Analysis 2015 List Analysis and Comparison

[Gmod23]

Love the write up Dannnnnnnn.

My interpretation of our list compared to others is that we draft and develop mids. Other teams recognize that KPP are harder to get, so they draft said KPP in preference, even if it means their reserve grade team is imbalanced and way too top heavy.

For whatever reason, we must embrace our midfielders and hope our KPP step up.

 

[Snake Livermore]

Great effort with the stats Dan. After reading and re-reading and analyzing your post I have come to the conclusion that the Bulldogs top secret research lab needs to develop a footy boot with 2cm cushioning in the bottom. Is that also your conclusion?

 

[Norm De Guerre]

This threads a little high brow for me. I'm felling distinctly uncomfortable.

 

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

I know we shouldn't discount rookies altogether because some do get to play AFL each year, but they are certainly the least likely and the least accessible. I'm not expecting you to do this, Dannnn but it would have been interesting to see the histograms as stacked columns (rookies shown in a different colour to seniors).

That actually wouldn't be very difficult to implement at all DW - I'll see what I can do a little later in the day.

Great work Dannnnn really great analysis.

Although for me, hight has nothing todo with having football ability. Yes id love to have 15 players that are 194cm tall on the ground but what good are they if they dont have great football ability. We shouldnt rate tall players just because they have height. you have to rate a player on football ability.

Id rather play a player in the 182cm category with football ability ahead of any 194cm kpp that has limited football ability

I absolutely agree and it's part of the reason I've avoided drawing any such conclusions - I'm liking reading how others have interpreted the stats past my very simple, "We're shorter than expected due to a large cluster of 181-185cm players," position. I very much agree with you - if our recruiters don't rate the talls, they shouldn't take them. My post just illustrates that we possess more of a list imbalance than examples of an elite team, a middle-ground team, and another rebuilding team. Something's gotta give eventually.

Few points

- Who are the 3 players on our list 201cm+? Cordy yes at 204cm, but after that the club website lists Roughead at 200cm, Boyd at 200cm, Campbell at 200cm & Minson at 199cm

- Caleb Daniel skews the stats a bit. His height as a mid is not as important as the height of KP's

- We have a very young list. Young players can be expected to grow a few cm's in their first few seasons. We could potentially keep the same list and be an average of 1-2cm taller in 3 years time

1. Various sites around the internet list both Tom Campbell and Tom Boyd as 201cm. As I put down the bottom I got the stats from one site (for ease of access as well as to ensure the heights are listed in an unbiased way), so some could be inaccurate.
2. He does skew the stats a little and I plan on omitting him from the analysis and seeing what effect it has on our stats a little later in the day. That said, as much as his height as a mid is less important than the height of a KPP, I still see it as being pretty important. There's very little in the rules that allows him to compete with even your average 182cm midfielder in the air. Could be a disaster in opposition link-up play.
3. True, but you can't really bank on it occurring. Sides with similar ages to us still have a better distribution of heights than we do.

 

[TBOW]

Wouldn't the data be heavily skewed due to the lack of kpp depth on our list?
Is that the conclusion you are drawing from this Dannnnnnn?

I think a height by position analysis is probably going to give a better indication of how our height compares across the park.

 

[Metal]

Great work Dann. As a list is a work in progress, and for any number of reasons, will be out of balance at different points in time (such as injuries to particular cohorts), I don't think it matters that we are 'short'. If it is deemed that that seriously affects our results in 2015, then I'm sure we will trade or target a key tall. There are plenty of sides who don't develop these from scratch but trade for them when / if opportunity arises and / or their premiership window is open. Simply put, for 2015 we deemed that ball disposal and ball movement was our number 1 priority.

 

[dogwatch]

Out
Griffen (188)
Gia (182)
Cooney (185)
Higgins (184)
Jones (197)
Tutt (177)
Young (191)
Howard (187)
Williams (198)
Goodes (183)
Pearce (182)

In
Boyd (201)
Biggs (187)
Cordy (192)
Hamling (194)
Webb (186)
McLean (179)
Hamilton (183)
Dale (182)
Daniel (167)
Redpath (194)
Jong (190)

Total Out: 2054cm
Total In: 2055cm

Yet everyone is suddenly saying we're short people now.

Good stats, but it doesn't change the fact (presented by Dannnn) that we are 1.5cm to 2cm shorter than the AFL average. As I said earlier that is a very significant deviation and would make us close to the shortest side (on average) in the AFL.

So your stats here tell me that we were also very short last year and have done nothing to redress the imbalance. If you have time it would be worth looking at how tall we were in 2011 and comparing that to our 2015 list. Even though playing lists are getting taller each year (on average) my guess is that we'd have been taller in 2011, i.e. in four years we have been dipping - or flatlining - against the trend of slow growth. (If I can find time I'll do it myself.)

 

[dogwatch]

We have a very young list and there is still growth in many of our players. Here are three examples of players growing after being drafted

Michael Talia November 2011 192cm
Michael Talia December 2014 195cm

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/a...th-michael-talia/story-fn53klc6-1226206209445
http://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/pp-western-bulldogs--michael-talia

Tom Boyd November 2013 199cm
Tom Boyd December 2014 201cm

http://www.unambitiousus.com/sports/2013-afl-phantom-draft/
http://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/pp-western-bulldogs--thomas-boyd

Tom Williams November 2004 196cm
Tom Williams December 2014 198cm

http://www.topendsports.com/sport/afl/testing-draft-results-2004.htm
http://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/pr-western-bulldogs--tom-williams

Not disputing this phenomenon. It's a good observation. However I strongly doubt such growth would occur across the board, even for the U21s. And as Dannn pointed out we are still shorter than other clubs with a similar age profile, so that even if ours grow, so will others.

 

[dogwatch]

Wouldn't the data be heavily skewed due to the lack of kpp depth on our list?
Is that the conclusion you are drawing from this Dannnnnnn?

I think a height by position analysis is probably going to give a better indication of how our height compares across the park.

INtuitively that's what I would have thought. Howevery if you look at the WB histogram vs the Hawthorn histogram it shows that the biggest difference is in the middle (181-195cm) range where we are skewed to the "small" side and they are skewed to the "tall" side. Our "very smalls" (under 181) and "very talls" (over 195) are quite similar in number to Hawthorn's.

 

[dogwatch]

This threads a little high brow for me. I'm felling distinctly uncomfortable.

That's how I feel when you do those fantastic graphics!

 

[maddog37]

Maybe we are breaking from the herd and implementing a full ground mosquito fleet anchored by a few big boys. This incessant desire to follow successful clubs trends just makes you constantly one step behind and playing catch up.

Time we formed our own style and create a system other clubs will follow. Rocket did it so no reason Bevo can't.

 

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

Part 2 might be a couple of days away - I'm going through with gangsta deluxe 's request to include separate histograms/box plots for the entire AFL's distribution as well as dogwatch 's suggestion regarding rookie trends, so it's quite a bit of work. I'll get it up as soon as possible.

 

[LondonBulldog]

Out
Griffen (188)
Gia (182)
Cooney (185)
Higgins (184)
Jones (197)
Tutt (177)
Young (191)
Howard (187)
Williams (198)
Goodes (183)
Pearce (182)

In
Boyd (201)
Biggs (187)
Cordy (192)
Hamling (194)
Webb (186)
McLean (179)
Hamilton (183)
Dale (182)
Daniel (167)
Redpath (194)
Jong (190)

Total Out: 2054cm
Total In: 2055cm

Yet everyone is suddenly saying we're short people now.

Nice try, you can manipulate figure easy if you want. Now do the same exercise with Rookies included last year and Rookies this year. You will find for a start Redpath and Jong will cancell each other out bringing our list much shorter this year compared to last.

 

[gangsta deluxe]

I used the three comparison teams to avoid having to input every player's height.

I'll see what I can do though, after I get part 2 up. It might be possible with easily-accessible stats like height, it's just going to be time consuming.

Thanks for going through with it and I appreciate all the work you've done. I can understand how this is time consuming for you because it seems like you are reviewing the data yourself. You need a data cube to make it faster to develop these visual aids.

Here is an example concerning Australian higher education: http://highereducationstatistics.education.gov.au/

I can come up with quantitative comparative analyses across universities (i.e. in terms of domestic/international students, casual staff/non casual, gender distributions etc.), similar to what you have done here with footy teams, but it takes * all time because the software does it for me. When you have this kind of quick route it makes it easier to get to communicating and simplifying the importance of the results (which, if you dont mind a bit of constructive criticism, you seem to be good at but still have the capacity to further develop your skills).

Given the interest in footy, it'd be good for you to look in to the software for this (you seem to have a career interest in this area, if I am not mistaken).

Ever thought about an academic career in this area? looks to be fertile ground with plenty of interest...

 

[Butane]

Total Out: 2054cm
Total In: 2055cm

Yet everyone is suddenly saying we're short people now.

Not the point, we we've been too small for years and lack elite AFL quality in the minimal ones we have. Balancing our heights from last seasons should have been a minimum requirement not a pat on the back.

BUT seeing as though we're now going down a rebuilding phase properly and are one of the youngest teams in the AFL I think we can afford to get the best talent in and then work on getting the heights and shapes of the list sorted out in the next few trade periods.

 

[Hoges64]

Not the point, we we've been too small for years and lack elite AFL quality in the minimal ones we have. Balancing our heights from last seasons should have been a minimum requirement not a pat on the back.

BUT seeing as though we're now going down a rebuilding phase properly and are one of the youngest teams in the AFL I think we can afford to get the best talent in and then work on getting the heights and shapes of the list sorted out in the next few trade periods.

This kind of runs along a train of thought I've been having that maybe as there was a lack of decent KPP's by the time we got a pick this year, we went for "best available" in the hope that maybe in 2-3 years time we can bundle 2 quality mids together (say Hrovat and Webb) and trade them to someone like Geelong who seem to have a dearth of talls. (Obviously players and teams are just used as examples)

 

[Snake Livermore]

Putting quality, age, experience, position (for now) and all other factors aside, the height profile of our list appears unbalanced and a fair way behind that of the other three clubs - Hawthorn, Brisbane and St Kilda - presented here. In essence, while we have a greater chance than these clubs at finding a competent small, we are spreading our chances way too thin at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Dannnnn I'm wondering how you came to this conclusion here. I think the stats and analysis are very good, but the finding that we are behind the other clubs doesn't really bear out, considering we finished above two out of three of them on the ladder this year, and our height profile hasn't changed from this year.

I think you can only conclude that our height profile is different to other clubs, which may or may not be of any consequence at all. Unless you can show a correlation (and ideally a theoretical causality) between height distribution and ladder position, it's kind of clutching at straws.

 

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

Thanks for going through with it and I appreciate all the work you've done. I can understand how this is time consuming for you because it seems like you are reviewing the data yourself. You need a data cube to make it faster to develop these visual aids.

Here is an example concerning Australian higher education: http://highereducationstatistics.education.gov.au/

I can come up with quantitative comparative analyses across universities (i.e. in terms of domestic/international students, casual staff/non casual, gender distributions etc.), similar to what you have done here with footy teams, but it takes **** all time because the software does it for me. When you have this kind of quick route it makes it easier to get to communicating and simplifying the importance of the results (which, if you dont mind a bit of constructive criticism, you seem to be good at but still have the capacity to further develop your skills).

Given the interest in footy, it'd be good for you to look in to the software for this (you seem to have a career interest in this area, if I am not mistaken).

Ever thought about an academic career in this area? looks to be fertile ground with plenty of interest...

Thanks for the input - always happy to get some constructive criticism.

I'm using IBM SPSS at the moment to generate the descriptives and the box plots (it also does histograms but I've been quickly re-doing them in Excel as it gives a little more flexibility with how it's presented), as well as some inferential statistics in other analyses. It's inputting the data that's time consuming. I'm definitely interested in looking at what else is out there to make this process a bit easier but for the moment SPSS is a booklisted program for my university course so it comes with the added bonus of extra practice.

List management/analysis and football stats analysis is something I have a keen interest in and have considered as a career path, but for the moment it's just a hobby more than anything else.

Dannnnn I'm wondering how you came to this conclusion here. I think the stats and analysis are very good, but the finding that we are behind the other clubs doesn't really bear out, considering we finished above two out of three of them on the ladder this year, and our height profile hasn't changed from this year.

I think you can only conclude that our height profile is different to other clubs, which may or may not be of any consequence at all. Unless you can show a correlation (and ideally a theoretical causality) between height distribution and ladder position, it's kind of clutching at straws.

I agree; not a great point to make. What I was trying to say is that our height distribution (especially within the 181-195 range in particular) is much more positively skewed than those of the comparison teams'; we're "behind" in that our players are built up at a shorter height than the shown competitors' players. The use of the word "behind" wasn't intended to infer ladder position or quality or anything of the sort.

 

[TempleKelvington]

Well done Dannnn, takes a lot of effort to put something like that together.

I'm not sure what it all means. Someone pointed out that the whole list does not run out at the same time. I think if we did the exercise with the best 22 to 25 players from each team then I think we'd stack up pretty similar. Give we drafted so many in that 181 to 185 range this year.

 

[bontshow]

Nice try, you can manipulate figure easy if you want. Now do the same exercise with Rookies included last year and Rookies this year. You will find for a start Redpath and Jong will cancell each other out bringing our list much shorter this year compared to last.

Redpath 194
Jong 190
Greenwood 178
Austin 195
Total 757

Kelly 192
Smith 182
Goodes 183
Pearce 181
Total 738

So you're right, we lost 19cm on the rookie list. What I'd argue though is that rookies are far less likely to play than main list players, and their inclusion could skew the numbers.

In fact, many other sides have tall international rookies on their lists that would be artifically inflating their numbers without making the 22 players we face on field any taller

 

[bontshow]

Not disputing this phenomenon. It's a good observation. However I strongly doubt such growth would occur across the board, even for the U21s. And as Dannn pointed out we are still shorter than other clubs with a similar age profile, so that even if ours grow, so will others.

Our 2015 list is the youngest in the AFL besides GC & GWS, and we are very close to them now. We didn't lose height on our main list this season, but we definitely lost age & experience. Not everyone on the list will grow, but players like Dale, Cordy, McLean & Hamilton could be 3cm taller in 3 years

 

[bontshow]

Good stats, but it doesn't change the fact (presented by Dannnn) that we are 1.5cm to 2cm shorter than the AFL average. As I said earlier that is a very significant deviation and would make us close to the shortest side (on average) in the AFL.

We haven't seen the average height for each side, only an overall AFL average. It would be interesting to see whether there is a correlation between average height and finishing position. I do note that Hawthorn are below the AFL average despite winning the flag.

But what there is an undisputed correlation between is average age and finishing position. GC, GWS & us are at the bottom, whilst Hawthorn, Fremantle & North are at the top.

Yet there hasn't been any discussion praising the club for going with Boyd, Biggs & Hamling as mature agers, as opposed to picking up more 18 year olds. There has even been negative feedback from our retention of Goodes on the rookie list, to retain some experience after losing so much of it this off season

So your stats here tell me that we were also very short last year and have done nothing to redress the imbalance. If you have time it would be worth looking at how tall we were in 2011 and comparing that to our 2015 list. Even though playing lists are getting taller each year (on average) my guess is that we'd have been taller in 2011, i.e. in four years we have been dipping - or flatlining - against the trend of slow growth. (If I can find time I'll do it myself.)

Not sure if we can even get a list of players on our list in 2011 for that.

Calling it an imbalance is presuming we are too short. It is a fact that we are shorter than the AFL average, it is not established that the AFL average is the ideal list height.

 

[Nightowl]

So, in short, you're saying we're a bit short.

 

[bontshow]

1. Various sites around the internet list both Tom Campbell and Tom Boyd as 201cm. As I put down the bottom I got the stats from one site (for ease of access as well as to ensure the heights are listed in an unbiased way), so some could be inaccurate.

They have both grown since we drafted them, which shows our young list could grow taller as they mature

2. He does skew the stats a little and I plan on omitting him from the analysis and seeing what effect it has on our stats a little later in the day. That said, as much as his height as a mid is less important than the height of a KPP, I still see it as being pretty important. There's very little in the rules that allows him to compete with even your average 182cm midfielder in the air. Could be a disaster in opposition link-up play.

Give us Oscar McDonald at Daniel's pick and that adds 30cm to the list, or 0.83 to the average over 36 players. That takes us to 187.65, within 0.63 of Hawthorn's 188.28.

Daniel may not make it, or height may not be a factor in the way he plays the game, so allowing him to skew the average and concluding we need more talls could be inaccurate

3. True, but you can't really bank on it occurring. Sides with similar ages to us still have a better distribution of heights than we do.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/a...says-latest-data/story-fni5f22o-1227149047364

St Kilda have an average age of 23.42 and average height of 187.89, we're at 23.21 and 186.82. We're only 1.07cm down, or 0.24cm if we took McDonald over Daniel.

 

[bontshow]

INtuitively that's what I would have thought. Howevery if you look at the WB histogram vs the Hawthorn histogram it shows that the biggest difference is in the middle (181-195cm) range where we are skewed to the "small" side and they are skewed to the "tall" side. Our "very smalls" (under 181) and "very talls" (over 195) are quite similar in number to Hawthorn's.

I actually think we're overstocked for small defenders. Webb, Biggs, JJ, Darley, Murphy, Fuller, Picken, Pearce, Smith, many of which are on the short side. But does it matter that these guys aren't tall in the role they play?