Elton Johns Wig
Premiership Ruckman
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Would never suggest that, never have. And in a shootout v Adelaide, they lose, no question.
Certified Legendary Thread Squiggle 2017
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is that you mr demetriou? dont try and say it isnt a dig. it is.
as a tiges fan watching us go coast to coast, in numbers, running in waves as the crowd erupts is beautiful, so beautiful
Ned_Flanders
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A job for roby?
So you don’t have a problem with these ugly games?
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Well if you asked me whether I'd prefer two teams coming out to just play footy I'd say that.
Admittedly that kinda game can be the most ugly.
I believe the game is way too technical and professional these days. It hurts the spectical tbh BUT no I don't have a problem with 'ugly' styles.
No point trying to be attractive if it doesn't suit your squad and you are up against a team that does it better.
It's the right thing to do in pursuit of success.
Admittedly that kinda game can be the most ugly.
I believe the game is way too technical and professional these days. It hurts the spectical tbh BUT no I don't have a problem with 'ugly' styles.
No point trying to be attractive if it doesn't suit your squad and you are up against a team that does it better.
It's the right thing to do in pursuit of success.
Many many thanks Max the squiggl is literally the best thing
Incidentally I looked at the 2017 and Richmond falling on the defensive island made me look at past squiggles and very few teams let alone premiers fell in the 'moat' between the defensive island and the rest.
I could be wrong but only Hawthorn 1961 don't know what it means. Is the moat statistically significant
There's plenty in the defensive island and almost exclusively there in the fifties. Go back to the thirties and the premiers don't even get in the zone at all
Incidentally I looked at the 2017 and Richmond falling on the defensive island made me look at past squiggles and very few teams let alone premiers fell in the 'moat' between the defensive island and the rest.
I could be wrong but only Hawthorn 1961 don't know what it means. Is the moat statistically significant
There's plenty in the defensive island and almost exclusively there in the fifties. Go back to the thirties and the premiers don't even get in the zone at all
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.
I've followed the Squig for years now. It has been bloody marvelous.
Thanks Final Siren
User name to Richmond V Squiggle correlation checks out. Cheers
Pathetic.
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I dont think everyone agrees. I saw us play you guys twice last year and your ball movement is beautiful to watch, and your team defence impressive.
I also saw all three games against the Tigers and theirs is very impressive as well, and their defensive pressure all over the ground superb. They lifted in September, I didn't predict it, but I did see it happen.
Defence always has been and always will be an essential part of any successful team.
LeverPuller
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Final Siren
You legend. Hope you are enjoying the glory. Thanks for the Squiggle and all the work you have sunk into this modelling.
You legend. Hope you are enjoying the glory. Thanks for the Squiggle and all the work you have sunk into this modelling.
No, that is not correct. Watch the game again and watch what happens when you get a mark in the backline. More often than not, you would hold onto the ball for the longest allowable time. A big pack would form near the boundary line. You would kick there and "The Back stabbing Money Hungry Snake" would punch the ball out of bounds. The throw in would result in Jacobs tapping to one of our players who who would get tackled and lose the ball - your guys would then look to move the ball forward.
This is a team game. The best team won. No arguments.
- Aug 18, 2009
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Further to this, there's an interesting tidbit in this awesome extract from a book I am totally going to buy the instant it's released:
http://www.richmondfc.com.au/news/2017-10-05/excerpt-from-yellow-blacka-season-with-richmond
It shows Hardwick very explicitly preaching a defensive mantra to the playing group this year:
---
The players file into the briefing room, and Hardwick asks Dan Butler to unveil the photo of the week. And there it is—a picture of Connect Four in its box. “This is the greatest game on the face of the earth,” says Hardwick, smiling. “Unfortunately, I can’t beat my 17-year-old daughter. It drives me insane. But there’s a reason why. What’s the object of the game, David? It gives you fair hint on the box.”
“To Connect Four?” says Astbury.
“You’ve got to Connect Four, David. So, what do you think I’m trying to do? What am I playing?” he asks. “I’m playing too quick. I’m playing all offence. And what do you think my daughter’s playing?”
“Defence,” answers the room.
“Deny, deny, deny. That’s all she does! So, Dad gets frustrated. Dad makes a s**t move. Dad loses. She goes in with a defensive mindset and she either wins—or has a draw. With my offensive mind set I either win—or lose.”
Hardwick begins getting to his point.
“It takes great discipline to play defence, but that’s what we’re doing. We’re looking for that ability to deny. If you take away their strengths, what are they going to do? They’re gonna try to go for it, and eventually, they’re going to lose. So, we’re going to deny, deny, deny.”
He points out that they’ve trained this system all summer long, and put it in practice in every game. The Tigers are—statistically speaking, after four rounds—the best defensive side in the AFL. “Understand today is all about defensive effort. We win. We don’t lose. Connect Four boys.”
Love this stuff. You know until it's pointed out I didn't 'see' the tigers as defensive
Crankyhawk
Brownlow Medallist
NOOOO!
As a Richmond Supporters, I didn't either - well not to that extent anyway. I saw that we adopted a game plan based on far more tackling and defensive forward pressure but I also saw a stronger attacking game too. Now I know that the basic mantra was defend first (even in the forward line which threw many clubs) and then attack on the turn over. I'm sure there was much more to it that that, but it was the freedom the players were given to score that made us so hard to play against.
It's funny that when you find a simple game plan, one that gives players license to play on instinct with ball in hand, it just works. We tried to use the Hawks Game plan in the past but our players were not skillful enough and was hurt on the turnovers. This game plan gives players license to take risks knowing that they can win back the ball and turn it over again quickly if that happens.
The Doggies used a similar gameplan but with a more traditional set up ie tap ruckman and more tall forwards. Other teams obviously looked at this and adapted their own game based on that. I wonder how many other teams will now play copy-cat given the success of not one but two teams using this sort of defense first game style?
King Brown
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Did Dogs have a tap ruck? From my POV they were the ones that sacrificed the ruck battle, basically having Bont go third man up, and their ruck act as a shepherd in the ruck contest, nullifying the opposition ruckman
The AFL introduced #ruknominate to give traditional ruckmen a fighting chance, so teams this year took it further and didn’t bother to use rucks at all on a number of occasions.
I could be wrong, but Richmond resembled a more traditional set up than the Dogs. Riewoldt and Rance are far more accomplished KPPs than Boyd and Wood.
The AFL introduced #ruknominate to give traditional ruckmen a fighting chance, so teams this year took it further and didn’t bother to use rucks at all on a number of occasions.
I could be wrong, but Richmond resembled a more traditional set up than the Dogs. Riewoldt and Rance are far more accomplished KPPs than Boyd and Wood.
I think what Hardwick is talking about is a defensive mindset without the ball as opposed to on the ball. Off the ball defensiveness is all about player positioning, tackling, and sometimes flooding. There's different ways to have a defensive mindset, either by flooding the backline or pressing up, but they're all defensive mindsets.
Having a defensive mindset with the ball? To me that's about playing a gameplan based around denying the opposition the ball rather than scoring. After all, risk averse sides generally don't get scored on much because, while they play an indirect style of play, they don't cough up the ball a lot by putting it in risky attacking positions. I don't think Richmond ever did that; they played a fairly direct and attacking style. I get why people hear that story and think that Richmond had to be a defensive team, but I think what Hardwick is saying is that Richmond will defend without the ball as much as possible by remaining organised and maintain a high press.
This is why, in part, the idea of sides being purely defensive or offensive is in part misleading. Many high scoring teams around the world operate some defensive technique to prize the ball away from their opposition and score. In fact, arguably, it's better to defend that way because it means you're not trying to defend when you already have the ball, you do that when you don't. Secondly, teams don't just defend when they don't have the ball. The thing that separates Fremantle from more attacking sides is, sure, they had defensive setups and tackling, but they would also defend with the ball by pulling players back and when they had the ball, played a keepings off style of play which made for fairly low scoring high possession games. In 2013 Fremantle were 1st for marks, 2nd for kicks, 4th for disposals and 9th for inside 50s.
No doubt the Richmond team is built on the defence, i.e. the backline. It is the best backline in the league, after all; posterity will judge it extremely favourably. The offence was the concern in that we struggled to kick goals despite a high number of inside-50s and plenty of attacking players in our line-up. Once we sorted out how to score, we became a premiership team.
- Aug 18, 2009
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Yes, very good points, and I agree that Richmond moved the ball very directly into attack this year once they got their hands on it, as exhibited by their numbers of disposals compared to Inside 50s. Their low Disposal Efficiency is also probably due to that kind of risk-taking mindset in attack - which is the polar opposite of how Richmond used to play, when they would chip the ball around in the backline, racking up uncontested possessions while losing the match.
So they're certainly not a repeat of Fremantle 2013. But I do think it makes reasonable sense to consider teams as being points on an attack-to-defend spectrum, rather than belonging to completely different categories. Naturally there are different reasons why a team might focus more on attack or defence, but in the broad sense it tells you something (not everything) significant about how they play.
Also teams can change from week to week! Fremantle 2013 were more cautious in attack than Richmond 2017, for sure, but even they could still score quickly and directly when they'd broken down their opposition, e.g. this game when they beat Port 134 to 60 despite having roughly the same numbers of disposals. And this year when Richmond smashed Fremantle by 104 points, they did so off the back of only 9 more Inside 50s, so it wasn't like they were constantly surging forward with low-value entries - every second I50 was a goal!
Certainly agree with your argument, though, and no team is ever "purely" attacking or defensive... it's only about degrees.
Dr Tigris
Brownlow Medallist
Welcome back to your home Max. You can't stay away
To the whole attack defense thing. It seemed like late in the H&A season the Tigers worked out how to score from their forward entries. From then we scored heavily and nullified teams. This is a problem with the squiggle. When a team 'suddenly' changes it's style (i.e. kicking goals instead of points) part way through a season the squiggle won't fully compensate. Because it is an algorithm over a time period of season. What makes the sqiggle so good is an issue if the Tigers really did change. And they seemed to change quite suddenly from not being able to complete their forward entries to being able to score heavily. No real problem with the Squiggle. It is what it is and does that really well.
If next year the Tigers continue to play much the same as they did the last 1/4 to 1/3 of the 2017 season we should see a far more 'normal' position for the tigers on the Squiggle chart - high scoring and good defense.
I don't think that is entirely correct. I think that is correct when they get forward of centre - they bomb the ball long into the forward 50 as quickly as they can. But I do thin that in the defensive 50 the Tigers are VERY defensive.
The Crows are the best in the league at scoring from turn-overs. Against the Cats and GWS they got over 70 points from turn-overs. They have been the best at forward defensive pressure - both from our forwards and our defenders sitting up high rebounding and marking the ball that comes out quick from our 50. This sets up multiple entries into our 50 and it is easy to pick out one of our forwards.
So what Hardwick (I think it probably came from Clarkson) did was to stop that ball coming back into the Adelaide f50 quickly. He denied the Crows the ability to rebound attack. If you watch the game again you will see that when Richmond got a mark inside the Crows 50 they held onto the ball and waited. They did not look for the quick exit. They held onto the ball for the maximum allowable time. They waited for a pack to form on the wing and kicked high and long to the wing where a big pack would punch the ball out of bounds. Richmond were not looking to score, they were looking to stop the quick rebound entry that the Crows require to score heavily. This makes perfect sense now reading the Connect 4 - try not to lose tactics!
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Dr Tigris
Brownlow Medallist
I think the tigers did try and release from the back half sometimes. But there was a lot of controlled movement from the back. I'm not sure how much of this was due to Adelaide setting up well to stop the rebound and how much was a plan to deny the opportunity for fast ball movement on a turnover to the Crows. I suspect part of the plan was to get eh ball into the middle of the park and then allow the fast endurance tiger forwards to create miss matches and to make the Crows defenders run and run. If it was then Brilliant!! It was a plan with two benefits. One, stopped Crows playing their fast ball game, and two, forced the crows defenders to run themselves into the ground. So that over time the Crows lost the zing over the ground and our faster forwards could create more and more outnumbering situations, and so gain control of the ball, and then force the crows defense to lose their structure as they chased tail against guys that ran faster for longer.
Not at all the Hawks gameplan. But a similar underlying logic
I sent a connect 4 game to the suns football department today.
- Aug 18, 2009
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I'm not leaving BF, I'm just not starting another Squiggle thread!Welcome back to your home Max. You can't stay away
To the whole attack defense thing. It seemed like late in the H&A season the Tigers worked out how to score from their forward entries. From then we scored heavily and nullified teams. This is a problem with the squiggle. When a team 'suddenly' changes it's style (i.e. kicking goals instead of points) part way through a season the squiggle won't fully compensate. Because it is an algorithm over a time period of season. What makes the sqiggle so good is an issue if the Tigers really did change. And they seemed to change quite suddenly from not being able to complete their forward entries to being able to score heavily. No real problem with the Squiggle. It is what it is and does that really well.
If next year the Tigers continue to play much the same as they did the last 1/4 to 1/3 of the 2017 season we should see a far more 'normal' position for the tigers on the Squiggle chart - high scoring and good defense.
If the Tigers carry their September 2017 form into next year, they won't look like a "normal" team, because they kept three of the league's highest-scoring teams to 40, 67, and 60 points! Those are crazy-low scores, and put Richmond out to the right regardless of whether they're kicking big scores themselves.
They may resemble Sydney of recent years, who have been a team that can score but is most notable for restricting their opposition.
Dr Tigris
Brownlow Medallist
1) I meant the Squiggle thread.
2) That makes sense. But wouldn't they inhabit the empty zone above Sydney 2012? A defensive team that also scores fairly well. Interesting that there is no premier team in that zone.
