- Mar 6, 2014
- 41,562
- 39,805
- AFL Club
- Geelong
I've been playing around with the idea of making up a table of our goal kicking from the past few years (2007-2014), with the view of finding out what has changed over this period- whether we are kicking as many goals, whether we're as accurate, who's doing the scoring (is it big forwards, crumbers, ruckmen, midfielders?), etc. etc.
With these questions in mind, I've made up a table of our major goal kickers for the past 8 seasons, including the top 8 goal kickers in some calculations.
One thing that is niggling at me but I have yet to work on it, is the fact that I recall that we used to have a lot of goal kickers in each game a few years ago but this doesn't seem to happen anymore- I think we've become so Hawkins-focussed that the other forwards haven't been leading up and presenting in and around the 50 as they used to and the goal assists from teammates, with their shorter passes closer to goal, have also diminished.
There are a lot of factors that influence our goal kicking - ranging from how good our ruckmen and midfielders are, how many goals the opposition are kicking against us (we can't be kicking goals if the ball's constantly down the other end of the ground, obviously), how accurate our goal kickers are- which depends on the type of shot they're taking, etc.
The goals dried up in 2012 and 2014 in particular- we kicked about 3-4 goals less per game than we had kicked in previous years. In 2011, Mooney disappeared from the front line, kicking only 9 goals for the year, while Podsiadly became the main goal kicker. In 2012, Hawkins continued his good form from the 2011 GF and became the prime focus of his teammates, with Pods as the second big forward. In 2013, Hawkins played restricted for most of the season but still topped the goal kicking list and, in 2013 and 2014, we had a cobbled-together ruck division.
Where will the goals come from in 2015? What areas can we improve on, to increase our output?
We're doing OK at getting the ball inside 50- we've been champions at doing this well over the past 8 years, being either the best or 2nd best team getting the ball inside 50 for 6 of these 8 years. Last year, we dropped to 6th.
That needs to improve this season.
How do we compare with other teams at converting our shots on goal into 6 points? Our accuracy has been reasonable over the past 8 years apart from 2009 and 2012, when we were 9th most accurate, and 2014 when we were the 15th most accurate team - or perhaps I should say we were the 4th least accurate team.
If we intend to keep wasting our shots on goal, then we need to increase our I50s so we can have more kicks in the direction of the big posts. If that's too difficult due to lack of manpower in the rucks, midfield, etc.- then we will just have to learn to be a lot cleverer and more economical with setting up our goal kickers so they aren't just peppering the goals and stop wasting the opportunities that their teammates have given them. Hawthorn improved their goal accuracy by 3% last season- there's no reason that we can't improve ours by that amount.
We need to be more accurate with our entries and our targets need to be in better position to receive, so that means the ball has to come in faster, before the opposition defence has time to set up 2 on 1 on a goal kicker- and we need to put a clever player or two (like Stokes, Bartel or Johnson) in the area, so they can get to the fall of the ball or direct a young fast teammate to be in the right place. Motlop would be handy here, too, with his speed. I'm sure there will be 20 players capable of rotating through here.
With these questions in mind, I've made up a table of our major goal kickers for the past 8 seasons, including the top 8 goal kickers in some calculations.
One thing that is niggling at me but I have yet to work on it, is the fact that I recall that we used to have a lot of goal kickers in each game a few years ago but this doesn't seem to happen anymore- I think we've become so Hawkins-focussed that the other forwards haven't been leading up and presenting in and around the 50 as they used to and the goal assists from teammates, with their shorter passes closer to goal, have also diminished.
There are a lot of factors that influence our goal kicking - ranging from how good our ruckmen and midfielders are, how many goals the opposition are kicking against us (we can't be kicking goals if the ball's constantly down the other end of the ground, obviously), how accurate our goal kickers are- which depends on the type of shot they're taking, etc.
The goals dried up in 2012 and 2014 in particular- we kicked about 3-4 goals less per game than we had kicked in previous years. In 2011, Mooney disappeared from the front line, kicking only 9 goals for the year, while Podsiadly became the main goal kicker. In 2012, Hawkins continued his good form from the 2011 GF and became the prime focus of his teammates, with Pods as the second big forward. In 2013, Hawkins played restricted for most of the season but still topped the goal kicking list and, in 2013 and 2014, we had a cobbled-together ruck division.
Where will the goals come from in 2015? What areas can we improve on, to increase our output?
We're doing OK at getting the ball inside 50- we've been champions at doing this well over the past 8 years, being either the best or 2nd best team getting the ball inside 50 for 6 of these 8 years. Last year, we dropped to 6th.
That needs to improve this season.How do we compare with other teams at converting our shots on goal into 6 points? Our accuracy has been reasonable over the past 8 years apart from 2009 and 2012, when we were 9th most accurate, and 2014 when we were the 15th most accurate team - or perhaps I should say we were the 4th least accurate team.
If we intend to keep wasting our shots on goal, then we need to increase our I50s so we can have more kicks in the direction of the big posts. If that's too difficult due to lack of manpower in the rucks, midfield, etc.- then we will just have to learn to be a lot cleverer and more economical with setting up our goal kickers so they aren't just peppering the goals and stop wasting the opportunities that their teammates have given them. Hawthorn improved their goal accuracy by 3% last season- there's no reason that we can't improve ours by that amount.
We need to be more accurate with our entries and our targets need to be in better position to receive, so that means the ball has to come in faster, before the opposition defence has time to set up 2 on 1 on a goal kicker- and we need to put a clever player or two (like Stokes, Bartel or Johnson) in the area, so they can get to the fall of the ball or direct a young fast teammate to be in the right place. Motlop would be handy here, too, with his speed. I'm sure there will be 20 players capable of rotating through here.
