Review Dogs def Freo 93-65 - Rd 13, 2021

[Mutt]

But those sports largely depend on one repetitive skill.

In the NBA, the difference between being a 37% and 33% 3 point shooter is literally worth tens of millions of dollars and the margins are so thin that one player jumping his accuracy up that much can add multiple wins a season to his team.

But goal kicking - where it isn't explained by randomness - simply doesn't have that big of an impact at AFL level.

Take Naughton. Whilst his bad goalkicking this year may have cost us about 3-4 points a game compared to a league average player, it'll regress to the mean. For example over two seasons 2019-20, his bad goalkicking "only" cost us about 15 total points - ie less than half a point a game.

View attachment 1149448

AFL Goal Kickers | Player Stats | Shot Charts | Heat Maps - Stats Insider

Dig deeper into the best and worst kicks for goal at each AFL club. Investigate every goal kicked since the start of the 2018 season.

www.statsinsider.com.au

On the other hand, who knows all the other strength and conditioning work that we've done instead of making him kick the ball 100 times more has made him a much better player.

For example - the simple act of taking 1 more mark inside 50 per game (worth 3 points a shot) is three times more valuable than "fixing" his goalkicking which might cost us one point a game vs the league average as it regresses to the mean over the course of his career. (4 points a game this year, but 0.5 points in 30+ games last year).

And that's, of course, assuming that doing the goalkicking work even makes a difference (I'm not sure it does).

And the other thing is - Even all of his bad goalkicking cost us only about 24 points today?

Do you know what else will cost us 24 points? Missing 3 games. If he had a standard injury that made him miss 3 games out of the 22 this year, he is such a valuable player (8 points over replacement), that outweighs even one solitary game of bad goalkicking.

If doing extra goalkicking work made him kick one more goal than he didn't yesterday (1 point), that's still not as harmful as the fitness impact of him missing a game (worth more than 5 points) - and that effect is multiplied if he gets an injury that makes him miss multiple games.

Kobe Bryant relied on one repetitive skill? Really? He was largely a three-point shooter? Really?

 

[WallyStringhaus]

But those sports largely depend on one repetitive skill.

In the NBA, the difference between being a 37% and 33% 3 point shooter is literally worth tens of millions of dollars and the margins are so thin that one player jumping his accuracy up that much can add multiple wins a season to his team.

But goal kicking - where it isn't explained by randomness - simply doesn't have that big of an impact at AFL level.

Take Naughton. Whilst his bad goalkicking this year may have cost us about 3-4 points a game compared to a league average player, it'll regress to the mean. For example over two seasons 2019-20, his bad goalkicking "only" cost us about 15 total points - ie less than half a point a game.

View attachment 1149448

AFL Goal Kickers | Player Stats | Shot Charts | Heat Maps - Stats Insider

Dig deeper into the best and worst kicks for goal at each AFL club. Investigate every goal kicked since the start of the 2018 season.

www.statsinsider.com.au

On the other hand, who knows all the other strength and conditioning work that we've done instead of making him kick the ball 100 times more has made him a much better player.

For example - the simple act of taking 1 more mark inside 50 per game (worth 3 points a shot) is three times more valuable than "fixing" his goalkicking which might cost us one point a game vs the league average as it regresses to the mean over the course of his career. (4 points a game this year, but 0.5 points in 30+ games last year).

And that's, of course, assuming that doing the goalkicking work even makes a difference (I'm not sure it does).

And the other thing is - Even all of his bad goalkicking cost us only about 24 points today?

Do you know what else will cost us 24 points? Missing 3 games. If he had a standard injury that made him miss 3 games out of the 22 this year, he is such a valuable player (8 points over replacement), that outweighs even one solitary game of bad goalkicking.

If doing extra goalkicking work made him kick one more goal than he didn't yesterday (1 point), that's still not as harmful as the fitness impact of him missing a game (worth more than 5 points) - and that effect is multiplied if he gets an injury that makes him miss multiple games.

These expected scores are great and a step forward in data analysis but it only paints a part of the picture. What happens after a miss? How many times have we all bemoaned the dreaded "12 point turnaround" where a player misses a gimme at one end and the opposition are able to score from the resultant kick in.

They can also kill momentum. We are an extraordinary contested and clearance team due in large part to the brilliance of Dunks, Bont, Lib and Macrae. Players missing easy goals (it's not always just Naughton) robs these guys of extra chances to do what they do best and pile even more pressure on the opposition.

It creates pressure for other players. We've all seen how bad kicking at goal can infect the whole team. You don't want players running into goal thinking "s**t we've missed 4 in a row, i have to kick this".

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Kobe Bryant relied on one repetitive skill? Really? He was largely a three-point shooter? Really?

In the sense that your shooting percentage, which varies a lot between good and bad players in the NBA, is the reason that you're a good or bad player, yes.

But AFL players' accuracy in variation hardly makes a difference. Answer this simple question: Would you rather Darcy Fogarty or Aaron Naughton as your key player heading forward?

You wipe 5% off Kobe's shooting percentages and he's gone from being a Hall of Famer to being a minimum contract player.

We can prove this with basis statistics - he's about a 5 points per game player value above replacement per advanced +/- statistics, shooting a certain amount of possessions (every third possession), you take about 3.5 points off for the shooting percentage difference and then you take more value off for the marginal effect of bad shooters shoot less volume. That diminishes him to barely above replacement/minimum contract.

So of course Kobe's gonna put up a million shots because that slight variation is everything to an NBA player.

However, Naughton - who is only a point a game worse than the league average despite being a "bad" goalkicker - fighting tooth and nail to get that up to league average is worth only one point a game, whereas many other things he does (like simple percentage of marks he takes when he's targeted) makes him clearly worth more than a point a game, so, in my eyes, he should do an extra hour of marking practice after training because if he managed one mark inside 50 more every third game, that's still worth the same.

 

[Dogs_R_Us]

Not sure if anyone cares but...

Someone who works at the club told me that when Bruce came off in the first or second quarter it was because he needed to poop.

TMI

 

[Zgope1]

Fair that Caleb didn’t have his best disposal game. Still set us off plenty of times with his amazing touch.

At one point he muffed a kick and Jordan Lewis was like “you can’t run one way and kick the other way it’s just not how to do it right””

I thought to myself, “Jordan, I don’t mind you as a commentator but on ball use, Caleb is the Beatles and you are Grinspoon. Best you shoosh on the topic because you’re discussing one of the biggest disposal geniuses the AFL has and will see”

 

[threenewpadlocks]

These expected scores are great and a step forward in data analysis but it only paints a part of the picture. What happens after a miss? How many times have we all bemoaned the dreaded "12 point turnaround" where a player misses a gimme at one end and the opposition are able to score from the resultant kick in.

They can also kill momentum. We are an extraordinary contested and clearance team due in large part to the brilliance of Dunks, Bont, Lib and Macrae. Players missing easy goals (it's not always just Naughton) robs these guys of extra chances to do what they do best and pile even more pressure on the opposition.

It creates pressure for other players. We've all seen how bad kicking at goal can infect the whole team. You don't want players running into goal thinking "sh*t we've missed 4 in a row, i have to kick this".

That has no statistical basis. Can you "prove" "killing momentum".

What we actually do know about kicking AFL behinds is that they're worth slightly more than 1 point because the team that just kicked the behind is more likely to have the next goal than the team with the kick-in ie the territory is more important than the possession.

 

[Guido]

But those sports largely depend on one repetitive skill.

In the NBA, the difference between being a 37% and 33% 3 point shooter is literally worth tens of millions of dollars and the margins are so thin that one player jumping his accuracy up that much can add multiple wins a season to his team.

But goal kicking - where it isn't explained by randomness - simply doesn't have that big of an impact at AFL level.

Take Naughton. Whilst his bad goalkicking this year may have cost us about 3-4 points a game compared to a league average player, it'll regress to the mean. For example over two seasons 2019-20, his bad goalkicking "only" cost us about 15 total points - ie less than half a point a game.

View attachment 1149448

AFL Goal Kickers | Player Stats | Shot Charts | Heat Maps - Stats Insider

Dig deeper into the best and worst kicks for goal at each AFL club. Investigate every goal kicked since the start of the 2018 season.

www.statsinsider.com.au

On the other hand, who knows all the other strength and conditioning work that we've done instead of making him kick the ball 100 times more has made him a much better player.

For example - the simple act of taking 1 more mark inside 50 per game (worth 3 points a shot) is three times more valuable than "fixing" his goalkicking which might cost us one point a game vs the league average as it regresses to the mean over the course of his career. (4 points a game this year, but 0.5 points in 30+ games last year).

And that's, of course, assuming that doing the goalkicking work even makes a difference (I'm not sure it does).

And the other thing is - Even all of his bad goalkicking cost us only about 24 points today?

Do you know what else will cost us 24 points? Missing 3 games. If he had a standard injury that made him miss 3 games out of the 22 this year, he is such a valuable player (8 points over replacement), that outweighs even one solitary game of bad goalkicking.

If doing extra goalkicking work made him kick one more goal than he didn't yesterday (1 point), that's still not as harmful as the fitness impact of him missing a game (worth more than 5 points) - and that effect is multiplied if he gets an injury that makes him miss multiple games.

Matthew Lloyd had similar goal kicking issues to Naughton early in his career.

Matthew Lloyd's goalkicking advice to Max King (and how his iconic grass toss came about)

AFL great Matthew Lloyd has opened up about the goalkicking struggles he experienced early in his career, in which he explained how his iconic grass toss before kicking at goal came about. Lloyd, who finished his career a renowned dead-eye in front of goal, was asked how he’d improve Max King’s...

www.3aw.com.au

If he didn't fix it when he did - with thousands of repetitive shots - and ended up with, say, a 50% career goal kicking accuracy rather than closer to 70%, he likely would have kicked 200 less goals. In key forward terms, an extra goal a game across a career is what separates the good from the great, and the great from the superstars.

 

[Dogs_R_Us]

Tom Hawkins had his problems early on too, iirc

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Matthew Lloyd had similar goal kicking issues to Naughton early in his career.

Matthew Lloyd's goalkicking advice to Max King (and how his iconic grass toss came about)

AFL great Matthew Lloyd has opened up about the goalkicking struggles he experienced early in his career, in which he explained how his iconic grass toss before kicking at goal came about. Lloyd, who finished his career a renowned dead-eye in front of goal, was asked how he’d improve Max King’s...

www.3aw.com.au

If he didn't fix it when he did - with thousands of repetitive shots - and ended up with, say, a 50% career goal kicking accuracy rather than 70%, he likely would have kicked 200 less goals. That's almost a goal a game and what separates the good from the great, and the great from the superstars.

It's foolish to think that it's through that work that the difference in variation of 50% and 70% was just that. There's simply no evidence for it.

It's more likely that it added a couple of percent.

How do we know?

Because the literal difference between the best and worst current AFL players in the AFL don't vary anywhere near between 50% and 70%

Who are the Best (and Worst) Kicks in the Comp? – Figuring Footy

figuringfooty.com

According to this, at a point partway through the 2017 season, the best player in the competition was only kicking half a point per shot above the league average, and the worst was about a point per game, over the course of a season.

So Lloyd improving from 50% to 70% is suggesting that that's a rate of improvement that makes you literally the worst kick in the league to the best.

If merely doing a lot of goalkicking practice achieved that, no AFL player would do any sort of training other than goalkicking practice, and every shot in the league would go through at a rate of 70+%. You don't think AFL clubs have done this analysis and thought of this?

 

[Mattdougie]

To suggest practicing something over and over wont improve it is ridiculous. If this is true why even bother training skills continually?

As long as you are practising “correctly” and not reinforcing your previous errors there is absolutely no doubt you will improve

 

[ScragCity]

It's foolish to think that it's through that work that the difference in variation of 50% and 70% was just that. There's simply no evidence for it.

It's more likely that it added a couple of percent.

How do we know?

Because the literal difference between the best and worst current AFL players in the AFL don't vary anywhere near between 50% and 70%

Who are the Best (and Worst) Kicks in the Comp? – Figuring Footy

figuringfooty.com

According to this, at a point partway through the 2017 season, the best player in the competition was only kicking half a point per shot above the league average, and the worst was about a point per game, over the course of a season.

So Lloyd improving from 50% to 70% is suggesting that that's a rate of improvement that makes you literally the worst kick in the league to the best.

If merely doing a lot of goalkicking practice achieved that, no AFL player would do any sort of training other than goalkicking practice, and every shot in the league would go through at a rate of 70+%. You don't think AFL clubs have done this analysis and thought of this?

Yeah I'd imagine the thought of goal kicking practice has crossed the minds of AFL coaches at one point or another. It's unlikely that the BBT (Bigfooty Brains Trust) are the first to think of it.

 

[ScragCity]

To suggest practicing something over and over wont improve it is ridiculous. If this is true why even bother training skills continually?

As long as you are practising “correctly” and not reinforcing your previous errors there is absolutely no doubt you will improve

But what is important is by how much you can improve. Training time is a finite resource, as you yourself have pointed out.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

I'm not saying a) nobody should do any goalkicking practice or b) that goalkicking isn't a facet of the game.

But I'm sayin:

a) bad or good goalkicking is more a product of randomness than people suggest, it's not uncommon to flip 13 tails when you flip a coin 20 times,

b) every player in the league is a lot closer to the league average than people think, and there's greater variation in skills other than goalkicking that makes a player valuable or not. For example, the difference between Darcy Fogarty (the best key forward kick for goal in the league) and Aaron Naughton's goalkicking is pretty much as wide a difference as you can get. But the difference in all skills other than goalkicking between Naughton and Fogarty is about 5 times greater than the difference in goalkicking. Even if we could get Naughton to kick the ball as well as Fogarty, if it comes at the cost of making him 1/5 as bad of a footballer relative to Fogarty otherwise it simply isn't worth it. If goalkicking accuracy made you fundamentally an elite player, Tory Dickson would have been an All-Australian player. But he wasn't, so goalkicking doesn't really matter

c) I'm not even sure it's as easy to improve goalkicking with effort, even if we wanted to. Do people think that hours and hours of goalkicking practice can make you a league average goalkicker, if you are not? I very much doubt it. I don't think if Naughton would have done 5 hours of extra goalkicking last week, that the chance that he doesn't miss those improve significantly. What I do know, however, is that if he misses a game to injury, even just 1, that has a material impact on our margin that is greater than missing one shot for goal.

 

[Mattdougie]

If Steph Curry ever has an issue with his shooting I’d imagine he goes onto the gym and practises it OVER AND OVER AND OVER regardless when the problem surfaces even during the year.

AFL players are on such tight training schedules that if they have an issue like Naughts or King during season they don’t have the ability to do this so it’s simply a mind game they have to win to “fix” the issue which seldom works.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

But what is important is by how much you can improve. Training time is a finite resource, as you yourself have pointed out.

Yes and we have to consider variation and what contributes to games.

If for some reason the AFL decided to change the rules of the league overnight and turned the competition into a shootout in which the winner of an AFL game was the team that kicked the most goals from 50 set shots from various locations, I have zero doubt that AFL players would do anything other than practice goalkicking for hours on end.

But what I've just described is other sports where players do the exact same thing. Golf players practice their swing for hours on end, because the sport is literally nothing else but a golf swing. But if golf players had to swing a golf club, bump their direct opponent and sprint to the location where the ball is landed before a timer ran out, they'd spend less time training their golf swing and more time in other areas of training. That's AFL.

There's no particular evidence that teams - above and beyond a baseline level of skills development - can get a strategic advantage in goalkicking alone.

Instead - as much as its against our human nature - that Naughton will continually be a very good player of which goalkicking accuracy is a fixed part his ability, but at the same time, is less of a weakness than people make it out to be.

This is a much better explanation of it:

The Goal-Kicking Accuracy Fallacy – Figuring Footy

figuringfooty.com

 

[Guido]

Yeah I'd imagine the thought of goal kicking practice has crossed the minds of AFL coaches at one point or another. It's unlikely that the BBT (Bigfooty Brains Trust) are the first to think of it.

In the modern era, there has been a concern from sport scientists that "too much" set shot practising can cause injuries, hence why many players are stopped from going down the "thousands of set shots" path of improving their kicking.

Historically however, many players have proven that you can go down that path, and have a relative injury free career.

There are many involved at the top levels of the game today who disagree with the current recommendations.

I just don't get this belittling, dismissive outlook towards some ideas, just because they're posted on an internet forum - why discuss anything on here, when the experts supposedly have it all covered and shouldn't be questioned?

There's are quite a few posters, whether it be drafting, trades, selection, sports science, sport management that have some valuable info to offer on here.

 

[Mutt]

In the sense that your shooting percentage, which varies a lot between good and bad players in the NBA, is the reason that you're a good or bad player, yes.

But AFL players' accuracy in variation hardly makes a difference. Answer this simple question: Would you rather Darcy Fogarty or Aaron Naughton as your key player heading forward?

You wipe 5% off Kobe's shooting percentages and he's gone from being a Hall of Famer to being a minimum contract player.

We can prove this with basis statistics - he's about a 5 points per game player value above replacement per advanced +/- statistics, shooting a certain amount of possessions (every third possession), you take about 3.5 points off for the shooting percentage difference and then you take more value off for the marginal effect of bad shooters shoot less volume. That diminishes him to barely above replacement/minimum contract.

So of course Kobe's gonna put up a million shots because that slight variation is everything to an NBA player.

However, Naughton - who is only a point a game worse than the league average despite being a "bad" goalkicker - fighting tooth and nail to get that up to league average is worth only one point a game, whereas many other things he does (like simple percentage of marks he takes when he's targeted) makes him clearly worth more than a point a game, so, in my eyes, he should do an extra hour of marking practice after training because if he managed one mark inside 50 more every third game, that's still worth the same.

The difference between being a hall-of-famer or a pretty good forward for Naughton will be his scoring efficiency. Just like it was for Kobe. Naughton has everything else...but he butchers simple shots at goal far too often.

I don't accept that it's justifiable for NBA players to practice, practice, practice to get the basic skills to the level where they are repeatable with precision under pressure, however we can't do that in the AFL because the players get tired...their load is too high...they might get injured. Sports science in the AFL is now the tail wagging the dog. Can you imagine Kobe or LeBron deciding not to out-train everyone else in the NBA because a sports science guru says they should only practice 20 minutes a day?

 

[Triple Baileys]

Two points:

I think people put too much stock in a bit of extra practice making a difference in being a guaranteed goal kicker. He's a bad kick for goal and will be for the rest of his career (or any improvement will come over the length of his entire career and be ridiculously slowly that you have to divide "improvement" over 150 more games, not something that can be fixed overnight). People vastly have an incorrect assessment of skill development and reason for skill execution if they think that 50 kicks after training makes anything but fu** all difference in his goalkicking. It's 50 more kicks from the hundreds of thousands of times he's kicked a footy in his life. It's like suggesting that a ATP tennis player can just add 10 k's an hour on their serve if they did an extra hour of serving practice every second day. Ridiculous.

And secondly, I think it's a bit presumptuous to think that "surely this can't happen fitness wise if you do this" given the people making the decisions of our fitness structure are arguably as qualified as anyone in the world. Mathew Inness has a PhD specifically researching footy fitness from one of the best universities in the world for doing it (Vic Uni). I think I'll defer to his years and years of research and building upon best practice, and the fact that he was a professional cricketer since the late 90's, studied this whilst he was still playing, and ascended ridiculously quickly up the ranks of the industry after retiring from 2008 (within 7 years he was the head of an AFL club, which, needless to say, is very quick). I'll much happily say he's right and the people on this board saying "but his fitness base won't suffer doing this" when a bloke with a PhD in it says it does.

Locks, I am not disagreeing with what you surmise about Naughton's accuracy. But sometimes, maybe not often, an AFL player can dramatically improve their accuracy - I am thinking of Stewart Loewe of the Saints, who could barely kick over the man on the mark when he started, but improved his kicking until he was very reliable, including difficult shots and long shots. Maybe Supernaut can do the same? Here's hoping.

 

[Mattdougie]

I'm not saying a) nobody should do any goalkicking practice or b) that goalkicking isn't a facet of the game.

But I'm sayin:

a) bad or good goalkicking is more a product of randomness than people suggest, it's not uncommon to flip 13 tails when you flip a coin 20 times,

b) every player in the league is a lot closer to the league average than people think, and there's greater variation in skills other than goalkicking that makes a player valuable or not. For example, the difference between Darcy Fogarty (the best key forward kick for goal in the league) and Aaron Naughton's goalkicking is pretty much as wide a difference as you can get. But the difference in all skills other than goalkicking between Naughton and Fogarty is about 5 times greater than the difference in goalkicking. Even if we could get Naughton to kick the ball as well as Fogarty, if it comes at the cost of making him 1/5 as bad of a footballer relative to Fogarty otherwise it simply isn't worth it. If goalkicking accuracy made you fundamentally an elite player, Tory Dickson would have been an All-Australian player. But he wasn't, so goalkicking doesn't really matter

c) I'm not even sure it's as easy to improve goalkicking with effort, even if we wanted to. Do people think that hours and hours of goalkicking practice can make you a league average goalkicker, if you are not? I very much doubt it. I don't think if Naughton would have done 5 hours of extra goalkicking last week, that the chance that he doesn't miss those improve significantly. What I do know, however, is that if he misses a game to injury, even just 1, that has a material impact on our margin that is greater than missing one shot for goal.

Sorry but I believe every word of this is nonsense and you are also arguing points no one ever made to reinforce YOUR opinion.

Tory Dickson was an average footy player that was rated better DUE TO HIS GOAL KICKING accuracy.

We have bemoaned in here for the last few years how poor our kicking for goal is. There is no logical argument that says kicking 10-10 isnt far better than 5-15.

 

[Sparkles Buttercup]

For all of the discussion about Cordy and Gardiner, and for my 2 cents, agree that neither are ideal options, i think we need to remember the following:

1. Fletcher Roberts played key back in out premiership side and he is no better than either.
2. Joel Hamling played key back in our premiership side and probably only played finals because marcus adams kept getting injured. The finals were when he unexpectedly broke out to become a really good afl player.

There is still hope all.

 

[Mattdougie]

Locks, I am not disagreeing with what you surmise about Naughton's accuracy. But sometimes, maybe not often, an AFL player can dramatically improve their accuracy - I am thinking of Stewart Loewe of the Saints, who could barely kick over the man on the mark when he started, but improved his kicking until he was very reliable, including difficult shots and long shots. Maybe Supernaut can do the same? Here's hoping.

He definitely isn’t improving if he doesn’t work at it

 

[WallyStringhaus]

How do we know?

Because the literal difference between the best and worst current AFL players in the AFL don't vary anywhere near between 50% and 70%

But that's just not true. From actual shots that have scored this year Naughton has kicked 29 of 55 = 52.7%. Within the very same forward line Josh Bruce has kicked 34 of 44 = 77.2%

c) I'm not even sure it's as easy to improve goalkicking with effort, even if we wanted to. Do people think that hours and hours of goalkicking practice can make you a league average goalkicker, if you are not? I very much doubt it. I don't think if Naughton would have done 5 hours of extra goalkicking last week, that the chance that he doesn't miss those improve significantly. What I do know, however, is that if he misses a game to injury, even just 1, that has a material impact on our margin that is greater than missing one shot for goal.

You say this yet there was anecdotal evidence from one of the best forwards in the history of the game that totally contadicts your argument posted above. Lloyd literally said that he did the hard work and practiced thousands of times to correct his technique yet you seem to disregard this?

 

[threenewpadlocks]

There are many involved at the top levels of the game today who disagree with the current recommendations.

And these people don't understand the world in a statistical way and/or do not have training in physical performance and sports science.

Historically however, many players have proven that you can go down that path

There's two points to this:

This is just an assertion that can be proven. I would argue there's very few players in the current professionalised AFL that have demonstrated an ability to significantly improve their goalkicking. Good goalkickers remain such through their career, as do bad ones. The ones who do improve is simply random (ie among hundreds of AFL players, of course 1 or 2 will appear to have improved. But say you flipped 100 coins twice, then repeated that 300 times. Out of that 300, there will be a couple in which you flipped 40 heads the first time, then 60 heads the second times).

I also believe that the construction of the AFL made goalkicking accuracy more important in the past, which is why you say "historically" but that doesn't necessarily apply to today.

For example, in 1987, a full 3.8% of St Kilda's total kicks as a team were Lockett's scoring shots. As such, the importance of Lockett's accuracy was a significant impact on St Kilda. On the other hand, Naughton's kicks for goal are only 2.1% of our total kicks as a team, making the importance of accuracy less important than what goes on in a game overall.

Just by that raw metric, the importance of Naughton's goalkicking this season is only 55% as important of the importance of Lockett's that year.

 

[Dogsman16]

Goalkicking in the 90s and 00s cannot be compared to modern day. How many times was lockett/lloyd charging back to CHB to be apart of the zone or applying defensive pressure. Pretty minimal in comparison to modern day KPF's.

I think the increase in pressure around the park and requirement of KPF's to apply defensive pressure has impacted majorly upon kicking for goal. Riewoldt, Franklin (Buddy genuinely kicked 2.11 against us in 2007), Cloke etc all had major problems at goal kicking during there careers in comparison to other forwards and a large reason for this is the amount of ground they covered in comparison to the dunstall era forwards who simply lead from the goal square.

I trust our fitness guys in this regard. If having more set shots at goal at training creates more risk of injury then I'd prefer we just take the good and the bad.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

but he butchers simple shots at goal far too often.

But this is fundamentally not proven by the fact that we can record his kicking for goal and compare them to league average from the same location.

For example before this season, across 100+ shots at goal, his goalkicking "only" cost us 15 points.

But that's just not true. From actual shots that have scored this year Naughton has kicked 29 of 55 = 52.7%. Within the very same forward line Josh Bruce has kicked 34 of 44 = 77.2%

1) there's a statistical basis to sampling and regressing to the mean. You can't selectively choose Bruce's kicking this season and ignore his last year, because he still is the same player.

2) Bruce has kicked multiple goals from the goalsquare (more than Naughton, think about the North game)



Per shot charting the league average for his 12 shots was to kick 8 goals, given about 6 of the shots were less than 20m out.