And then there was one....
Certified Legendary Thread Squiggle 2017
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Once again, a 'worse' side on paper (and Squiggle) beats a 'better' side on the day. Doesn't mean Squiggle's worth is diminished or that pressure always beats skill. Just means that Richmond played well and won the premiership while Adelaide played poorly and blew it.
i actually have a question for FS to do with how this changes the squiggle, but in short the squiggle is reactionary to the way the game changes. I wont assume before he clarifies it but my understanding is that the new cup on the squiggle will change how it weights defence vs attack outside of the flagpole which is purely attack.
If fremantle won one during the hawks 3peat then squiggle would have had different predictions all year and could have predicted it alot closer
I think the squiggle does need fine-tuning but there's nothing that can't be fixed. I'm noticing three issues that the squiggle may need to respond to.
1. Part of the reason why Richmond won is the bye. We now have three byes, one mid season, one before the finals and one if you win a qualifying final. Some seasons, there was only one bye, the bye for the qualifying final. I think byes help teams that play a physically taxing style of game a la Richmond or Footscray last year. Whereas it's not sustainable to play that way for 22 rounds across 23 weeks. But sides are treating the finals like a new season and are basically going for broke, but also, teams are treating every game like it's their last because in finals, it kinda is. So teams are red-lining especially teams that base their gameplan on pressure. I also think such a physically taxing gameplan is hard to maintain consistently which is why Richmond was more inconsistent this year during the home and away season than Adelaide. I suspect the bye means the regular season and the finals are somewhat more disconnected from each other than before and aren't as relevant as before.
2. Another trend is scoring, or how its reducing. The squiggle treats all teams from all seasons roughly the same, and looks at what works in a general sense: high scoring. Problem is, 2017's scoring rates are lower than other periods in history, which means that while Richmond's scoring rate historically isn't very good, in this year, it's not as bad comparatively. For instance, the average score in the home and away season was 89 points per team. That's low compared to the 90s where scores hovered around the low 90s. I think lower average scores allow for more upsets, much like how upsets are more common in soccer than in basketball. Now was the grand final won by some flukey own goal? Thankfully not (at least for us tigs fans). But I do wonder if this Adelaide team has the firepower than teams from previous years have. This point was picked up by the espn AFL expert Matt Cowgill who observed that once you factor in actual scoring rate differences per season, Richmond's scoring rate improves comparatively. In essence, Richmond's impotent attack isn't that much of an issue if other teams aren't scoring as much either.
3. Gamestyle. I know it's hard for the squiggle to make judgements on gamestyles without becoming subjective. Nonetheless, it is indicative of Richmond's attacking threat that they averaged high 50s for inside 50s in the finals. Compare that to Fremantle in 2013 who averaged mid 40s for inside 50s and lost the inside 50 count twice in the 2013 finals and you see a difference in how often the ball actually gets in there. I feel like teams who at least try and play attacking football but have a mediocre forwardline have more of a potential to get hot than a team which deliberately plays more conservatively. All it takes is for say a midfield to get on top, which happened, and the opposition's offense will be stunted, in which your team's willingness to attack will help punish them, especially given finals footy is dominated by the ability to win contested ball.
In essence, if you're not an high scoring team, at least trying to be a high scoring team will help. We'll never know if Fremantle could have won the flag with a more daring coach, but a gamestyle which limits the amount of times you attack limits the amount of times you can score, and doesn't put scoreboard pressure on the opposition. But I never felt like Richmond were playing a Ross Lyon defensive style of play this year. Richmond defend well, but there's a difference between defensive efforts of a team and a defensive gamestyle. Given Richmond have some of the best defensive personnel in the league, yet have some of the highest inside 50s rates in the league, I genuinely believe Richmond's defensive record is due to good defensive performances by defenders, as opposed to a team gamestyle.
1. Part of the reason why Richmond won is the bye. We now have three byes, one mid season, one before the finals and one if you win a qualifying final. Some seasons, there was only one bye, the bye for the qualifying final. I think byes help teams that play a physically taxing style of game a la Richmond or Footscray last year. Whereas it's not sustainable to play that way for 22 rounds across 23 weeks. But sides are treating the finals like a new season and are basically going for broke, but also, teams are treating every game like it's their last because in finals, it kinda is. So teams are red-lining especially teams that base their gameplan on pressure. I also think such a physically taxing gameplan is hard to maintain consistently which is why Richmond was more inconsistent this year during the home and away season than Adelaide. I suspect the bye means the regular season and the finals are somewhat more disconnected from each other than before and aren't as relevant as before.
2. Another trend is scoring, or how its reducing. The squiggle treats all teams from all seasons roughly the same, and looks at what works in a general sense: high scoring. Problem is, 2017's scoring rates are lower than other periods in history, which means that while Richmond's scoring rate historically isn't very good, in this year, it's not as bad comparatively. For instance, the average score in the home and away season was 89 points per team. That's low compared to the 90s where scores hovered around the low 90s. I think lower average scores allow for more upsets, much like how upsets are more common in soccer than in basketball. Now was the grand final won by some flukey own goal? Thankfully not (at least for us tigs fans). But I do wonder if this Adelaide team has the firepower than teams from previous years have. This point was picked up by the espn AFL expert Matt Cowgill who observed that once you factor in actual scoring rate differences per season, Richmond's scoring rate improves comparatively. In essence, Richmond's impotent attack isn't that much of an issue if other teams aren't scoring as much either.
3. Gamestyle. I know it's hard for the squiggle to make judgements on gamestyles without becoming subjective. Nonetheless, it is indicative of Richmond's attacking threat that they averaged high 50s for inside 50s in the finals. Compare that to Fremantle in 2013 who averaged mid 40s for inside 50s and lost the inside 50 count twice in the 2013 finals and you see a difference in how often the ball actually gets in there. I feel like teams who at least try and play attacking football but have a mediocre forwardline have more of a potential to get hot than a team which deliberately plays more conservatively. All it takes is for say a midfield to get on top, which happened, and the opposition's offense will be stunted, in which your team's willingness to attack will help punish them, especially given finals footy is dominated by the ability to win contested ball.
In essence, if you're not an high scoring team, at least trying to be a high scoring team will help. We'll never know if Fremantle could have won the flag with a more daring coach, but a gamestyle which limits the amount of times you attack limits the amount of times you can score, and doesn't put scoreboard pressure on the opposition. But I never felt like Richmond were playing a Ross Lyon defensive style of play this year. Richmond defend well, but there's a difference between defensive efforts of a team and a defensive gamestyle. Given Richmond have some of the best defensive personnel in the league, yet have some of the highest inside 50s rates in the league, I genuinely believe Richmond's defensive record is due to good defensive performances by defenders, as opposed to a team gamestyle.
It was actually closest to the margin
evo
Let's hit the f*ken road!
The last 24 hours has felt like a dream. But now I know it's true. Last flag standing!
Also one thing to note is there's more degrees of variation between the ratings of premiership team offences compared to defences. I also suspect that what separates Adelaide from a side like say Geelong or Hawthorn is their ability to score well at the MCG not iust at home.
The squiggle couldn't predict that Adelaide would go home at quarter time!
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Richmond Tigers
Premiers 2017
Premiers 2017
Well holy ******* s**t. I am dead set serious about retiring. This is the final Squiggle thread.
In animated form:
In Flagpole form:
Obviously I'm posting the above just for the enjoyment of Richmond fans, not because it offers any kind of analytical insight. That much is clear, because if there's one thing Squiggle has been consistent on this year, it's that THE TIGERS WILL NOT WIN THE PREMIERSHIP. It didn't rate them as a team until late, and even then was confident that somewhere, sometime, the defensive gameplan would unravel as a more balanced side got hold of them and shook until all their mediocre players fell out.
Instead, for reasons that leave me equal parts baffled and tumescent, Adelaide turned up on Grand Final Day and played listless football. At no point did it look like an Adelaide game; instead, it always resembled a Richmond game: close and scrappy, with Tigers outworking and outrunning their opponents, taking risks, swarming, and halving and winning contests one by one until the weight of numbers was too great to resist.
In this way, it was the same story as the two previous Richmond finals - moreso, if anything, than the preliminary final, where GWS at least occasionally managed to look like a team not playing Richmond. Where Squiggle expected the Tigers inevitably to break down, they barely showed a crack.
Why this happened requires a closer look at game style than I can provide. But we can examine how unusual it is, and how it fits (or doesn't) with other modern premierships.
Richmond's triumph replaces the 20-year-old 1997 Adelaide premiership on the chart, leaving something of a two-island effect, with four defence-oriented flag teams set a short distance away from 16 balanced or attacking ones. On its face, that still looks like evidence that low-scoring teams do worse, especially if you consider the number of wrecks of premiership campaigns located here, most of which belong to Sydney, Fremantle and St. Kilda. But it's very noticeable that it now hosts the two most recent flags. In fact, by the time next season rolls around, you will have to go back seven years to find a premier that wasn't either defensively-oriented or Hawthorn.
So is it still better to be attacking? Plenty of evidence remains for the benefits of attacking football, but it stops rather abruptly at the end of 2015. In 2016, the four most defensive teams made prelims, while Adelaide, a high-rated attacking team, fell out unexpectedly in the semi-finals. 2017 has been more ambiguous, with another finals failures from defensive specialists Sydney (and, to a lesser extent, Port Adelaide), but a dominant finals campaign from the Tigers. Whether this means the game has evolved, it's a temporary aberration, or squiggle has no freaking idea what it's talking about, I leave to you.
In terms of raw dominance, the 2017 Tigers are rated tenth of those 20 flags, so pretty much bang in the middle, but 2nd for defence and 18th for attack.
The Tigers didn't come from as far back ahead of finals as the Bulldogs did last year - no-one has - but they did move a long way by thrashing all three opponents. They also moved a long way over the course of the season, after a lacklustre 2016 that ended with an 88-point loss to the Giants and a 113-point belting at the hands of the Swans. Some travelled further, but no modern premier has started the year as far back as Richmond did in 2017.
On balance, the Bulldogs 2016 premiership remains the greater anomaly, given how poor they were leading into finals, the need to win 4 straight games, two of which were interstate, and the strength of their opposition, which was greater in 2016 than offered by the top four this year. But the Tigers are up there, particularly (from squiggle's point of view) since they found success with a low-scoring game style that has a terrible historical strike rate.
Richmond had a generous draw in 2017, with only one double against a top-8 opponent (GWS) and three doubles against the bottom 5 (Carlton, Brisbane, Fremantle). It was also a good year to be thereabouts, with a very even competition and no dominant team; probably the least competitive top end field since 2009. But they were also unlucky not to have another close game or two fall their way, deserved to finish top 4, and were emphatic in dismantling each opponent once they got there.
On a personal note, thank you for following Squiggle 2017, and the earlier ones, if you've been on board for that. It's been an amazing ride. But I think this is a good place to leave it, with the team I love obliterating my algorithm and demonstrating how much greater the game is than all the bullshit I do here. So I will stick around BigFooty but not start a squiggle thread next year. In the words of a great man, I am going to spend some time on my novel.
And again, holy ******* s**t. I remember complaining about how bad the Tigers were with a guy on my bus, and him saying don't worry, we'd come good in a couple years. That was around 1986. We were on our way to school. I've followed this team through the 29-year period where we missed the finals 27 times. People don't appreciate that; the numbers are too big to really comprehend what it's like to be bad year after year and have that go on almost without break for three decades. Until this year, I'd never seen Richmond win a final in person - I have seen us get smashed from the opening bounce twice - and was too young to remember the last time we made a Grand Final. But now. Holy ******* s**t.
I was expecting to be able to report here my experience on which is really worse: being bad forever or losing a Grand Final. All I can say is I still suspect it's the first one.
I like football because it's so divorced from reality, it doesn't matter what else is going on in your life, everyone's on common ground. It doesn't matter who you are. You can connect to people and everything about the two of you is irrelevant except what you think of the teams, or how badly the AFL are managing the rules. It strips us all down to something simple and clean. That's a great thing.
May your off-season be brief, your trades fruitful, and your spuds delisted.
Much love,
Max.
I definitely think things are changing, and you'd be a fool to think otherwise. Last year I said to anyone that'd listen and many who didn't that Clinton was a certainty as she had Hispanics, blacks, young people and women on her side. But various factors (let's not do another edition of Why Hillary Lost) meant she didn't. The paradigm of demographics being certainties wasn't true. It was true mostly from 1992-2012, but not in 2016.
AFL is changing and the need for sides to be quick, agile, have endurance and be able to pressure is more than ever before. Height matters less than ever before, look at how much ruckmen matter these days, and KPFs don't have the currency they used to in the 90s. In the 90s, forwars like Carey, Lockett, Dunstall, Ablett (not a key forward but often played like one) and Richardson dominated and determined football games. Now the shift towards midfielders is happening and height isn't crucial. The amount of tackling, contested football and pressure in finals football is unhearalded. 10 years ago, teams would rack up 60-70 tackles between them in the game, now it's double that. The pressure is way different, Richmond pressure in a way that many 90s sides didn't.
I think what happened to Adelaide is they had a few guys who were able to beat up on weak defences, and used height well. But in finals, where the emphasis on athleticism, especially endurance means you have no space, teams are able to pressure backlines and create mismatches against immobile tall forwards. For me, the finals are more and more becoming a game of pressure, running, tackling and two-way running, which key forwards aren't really good at. I think you can unlock a defence in the home and away season with a tall but that's because they have the space and there's not the number mismatches. but the pressure of a grand final is a massive leveler in terms of forwardline quality, and teams are becoming increasingly adept at negating tall forwards. In fact every team has gone to school on how to negate the tall forward for 20 years now as that was the way to blow a team out of the water. Now we have defenses very skilled at making key forwards look irrelevant.
Now why does KPF play seem to matter less in a grand final than in a home and away season? Again because defensive tactics of pressure and numbers, which increase in grand finals help negate forwards, especially tall forwards in a way that's more difficult to do, or wasn't done in the grand final. It's interesting that we haven't really seen a dominant key forward display in a grand final for some time now. I'm not sure if Adelaide were to go for a smaller forwardline, they'd score more during a grand final and less during the season, but I definitely think you can't expect a tall forwardline to function as well in a grand final than a normal season game. And it may be possible that what works during the season doesn't during finals.
I suspect key forwards like games where there's space to lead and where they can isolate forwards one-on-one which doesn't happen that much in finals and isn't that important for small forwards who create space through agility and speed. So where space and one-on-ones are present, tall forwards may be better weapons than smaller forwards. And teams generally score well when they keep forwards in the forwardline, but that strategy may not work in finals as the pressure and need to keep running players near the ball seems so important these days with massive packs surrounding football, where contested possession and tackle rates keep increasing. And when the pressure and congestion increases, maybe the agility and speed of smaller forwards comes into play. So maybe being able to score heavily in free-flowing and uncontested matches doesn't really mean anything, and the type of forward and the type of forward setup needs to change. It feels like maybe Adelaide's forwardline is not just be somewhat unhelpful, it may also be a hindrance in finals. It's noticeable that that players like Dangerfield have become key forwards, who are agile and quick. Even Franklin, a key forward plays like a midfielder and pressures like one too.
This makes me question whether the scoring rates of teams in home and away seasons are relevant to finals football, which is the exact premise of the squiggle. It's a theory, and it may be wrong, but it's possible.
In essence, maybe normal season and finals footy are different beasts. like 20/20 and test cricket, their skills are different. Test cricket often requires an ability to bowl tight lines and be able to be patient and perfect basic classic shots like cover drives and pulls. But bowling consistently doesn't work in 20/20 cricket as teams just attack you, and you need to be able to attack and play a variety of strokes in order to attack in 20/20 cricket. In other words, the skills don't translate. Patience is just not something that's useful in 20/20 cricket, and trying to attack every delivery isn't helpful in test cricket.
If you look at Golden State, they ignored tall guys and mainly focused on length, speed and outside shooting. Dinosaurs like Charles Barkeley said they could never win a title with outside shooting, yet they did. Now, Richmond don't score like the warriors do, but they're both small ball teams who focus on agility, speed and endurance. It's noticeable how the warriors defend using pressure and lots of switches, keeping teams running. And they score by being quick and agile, not through height.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the last two sides to win grand finals won won it through pressure, speed and endurance. It wouldn't surprise me if AFL teams become shorter as they realise they need to increase the speed on and off the ball. I noticed that whenever a team was criticised for not being able to play a ground, it was because the ground was bigger, like how the MCG is bigger than Kardinia. That's because on narrower grounds, where you have to kick up the line, height can help. But in the open spaces of the MCG, where players can find space, agility, speed and spread helps. These traits are generally not found in players 190cm or taller. Sure, it allows space for forwards to lead, but that's generally swamped by defensive pressure, and what isn't swamped is fast constantly running midfielders.
This leads me to believe that the decline in the key forward is due to the changing nature of the game. It's not as if modern key forwards suck, it's that the game relies less on them.
It also has to be said that in recent years, no great non-Victorian side has won a flag, let alone great attacking side. The last non-Victorian side to beat a Victorian side in a grand final was Sydney in 2012, playing a negative style, and before that it's Brisbane in 2003. I suspect, again, the negative style may help playing in grand finals where you can combat the spread. Further, maybe scoring heavily interstate needs to be discounted given grand finals aren't played anywhere besides the MCG. I just suspect that Adelaide's scoring at Adelaide Oval means less than Hawthorn's scoring at the MCG. I don't know how many attacking interstate sides have either failed to win a final or grand final at the MCG in recent times, and have underperformed, but it does seem like a few. It's an awkward admission because I'm basically admitting that the MCG helps Victorian sides like Richmond win grand finals. But I think it's undeniably true that it does. The one exception to this is Brisbane in 2002-2003, but I suspect that side would crush most recent fellow non-Victorian challengers let alone Victorian ones. But it does feel like non-Victorian sides who play attacking football are perhaps playing fool's game.
AFL is changing and the need for sides to be quick, agile, have endurance and be able to pressure is more than ever before. Height matters less than ever before, look at how much ruckmen matter these days, and KPFs don't have the currency they used to in the 90s. In the 90s, forwars like Carey, Lockett, Dunstall, Ablett (not a key forward but often played like one) and Richardson dominated and determined football games. Now the shift towards midfielders is happening and height isn't crucial. The amount of tackling, contested football and pressure in finals football is unhearalded. 10 years ago, teams would rack up 60-70 tackles between them in the game, now it's double that. The pressure is way different, Richmond pressure in a way that many 90s sides didn't.
I think what happened to Adelaide is they had a few guys who were able to beat up on weak defences, and used height well. But in finals, where the emphasis on athleticism, especially endurance means you have no space, teams are able to pressure backlines and create mismatches against immobile tall forwards. For me, the finals are more and more becoming a game of pressure, running, tackling and two-way running, which key forwards aren't really good at. I think you can unlock a defence in the home and away season with a tall but that's because they have the space and there's not the number mismatches. but the pressure of a grand final is a massive leveler in terms of forwardline quality, and teams are becoming increasingly adept at negating tall forwards. In fact every team has gone to school on how to negate the tall forward for 20 years now as that was the way to blow a team out of the water. Now we have defenses very skilled at making key forwards look irrelevant.
Now why does KPF play seem to matter less in a grand final than in a home and away season? Again because defensive tactics of pressure and numbers, which increase in grand finals help negate forwards, especially tall forwards in a way that's more difficult to do, or wasn't done in the grand final. It's interesting that we haven't really seen a dominant key forward display in a grand final for some time now. I'm not sure if Adelaide were to go for a smaller forwardline, they'd score more during a grand final and less during the season, but I definitely think you can't expect a tall forwardline to function as well in a grand final than a normal season game. And it may be possible that what works during the season doesn't during finals.
I suspect key forwards like games where there's space to lead and where they can isolate forwards one-on-one which doesn't happen that much in finals and isn't that important for small forwards who create space through agility and speed. So where space and one-on-ones are present, tall forwards may be better weapons than smaller forwards. And teams generally score well when they keep forwards in the forwardline, but that strategy may not work in finals as the pressure and need to keep running players near the ball seems so important these days with massive packs surrounding football, where contested possession and tackle rates keep increasing. And when the pressure and congestion increases, maybe the agility and speed of smaller forwards comes into play. So maybe being able to score heavily in free-flowing and uncontested matches doesn't really mean anything, and the type of forward and the type of forward setup needs to change. It feels like maybe Adelaide's forwardline is not just be somewhat unhelpful, it may also be a hindrance in finals. It's noticeable that that players like Dangerfield have become key forwards, who are agile and quick. Even Franklin, a key forward plays like a midfielder and pressures like one too.
This makes me question whether the scoring rates of teams in home and away seasons are relevant to finals football, which is the exact premise of the squiggle. It's a theory, and it may be wrong, but it's possible.
In essence, maybe normal season and finals footy are different beasts. like 20/20 and test cricket, their skills are different. Test cricket often requires an ability to bowl tight lines and be able to be patient and perfect basic classic shots like cover drives and pulls. But bowling consistently doesn't work in 20/20 cricket as teams just attack you, and you need to be able to attack and play a variety of strokes in order to attack in 20/20 cricket. In other words, the skills don't translate. Patience is just not something that's useful in 20/20 cricket, and trying to attack every delivery isn't helpful in test cricket.
If you look at Golden State, they ignored tall guys and mainly focused on length, speed and outside shooting. Dinosaurs like Charles Barkeley said they could never win a title with outside shooting, yet they did. Now, Richmond don't score like the warriors do, but they're both small ball teams who focus on agility, speed and endurance. It's noticeable how the warriors defend using pressure and lots of switches, keeping teams running. And they score by being quick and agile, not through height.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the last two sides to win grand finals won won it through pressure, speed and endurance. It wouldn't surprise me if AFL teams become shorter as they realise they need to increase the speed on and off the ball. I noticed that whenever a team was criticised for not being able to play a ground, it was because the ground was bigger, like how the MCG is bigger than Kardinia. That's because on narrower grounds, where you have to kick up the line, height can help. But in the open spaces of the MCG, where players can find space, agility, speed and spread helps. These traits are generally not found in players 190cm or taller. Sure, it allows space for forwards to lead, but that's generally swamped by defensive pressure, and what isn't swamped is fast constantly running midfielders.
This leads me to believe that the decline in the key forward is due to the changing nature of the game. It's not as if modern key forwards suck, it's that the game relies less on them.
It also has to be said that in recent years, no great non-Victorian side has won a flag, let alone great attacking side. The last non-Victorian side to beat a Victorian side in a grand final was Sydney in 2012, playing a negative style, and before that it's Brisbane in 2003. I suspect, again, the negative style may help playing in grand finals where you can combat the spread. Further, maybe scoring heavily interstate needs to be discounted given grand finals aren't played anywhere besides the MCG. I just suspect that Adelaide's scoring at Adelaide Oval means less than Hawthorn's scoring at the MCG. I don't know how many attacking interstate sides have either failed to win a final or grand final at the MCG in recent times, and have underperformed, but it does seem like a few. It's an awkward admission because I'm basically admitting that the MCG helps Victorian sides like Richmond win grand finals. But I think it's undeniably true that it does. The one exception to this is Brisbane in 2002-2003, but I suspect that side would crush most recent fellow non-Victorian challengers let alone Victorian ones. But it does feel like non-Victorian sides who play attacking football are perhaps playing fool's game.
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Monopoly_Man
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Thank you so much for these threads Max, they have easily been my favourite on this site. I have spread the gospel of squiggle far and wide, will be sad not to have them next year, but what a way to finish!Richmond Tigers
Premiers 2017
Well holy ******* s**t. I am dead set serious about retiring. This is the final Squiggle thread.
In animated form:
In Flagpole form:
Obviously I'm posting the above just for the enjoyment of Richmond fans, not because it offers any kind of analytical insight. That much is clear, because if there's one thing Squiggle has been consistent on this year, it's that THE TIGERS WILL NOT WIN THE PREMIERSHIP. It didn't rate them as a team until late, and even then was confident that somewhere, sometime, the defensive gameplan would unravel as a more balanced side got hold of them and shook until all their mediocre players fell out.
Instead, for reasons that leave me equal parts baffled and tumescent, Adelaide turned up on Grand Final Day and played listless football. At no point did it look like an Adelaide game; instead, it always resembled a Richmond game: close and scrappy, with Tigers outworking and outrunning their opponents, taking risks, swarming, and halving and winning contests one by one until the weight of numbers was too great to resist.
In this way, it was the same story as the two previous Richmond finals - moreso, if anything, than the preliminary final, where GWS at least occasionally managed to look like a team not playing Richmond. Where Squiggle expected the Tigers inevitably to break down, they barely showed a crack.
Why this happened requires a closer look at game style than I can provide. But we can examine how unusual it is, and how it fits (or doesn't) with other modern premierships.
Richmond's triumph replaces the 20-year-old 1997 Adelaide premiership on the chart, leaving something of a two-island effect, with four defence-oriented flag teams set a short distance away from 16 balanced or attacking ones. On its face, that still looks like evidence that low-scoring teams do worse, especially if you consider the number of wrecks of premiership campaigns located here, most of which belong to Sydney, Fremantle and St. Kilda. But it's very noticeable that it now hosts the two most recent flags. In fact, by the time next season rolls around, you will have to go back seven years to find a premier that wasn't either defensively-oriented or Hawthorn.
So is it still better to be attacking? Plenty of evidence remains for the benefits of attacking football, but it stops rather abruptly at the end of 2015. In 2016, the four most defensive teams made prelims, while Adelaide, a high-rated attacking team, fell out unexpectedly in the semi-finals. 2017 has been more ambiguous, with another finals failures from defensive specialists Sydney (and, to a lesser extent, Port Adelaide), but a dominant finals campaign from the Tigers. Whether this means the game has evolved, it's a temporary aberration, or squiggle has no freaking idea what it's talking about, I leave to you.
In terms of raw dominance, the 2017 Tigers are rated tenth of those 20 flags, so pretty much bang in the middle, but 2nd for defence and 18th for attack.
The Tigers didn't come from as far back ahead of finals as the Bulldogs did last year - no-one has - but they did move a long way by thrashing all three opponents. They also moved a long way over the course of the season, after a lacklustre 2016 that ended with an 88-point loss to the Giants and a 113-point belting at the hands of the Swans. Some travelled further, but no modern premier has started the year as far back as Richmond did in 2017.
On balance, the Bulldogs 2016 premiership remains the greater anomaly, given how poor they were leading into finals, the need to win 4 straight games, two of which were interstate, and the strength of their opposition, which was greater in 2016 than offered by the top four this year. But the Tigers are up there, particularly (from squiggle's point of view) since they found success with a low-scoring game style that has a terrible historical strike rate.
Richmond had a generous draw in 2017, with only one double against a top-8 opponent (GWS) and three doubles against the bottom 5 (Carlton, Brisbane, Fremantle). It was also a good year to be thereabouts, with a very even competition and no dominant team; probably the least competitive top end field since 2009. But they were also unlucky not to have another close game or two fall their way, deserved to finish top 4, and were emphatic in dismantling each opponent once they got there.
On a personal note, thank you for following Squiggle 2017, and the earlier ones, if you've been on board for that. It's been an amazing ride. But I think this is a good place to leave it, with the team I love obliterating my algorithm and demonstrating how much greater the game is than all the bullshit I do here. So I will stick around BigFooty but not start a squiggle thread next year. In the words of a great man, I am going to spend some time on my novel.
And again, holy ******* s**t. I remember complaining about how bad the Tigers were with a guy on my bus, and him saying don't worry, we'd come good in a couple years. That was around 1986. We were on our way to school. I've followed this team through the 29-year period where we missed the finals 27 times. People don't appreciate that; the numbers are too big to really comprehend what it's like to be bad year after year and have that go on almost without break for three decades. Until this year, I'd never seen Richmond win a final in person - I have seen us get smashed from the opening bounce twice - and was too young to remember the last time we made a Grand Final. But now. Holy ******* s**t.
I was expecting to be able to report here my experience on which is really worse: being bad forever or losing a Grand Final. All I can say is I still suspect it's the first one.
I like football because it's so divorced from reality, it doesn't matter what else is going on in your life, everyone's on common ground. It doesn't matter who you are. You can connect to people and everything about the two of you is irrelevant except what you think of the teams, or how badly the AFL are managing the rules. It strips us all down to something simple and clean. That's a great thing.
May your off-season be brief, your trades fruitful, and your spuds delisted.
Much love,
Max.
Just out of interest, will you still be displaying the data on your website? Or is this completely goodbye for all things squiggle?
On SM-G900I using BigFooty.com mobile app
Last year the Bulldogs bruised the squiggle, this year the Tigers kicked it to the curb and stomped the life out of it.
- Moderator
- #1,841
Thanks Final Siren.
- Oct 9, 2013
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Considering the Tigers essentially carbon copied the Bulldogs game plan from last year (and arguably took it even further), you'd have to say there's something in it.
Here's the thing, neither had good forwardlines, and decided to flood numbers in the midfield around the ball carrier instead. Does having a dominant forwardline encourage teams to drag players away from the midfield and keep them there, especially as guys like Lynch, Walker and Jenkins don't really roll through the midfield as midfielders?
One may be a fluke, two may be just a coincidence, but if a low scoring team manages to pull it off next year, maybe the squiggle is cooked? Either way, it'll be interesting if the new pressure with short forwardlines keeps going on.
Crankyhawk
Brownlow Medallist
Thanks max. Hope you continue with the squiggle site even without the awesome write ups.
And I will be looking for your novel.
And I will be looking for your novel.
- Banned
- #1,846
The game is just far too professional and structured these days.
It's not 2 teams just playing footy anymore.
Whenever there is an attacking team the counter will always be to play anti-football. Richmond play ugly and it gets them results.
Had they attempted to play positive footy they'd have been killed.
Sad in some ways that the game has changed this much but exciting for the future to see who can end this defensive, ugly style.
It's not 2 teams just playing footy anymore.
Whenever there is an attacking team the counter will always be to play anti-football. Richmond play ugly and it gets them results.
Had they attempted to play positive footy they'd have been killed.
Sad in some ways that the game has changed this much but exciting for the future to see who can end this defensive, ugly style.
- Jun 21, 2010
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All we did was run harder to contests and tackle/pressure more, that isn't ugly football, that's just football, in fact, it's the basics of our game, we just did it better then anyone else.
Squiggle and/or Final Siren, and plenty of pundits, incorrectly label Richmond as a defensive and low-scoring team. In the first half of the season, the low-scoring part was mostly true, only three scores over 100 in our first 15 games. But in our last 10 games, we averaged 101.2 points per game, cracking the ton five times, and scoring in the 90s three more times. In the same period, Adelaide averaged 98.4 points per game, also with five scores over 100, but also four under 85. (Bulldogs 2016 topped the ton once in their last 10 games, average 92.7. Geelong this year averaged 80.5ppg in their last 10 matches.)
As for defensive, that aspect of our game was largely in our pressure and harassment all over the ground. We did not flood the backline. We did not play for stoppages a la Sydney 2005, but moved the ball quickly. We averaged 55.4 inside 50s per game; Adelaide 57.5.
It took until the second half of the season for our new attack to properly gel, but when it did we scored quite freely, mostly in the second half of games - 10 second-half goals in every one of our finals.
As for defensive, that aspect of our game was largely in our pressure and harassment all over the ground. We did not flood the backline. We did not play for stoppages a la Sydney 2005, but moved the ball quickly. We averaged 55.4 inside 50s per game; Adelaide 57.5.
It took until the second half of the season for our new attack to properly gel, but when it did we scored quite freely, mostly in the second half of games - 10 second-half goals in every one of our finals.
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catstorm
Premium Platinum
- Dec 9, 2011
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Final Siren
I'm not sure how much effort goes into the squiggle on a weekly basis in terms of maintenance, you seem to have it set up to update almost automatically so i suppose my question is if it's to much and you have no desire to continue maybe you could pass the torch onto someone else. Obviously i have no idea what would be involved in that or if it's even possible, just seems a shame that something so many people enjoy that you have created has no future.
I'm not sure how much effort goes into the squiggle on a weekly basis in terms of maintenance, you seem to have it set up to update almost automatically so i suppose my question is if it's to much and you have no desire to continue maybe you could pass the torch onto someone else. Obviously i have no idea what would be involved in that or if it's even possible, just seems a shame that something so many people enjoy that you have created has no future.
- Oct 9, 2013
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- Western Bulldogs
Only one team played ugly and it wasn't Richmond.
