driven by the need for answers to why our recent seasons have played out the same way, the same failures repeated. I would be stunned if the club is sitting there patting each other on the back over their Squiggle rating and bemoaning another year of “bad luck”. The fact we turned the football department upside down last year off the back of two years of similar results strongly suggests that wouldn’t be the case. We’ll have our answer if Bev enters next season without an extension.
threenewpadlocks
Brownlow Medallist
That's the difference though. We weren't unlucky in 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023. We were a worse team in all of those years than we were in 2024. We were not good enough to be a top 4 team in any of those years. I can't accept that 2024 was an "equal" season to those others, at least in the context of what it represents in terms of likely outcomes for the subsequent season. I don't agree with the characterisation of "another" year of back luck, because at least in terms of finals outcomes representign the quality of the team heading into the finals, we weren't that unlucky in 2019, 2020, 2022, we were simply just not that good.
2024: 2nd best percentage, 125.1%.
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ArNcHiSe
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I’m sorry but this is one of the biggest smelling your own farts posts since the “Bevo is a secret genius” post from earlier this season. If a club is basing its decisions around “luck” then that club isn’t going anywhere.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.
It followed the same outline as the previous years and netted us the same result. Other than whatever award we’ll receive in 2025 for having the second highest percentage the year prior. Joining the esteemed previous recipients of us in 2022 and Melbourne last year and this year.
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Maybe Daniels is the exact guy for us?
I could have sworn after he missed the game sealer in a cutthroat final (needlessly playing on and kicking off the ground from 10 metres out) , he looked directly to Sam Power in the stands and mouthed 'just get me there'.
Perfect audition.
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You’re conveniently forgetting 2017, the year after winning a flag, we missed the 8 when we comfortably had a top 4 team.
We won early games and still missed.
Bevo coaches at start of season but his tenure is performance based. At the bye make a decision on extension or not.
threenewpadlocks
Brownlow Medallist
Right, so this goes back to my earlier posts about looking backward and "punishing" Bevo for his "failures" (even if those failures were as a result, to an extent, of worse luck than in previous seasons, as I've outlined) emotionally rather than looking forward as to what past results can tell us about the possibility of future success, going around in circles.
Like I've said a million times, we could have won 14 games by 60 points and lost 9 by 1 point, lost in the EF, and your argument would still be presenting the same way, even though it clearly represents a good coach with a good team for 2025 with some bad luck in 2024.
If other team's results went a different way, we could have defeated an injury hit Carlton by 1 point if they kicked 10.20 on the day and we kicked 13.3 (representing a worse overall performance) and lost the semi final by 100 points, and people would be calling that as a better guide to 2025, because we "won a final".
Obviously these examples didn't happen, but our season pointed in those directions away from a "typical" EF losing team in various ways.
The first time you attempted to characterise any alternative view to yours as merely emotional and lesser than what you feel is your “logical” opinion was unnecessary, let alone repeating it.
If you want to base your optimist’s outlook for next year on taking into account (our percentage in) 1 season out of the set of 10 available to us to draw conclusions from, to arrive at “it was all just a bit of bad luck”, that’s your prerogative. But it’s no less driven by bias and emotion than anyone else’s opinion.
And your argument would still be presenting the same way if we were talking about Matthew Nicks last year. Possibly something for you to think about.
No, I think that’s exaggerating and misconstruing things. Personally, being thrashed in a SF would probably reinforce some of my views. If however we won an EF and played well and were competitive in a losing SF, I’d take something positive from it. We only won the SF in 2021 by one point, remember, we were that close to one EF win to show for 8 years.
If my uncle was a woman he’d be my aunty. If the outcome of all of those strong statistical indicators is being throughly outplayed in an EF by a lower ranked side, again, then to me very little materially changed to indicate next year will be any different. And nothing is promised next year. Just ask Adelaide supporters what “bad luck” and good percentage guarantees you the following year.
threenewpadlocks
Brownlow Medallist
If you're happy to present any argument about why 2024 was identical to previous seasons, accepting that the end result of where we were knocked out is a clumsy way of measuring what a coach can control and what it represents to the future, be my guest. You haven't. I'm happy to discussing the ins and outs of how the team may or may not improve next year. Absent that, I don't think it's wrong to simply take a measurement of a team's general form and power rankings into the following season, stripped of uncontrollable, lucky elementd, of which we are clearly better in this off-season compared to off-seasons past (as many ratings systems still have us as a top 3 team, even after adjusting to the Hawks loss). Your argument is simply "we got knocked out in the same week as previous seasons" and I'm characterising that as an emotional argument, because you're not looking any deeper than just that fact in and of itself. Guess what - we can look deeper than that, which as I've said before, is how bodies such as bookmakers aim to make accurate predictions on the future. The bookmakers will make us more likely to win the 2025 flag than we have been in other pre-seasons when they release their premiership odds.
I would have hoped that me pointing out numerous times elements such as fixturing, goal kicking accuracy and the distribution of overall points for/points against across a season (a team that kicks 60 more points than their opponents in 2 games will more often than not win both their games than just one) is both unlucky and not controllable by Bevo. Sporting outcomes being a reflection of both luck and controllable elements is foundational to the understanding of sport and good decision making processes. People talk about it on here without even realising. I can dig out the mathematical formulas for you if you want I would argue the whole point of my argument isn't biased but more a reflection of me simply trying to understand what makes teams likely or not to win future games. You can see my past posts on Essendon e.g. predicting that they weren't that good simply on the basis that they had far more wins than losses with a percentage of below 100% to start this year and ultimately over a larger sample size they fell out of finals without even a necessary decerease in performance.
And I was personally a little optomistic about Adelaide's start to this year on that basis. Doesn't mean I shouldn't have quickly updated my views, just as I will if Bevo starts 2025 in a similar manner.
While we still lost, still underperformed to expectations and I'm not denying that, I'm not as negative as many are because Hawks are a good team at their home ground. We could have played worse against a worse team with a home ground advantage and I would have said that could have represented a worse team heading forward, despite the win. It's because of that fact that I'm still.
Consider we were underdogs for the Port prelim mainly because of the fact the narrow Brisbane win.
I'm not trying to say we "should" have won the elimination final. I'm making the point that sometimes there's variance and you underperform but that doesn't make you a bad team. We weren't a bad team losing subsequent games, because we lost to Brisbane, Port and Adelaide in the back end of this year, and those were three examples of underperformance in the back end of the year similar to the Hawthorn one. We managed to win games thereafter.
Put it this way - say for whatever reason, we get to play Hawks again at the MCG in week 2 of the finals. A repeat.
We went into first game as a 5 point favourite and lost by 37 points. Would you have kept us as favourite or not for the second game? Team ratings are typically 80-90% previous the game and 10-20% your new one. Which means that the line would have moved 4-8 points and Hawks would have been a slight favourite. We'd still be favourite if we could play at Docklands and have 65% of the crowd supporting us.
Ultimately, I'm trying to fairly assess the coach on what he could, to not punish him for things he couldn't, and use that as an assessment going forward.
There's a whole world out there about the role of luck in sports which is interesting reading:
Part II: Rethinking our playoff philosophy (on the role of chance in the postseason) | Statsbylopez
In the 2016-17 season, the Washington Capitals dominated the NHL like few teams in recent history, winning the Presidents’ Trophy with 118 points. The Caps entered a 2nd-round playoff series with Pittsburgh as decent-sized favorites (58 percent), and sure enough, Washington outplayed its rivals...
statsbylopez.netlify.app
Why it’s so much harder to predict winners in hockey than basketball
A statistical look at luck and skill in sports.
www.vox.com
Etc etc.
The changes we saw this year should have happened last year - we pissed 2023 up against the wall. Its such a shame we had to hold a gun to bevos head just to get some meaningful change happening this year.
Theres no luck involved in that. Had 2023 been the year of meaningful change, this year should have seen us performing more consistently throughout the season, finishing top 4, and every chance of playing next week.
One of my criticisms of Bev is that he ( from the outside) never seems to change and often gets beaten by what he already knows. My concerns with his coaching style are not based on one offs but problems that keep recurring. For instance no one was surprised that in the EF English struggled against a big bodied ruckman. How many times has that happened and what has been done about it?(apart from waiting for Darcy to develop). There are similar frequent occurrences of games gifted to players who will not make it, players played in roles that don’t suit or not making moves when needed ( no plan B). None of this is new but it’s just the same old same old. I had hoped the addition of Lade would cause a change in Bev accepting different ideas but I don’t believe it has.
threenewpadlocks
Brownlow Medallist
That's entirely fair.
We can use that as a lesson for 2025, in that to act more swiftly if it appears things are heading downhill to not repeat those mistakes again, by letting mutiole underperforming games stack on each other. This includes the elimination final loss - my arguments "it's just one game" obviously don't hold weight if we underperform games early next year.
Without overreacting to the fact that there shouldn't be a default, metaphysical expectation that we're a top team, but we can still strive to be a top team and correct decisions that fail to achieve that.
Other than that, ruing or attributing blame for the past, in my eyes, doesn't really serve a purpose into what we can do to achieve future success.
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I think you are being very hard on Bevo.
We are up against coaches who have been around longer than Bevo in Scott and Longmire. Sure courtesy of both teams holding an advantage of home grounds not shared with others they make top four every year.
Longmire five grand final appearances for one flag
Scott 8 preliminary finals for three wins, two flags
Bevo no top four for two prelims both won, 1flag
Coaching itself is an evolutionary process, Bevo brought in the handball club, the chaos football, working in a phone box etc. sadly Hardwick gets credited for a lot of innovation he copied off Bevo.
This year it was the Bulldog strip, guess it will be copied by some “genius” coach next year.
We are up against coaches who have been around longer than Bevo in Scott and Longmire. Sure courtesy of both teams holding an advantage of home grounds not shared with others they make top four every year.
Longmire five grand final appearances for one flag
Scott 8 preliminary finals for three wins, two flags
Bevo no top four for two prelims both won, 1flag
Coaching itself is an evolutionary process, Bevo brought in the handball club, the chaos football, working in a phone box etc. sadly Hardwick gets credited for a lot of innovation he copied off Bevo.
This year it was the Bulldog strip, guess it will be copied by some “genius” coach next year.
cleveland
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Cos Hardwick did it better sadly
ArNcHiSe
Team Captain
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You’re right, we are being too hard on poor Bevo. Maybe we can pull together some money for a nice spa day for the poor man. Because coaching is really hard and he has coach against guys that have been coaching for a long time. It’s not like he got out coached by someone in their 3rd season.
There was a loud chorus pointing to the Bombers’ percentage halfway through the year and predicting they’d drop off. It was a safe assumption to draw from a glance at the ladder.
What the Bombers’ percentage and statistical models didn’t and could not predict was that after the halfway point of the season Essendon’s opponents would average the same number of scoring shots, but two more goals, converting their shots at a rate well above the league average. “Bad luck” abounds for most teams.
And I was personally a little optomistic about Adelaide's start to this year on that basis. Doesn't mean I shouldn't have quickly updated my views, just as I will if Bevo starts 2025 in a similar manner.
While we still lost, still underperformed to expectations and I'm not denying that, I'm not as negative as many are because Hawks are a good team at their home ground. We could have played worse against a worse team with a home ground advantage and I would have said that could have represented a worse team heading forward, despite the win. It's because of that fact that I'm still.
Consider we were underdogs for the Port prelim mainly because of the fact the narrow Brisbane win.
I'm not trying to say we "should" have won the elimination final. I'm making the point that sometimes there's variance and you underperform but that doesn't make you a bad team. We weren't a bad team losing subsequent games, because we lost to Brisbane, Port and Adelaide in the back end of this year, and those were three examples of underperformance in the back end of the year similar to the Hawthorn one. We managed to win games thereafter.
Put it this way - say for whatever reason, we get to play Hawks again at the MCG in week 2 of the finals. A repeat.
We went into first game as a 5 point favourite and lost by 37 points. Would you have kept us as favourite or not for the second game? Team ratings are typically 80-90% previous the game and 10-20% your new one. Which means that the line would have moved 4-8 points and Hawks would have been a slight favourite. We'd still be favourite if we could play at Docklands and have 65% of the crowd supporting us.
Ultimately, I'm trying to fairly assess the coach on what he could, to not punish him for things he couldn't, and use that as an assessment going forward.
There's a whole world out there about the role of luck in sports which is interesting reading:
Part II: Rethinking our playoff philosophy (on the role of chance in the postseason) | Statsbylopez
In the 2016-17 season, the Washington Capitals dominated the NHL like few teams in recent history, winning the Presidents’ Trophy with 118 points. The Caps entered a 2nd-round playoff series with Pittsburgh as decent-sized favorites (58 percent), and sure enough, Washington outplayed its rivals...
Why it’s so much harder to predict winners in hockey than basketball
A statistical look at luck and skill in sports.
Etc etc.
I’ve had a keen interest in sports data analytics for over 20 years. I’m a bit miffed that the conclusion you appear to continually draw from my disagreement is that I need basic concepts explained to me. I fully understand what you’re saying, I just think you’ve got a set of blinkers on.
I’ve said all that I can be bothered saying on the topic for now and I don’t think this last post takes the discussion anywhere new, so I’m just going to park it there.
threenewpadlocks
Brownlow Medallist
Fair enough. We march on.
dogwatch
Premium Platinum
So is the correct inference from this that we will make top 4 and be every chance of playing in the GF in 2025?
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Top 4 and Granny in 2025!!
dogwatch
Premium Platinum
If Bevo had five GF appearances for one flag (maybe two next Saturday?), like Longmire, or 8 PF appearances for 2 flags like Scott (pro-rated for Bevo's shorter tenure if you like) I doubt there'd be many calling for him to be moved on.
As for the handball club and the working in a phone box I don't think you can say Bevo originated those. Maybe the slick name but not the concept. As an example Ron Barassi's Carlton famously won the 1970 GF after trailing Collingwood by 44 pts at half time. Supposedly he had urged his side to handball at all costs. That GF helped sow the seeds of many aspects of modern football over the next 50 years, but the recognition of handball as a tactical weapon pre-dated even that.
From Wikipedia:
I agree Hardwick pinched some ideas from Bevo but Hardwick tweaked and enhanced them, much as Bevo himself had done. Coaching is usually an incremental process, rather than a revolutionary one. Above any of this, Bevo's piece of magic in 2015-16 was the inspiration he provided and the self-belief he instilled. Not surprisingly that has proved difficult to sustain.
He has been solid since then but I don't think he has come up with anything like the level of innovation or motivation that we saw in those first two years. Others have passed him by, or at the very least picked his game apart. Furthermore the AFL's abolition of third man up was a bigger hit than most of us realised at the time. I'm still not convinced it was necessary - or that it is even good for the game.
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How would Bevo rate in the top coaches the past 20 years?
_Cerberus_
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Behind Malthouse, Williams, Simpson, Thompson, Longmire, Roos, Clarkson, Hardwick, Scott, just to name a few off the top of my head. All either won multiple premierships, or at least one. But also had their teams winning more games, more competitive and in the top 4. I say Bevo is on the fringe of being inside or outside the top 10. If Fagan wins next weekend, he overtakes Bevo. We have only had four decent home and away seasons under Bevo, 2015, 2016, 2021, and 2024. But have only won finals in two of those years, and never once made top 4. Which is why Bevo doesn't rank inside the top 10.
That being said. 9 clubs have not won a flag in the last 20 years. We are one of the 9 who have. I would still take it.
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