Preview Round 13 - Essendon Bombers vs Carlton Blues - Sunday, June 11th - 7:15 pm - For The Emblem!!!

[MiguelM]

My 2c

In:Wright, Tippa, Baldwin, Massimo
Out: Phillips, Snelling, Shiel, Hind (sub)

 

[eth-dog]

I don't see Walla playing the next few games.

 

[jannissary]

My 2c

In:Wright, Tippa, Baldwin, Massimo
Out: Phillips, Snelling, Shiel, Hind (sub)

massimo has earned some proper game time, tippa needs more time to get match ready

 

[jannissary]

cookers in the replies questioning what he’s here for, i think he’d do well playing off the half back potentially, adds a lot of needed height, would be even better if he gets bigger too

 

[fairbump_playon]

I remember seeing a conversation earlier in the week about us being 18th for transition defence, thought that this tweet from CD was promising ahead of our game Sunday

Does highlight that stats are dumb & blind sometimes.

We play 17 & 18 and our defensive stats improve. Wow.

 

[Don Won]

A

I don't see Walla playing the next few games.

Agreed. I think putting him in the middle in the vfl might signal a hard block of training. I hope at least.

 

[TheGrizz]

cookers in the replies questioning what he’s here for, i think he’d do well playing off the half back potentially, adds a lot of needed height, would be even better if he gets bigger too

Smart, Cox needs at least another 2 games of building game fitness up personally.

Kelly the more logical inclusion in defence if required.

For me
In: Wright, Kelly, D'Ambrosio
Out: Phillips (structure), Shiel (foot) Hind
Sub: Hind

 

[Ati Tude]

Does highlight that stats are dumb & blind sometimes.

We play 17 & 18 and our defensive stats improve. Wow.

17th put up 99 points against us. Nothing good defensively about that.

 

[DallasCrane316]

Based on Scott’s presser - 2MP and Kelly will come in. Shiel won’t play unless 100% and realistically, can’t see him being 100%

Guessing it’ll be Phillips/weed as the second omission.

 

[fairbump_playon]

17th put up 99 points against us. Nothing good defensively about that.

That's how dumb stats are

 

[Lore]

Based on Scott’s presser - 2MP and Kelly will come in. Shiel won’t play unless 100% and realistically, can’t see him being 100%

Guessing it’ll be Phillips/weed as the second omission.

If it's purely on form you'd think Weideman gets dropped (at least from reading this board).

But if we're trying to find out about our list then surely the coaches would be ridiculously excited to get as many games into the Wright/Weideman combination as possible and see if it has potential long term...

 

[Vander18]

Im probably not playing Zerk on any of them and if so only on Harry

Ridley - Charlie
Lav - Harry (To Start)

I expect Silvagni to play so prefer Zerk to take him

Totally agree.

McKay is the one that worries me - we have nothing resembling a good match -up for him. Lav will need to go into full warrior mode to keep him under control.

Our grand tradition of playing key forwards into form looks like it could continue….

 

[ant555]

If Weideman has a foot issue he may be the out .

 

[Lore]

That's how dumb stats are

Stats are just a quantitative reflection of reality.

How they're interpreted is a reflection of the interpreter... most people use them "as a drunk uses a lamp post, for support rather than illumination" – their biases determine what stats they cherry pick and how they analyse them.

If you start with a broader question "how is our defence going?" and take in the entire data set, you could actually use them for illumination.

For instance, it would be interesting to see the stats broken down against top/middle/bottom six opponents, better yet if you can break it down as our defence against the six best forward lines, middling forward lines and worst forward lines in the league (and so on).

Probably you could work it out using points for/points against as a proxy for best/worst defences and forward lines, rather than basic ladder position, percentage or premiership points.

You'd also have to plot it in a way that you can see if there are outliers or if the average is representative, and then what makes those outliers unique (such as Brisbane's three talls approach versus a Richmond who had none when we played them).


I don't really have time to do all that right now, but if you want some interesting stats there's some here:

MatterOfStats 2023 : Team Dashboard for Round 12 — Matter of Stats

The latest Ranking on Dashboard metrics data appears below, and uses the Match Ratio metric to adjust for the fact that four teams had byes this week. Collingwood and Melbourne have the most impressive set of numbers, with the former ranked no lower than 5th except for Q3 Performances, and the latt

www.matterofstats.com

So looking at Scoring Shot and Conversion Rate data:

For our attack vs their defence, my interpretation is that we are good at generating scoring shots and better than average at converting them, but their defence is equally good and this will be a battle ground. Looking at the inverse, our team defence will allow them more scoring shots than they're used to, but from difficult angle/distance that they likely won't easily convert – which they probably won't convert anyway because they suck.

Or to put it another way, their team offence and our team defence both suck, so they could have more shots at goal than they are used to but will probably waste them. Meanwhile, their midfield is stronger defensively and we will be battling to even get opportunities, but are capable of converting them when we do get a chance.

If our midfield/team offence setup is up to creating opportunities for ourselves then we should win, and if they're not then it'll be a low-scoring dirty scrum pinging between their half-back line and our kick out, which would favour Carlton.

If it favours Carlton then it's going to be either death by a thousand paper cuts, or Curnow gets off the chain and decides to kick straight for only the third time this year.

(They've only kicked more than 10 goals four times this year, and in three of those games Curnow kicked 5+ goals. Their total goals in any given week are basically Curnow+5).


There are also stats broken down by quarter at the bottom of the Team Dashboard.

My interpretation is that Carlton have a 1st quarter shoot-out that they usually lose, because their defenders are slow to warm up. Meanwhile we kick slightly more points than whatever our opponents do, winning most first quarters on average by a narrow margin.

In Q2 Carlton's defence improves, but their forward line drops off. They kick fewer points than in the first term, but keep their opponent to even fewer, allowing them to win most Q2s. Essendon are very similar in that the defence improves and the forward line drops off, but we have ended up losing more second quarters than Carlton have (probably due to inconsistency in defence).

By Q3 Carlton have most likely exhausted their defenders trying to overcome the Q1 blow-out, and play the rest of the game at the minimum level possible – the level of their opponent. Essendon clamp down, keeping our opponent to about two thirds of our score and winning most Q3s as a result.

In Q4 both teams should have used their subs, which sometimes works for them and sometimes doesn't. Essendon win the quarter by a bit most of the time or lose by a lot some of the time, while Carlton do the reverse.


If Carlton are going to beat us they'll need to out-perform themselves offensively and defensively in the first quarter and extend on their lead in Q2, because if they don't they're probably already well behind and are not accustomed to winning the game back in the second half.

If Essendon are going to win, we need to bring our A-game in the midfield, generate our own opportunities (because they're not going to make many mistakes defensively overall) and ensure that their first quarter is as awful as they're used to.

Key match-ups are probably our offensive midfielders in Merrett, Martin, and Stringer, though Caldwell and Perkins may get loose and generate opportunities for us if they're allowed to.

 

[fairbump_playon]

Stats are just a quantitative reflection of reality.

How they're interpreted is a reflection of the interpreter... most people use them "as a drunk uses a lamp post, for support rather than illumination" – their biases determine what stats they cherry pick and how they analyse them.

If you start with a broader question "how is our defence going?" and take in the entire data set, you could actually use them for illumination.

For instance, it would be interesting to see the stats broken down against top/middle/bottom six opponents, better yet if you can break it down as our defence against the six best forward lines, middling forward lines and worst forward lines in the league (and so on).

Probably you could work it out using points for/points against as a proxy for best/worst defences and forward lines, rather than basic ladder position, percentage or premiership points.

You'd also have to plot it in a way that you can see if there are outliers or if the average is representative, and then what makes those outliers unique (such as Brisbane's three talls approach versus a Richmond who had none when we played them).


I don't really have time to do all that right now, but if you want some interesting stats there's some here:

MatterOfStats 2023 : Team Dashboard for Round 12 — Matter of Stats

The latest Ranking on Dashboard metrics data appears below, and uses the Match Ratio metric to adjust for the fact that four teams had byes this week. Collingwood and Melbourne have the most impressive set of numbers, with the former ranked no lower than 5th except for Q3 Performances, and the latt

www.matterofstats.com

So looking at Scoring Shot and Conversion Rate data:

For our attack vs their defence, my interpretation is that we are good at generating scoring shots and better than average at converting them, but their defence is equally good and this will be a battle ground. Looking at the inverse, our team defence will allow them more scoring shots than they're used to, but from difficult angle/distance that they likely won't easily convert – which they probably won't convert anyway because they suck.

Or to put it another way, their team offence and our team defence both suck, so they could have more shots at goal than they are used to but will probably waste them. Meanwhile, their midfield is stronger defensively and we will be battling to even get opportunities, but are capable of converting them when we do get a chance.

If our midfield/team offence setup is up to creating opportunities for ourselves then we should win, and if they're not then it'll be a low-scoring dirty scrum pinging between their half-back line and our kick out, which would favour Carlton.

If it favours Carlton then it's going to be either death by a thousand paper cuts, or Curnow gets off the chain and decides to kick straight for only the third time this year.

(They've only kicked more than 10 goals four times this year, and in three of those games Curnow kicked 5+ goals. Their total goals in any given week are basically Curnow+5).


There are also stats broken down by quarter at the bottom of the Team Dashboard.

My interpretation is that Carlton have a 1st quarter shoot-out that they usually lose, because their defenders are slow to warm up. Meanwhile we kick slightly more points than whatever our opponents do, winning most first quarters on average by a narrow margin.

In Q2 Carlton's defence improves, but their forward line drops off. They kick fewer points than in the first term, but keep their opponent to even fewer, allowing them to win most Q2s. Essendon are very similar in that the defence improves and the forward line drops off, but we have ended up losing more second quarters than Carlton have (probably due to inconsistency in defence).

By Q3 Carlton have most likely exhausted their defenders trying to overcome the Q1 blow-out, and play the rest of the game at the minimum level possible – the level of their opponent. Essendon clamp down, keeping our opponent to about two thirds of our score and winning most Q3s as a result.

In Q4 both teams should have used their subs, which sometimes works for them and sometimes doesn't. Essendon win the quarter by a bit most of the time or lose by a lot some of the time, while Carlton do the reverse.


If Carlton are going to beat us they'll need to out-perform themselves offensively and defensively in the first quarter and extend on their lead in Q2, because if they don't they're probably already well behind and are not accustomed to winning the game back in the second half.

If Essendon are going to win, we need to bring our A-game in the midfield, generate our own opportunities (because they're not going to make many mistakes defensively overall) and ensure that their first quarter is as awful as they're used to.

Key match-ups are probably our offensive midfielders in Merrett, Martin, and Stringer, though Caldwell and Perkins may get loose and generate opportunities for us if they're allowed to.

This is why I (and probably everyone else) love your work Lore.

The lamppost!

 

[Wahooti Fandango]

daresay that nic cox will need some VFL time

You'd think he'd need a good month in the VFL.

 

[Vindicater]

Out: Shiel and Weideman

In: Kelly and Wright.

Mass comes into the main 22 to play forward and release Perkins more into the midfield to cover Shiel.

Kelly comes in to replace Hind and Hind moves to sub.

Wright comes in for Weid to play forward full time.

 

[jannissary]

You'd think he'd need a good month in the VFL.

i'd say 2 weeks, give him a chance to prove himself there imo

 

[Lore]

So this is actually an away game, and yet for some reason we're hauling 16 premiership cups to a 1993 premiership reunion party at an away game? Why didn't they request this one as a home game? Or is this the result of having no CEO when the fixture requests were due in?

 

[TheGrizz]

So this is actually an away game, and yet for some reason we're hauling 16 premiership cups to a 1993 premiership reunion party at an away game? Why didn't they request this one as a home game? Or is this the result of having no CEO when the fixture requests were due in?

I think it's the result of us having the home game last year for our 150th against the same mob?

 

[eth-dog]

I think it's the result of us having the home game last year for our 150th against the same mob?

That, and we probably requested them twice which didn't happen

 

[Wahooti Fandango]

Hate the Drake, sorry that should be hate he scum.

 

[jannissary]

So this is actually an away game, and yet for some reason we're hauling 16 premiership cups to a 1993 premiership reunion party at an away game? Why didn't they request this one as a home game? Or is this the result of having no CEO when the fixture requests were due in?

misread this as them showing all the games before the game started haha

 

[citizen-erased]

Totally agree.

McKay is the one that worries me - we have nothing resembling a good match -up for him. Lav will need to go into full warrior mode to keep him under control.

Our grand tradition of playing key forwards into form looks like it could continue….

The goal umpire?

 

[DallasCrane316]

If Weideman has a foot issue he may be the out .

Was there a report about this?