Moved Thread Neutral fans: Hawkins or Riewoldt?

Neutral fans: Who’s the better player over the course of their 16 seasons

  • Tom Hawkins

    Votes: 234 69.6%
  • Jack Riewoldt

    Votes: 102 30.4%

  • Total voters
    336
May 27, 2006
40,561
78,438
This is the location section. 🤗
AFL Club
Melbourne
The poll in the draft thread has Riewoldt ahead of Hawkins and Josh Kennedy.
From my count, ~43% of Riewoldt voters in that poll (currently 28/26/19 for Riewoldt/Hawkins/Kennedy, which I actually think is a pretty fair result - could really go any of the three ways IMO) are from the same club.

This poll (currently 170/79 for Hawkins/Riewoldt) is designed for neutrals.
 
Apr 23, 2016
30,510
42,672
AFL Club
Essendon
We have a greater % of smalls fwds kicking goals compared to the cats via the handball chains.

Do you?

I’ve added up every goal kicked by a Geelong ‘tall’ player since the start of 2017.
Hawkins, Cameron, Stanley, Taylor, Ratugolea, Blicavs, Henderson, Darcy Fort: 32 per cent of our goals have come from them.

In the same period, ONLY counting Riewoldt, Lynch, Nankervis and Chol, they have kicked….. 32 per cent of Richmond’s goals.

Who knows, maybe you do have a larger percentage of ‘small’ forwards kicking goals. But even without really going through the minutiae of your goal kickers and their heights over the last 6 seasons (I don’t know the heights of all your players but if you threw players like McIntosh, Soldo etc in there it takes the percentage well above Geelong’s), you sure as hell don’t have a lower percentage of tall forwards kicking them.

What height have you chosen as ‘tall’? Also Soldo has kicked f all goals since 2019, he’s a non factor.

Looks a lot like you were wrong. Yet again.
 
Oct 19, 2020
21,740
31,467
AFL Club
Richmond
From my count, ~43% of Riewoldt voters in that poll (currently 28/26/19 for Riewoldt/Hawkins/Kennedy, which I actually think is a pretty fair result - could really go any of the three ways IMO) are from the same club.

This poll (currently 170/79 for Hawkins/Riewoldt) is designed for neutrals.
It's not just neutrals in the poll though.
 
Apr 23, 2016
30,510
42,672
AFL Club
Essendon
I guess there is no reason both cannot be true.

It is just that for them both to be true you are saying it is easier for key forwards to score:

a) when they play in weak teams with weaker forwards around them, and

b) when their teams are way too good for the opposition.

And presumably it is harder for them to score:

a) when their teams are competitive with the opposition, and

b) when they play in stronger forward lines.


But do you actually believe that is true? To me it seems a complicated construction totally reliant on the odd forward from a lower ranking team who plays in a weak forward line winning or finishing high in the Coleman, and the unsupported proclamation that lower ranking teams don’t tend to have gun forwards.

A quick glance at this years’ ladder and Coleman standings in instructive. If what you are saying is true, Kennedy, Larkey, Wright, Lewis, Walker, Marshall, Mihocek should be dominating the Coleman, and those with stronger alternative targets like Daniher, Hawkins, Cameron, Lynch, Riewoldt, Bolton, Chuck Cameron, McKay and Curnow should be struggling to match them.

View attachment 1430674



22 of the 30 listed here also have at least one team-mate in the top 30.

The exceptions are:

King, 4th
Fritsch and Wright =8th
T Marshall =11th
Greene =19th
Larkey and Walker =23rd
Lobb =28th

A young Jack Riewoldt on his way to a 78 goal Coleman Medal season in the second bottom would be sitting well clear on about 47 goals amongst that lot right now. If that was happening now do you think people would be saying he is benefitting from being the only target? They have been showing figures recently showing Max King is the most targetted forward in the AFL. Some people think he is killing it and plenty think he is destined for greatness. Yet he sits on 35 goals.

I don’t think the argument you are making stacks up.

The key is that the forward has to actually be good, and their team not utter trash. Most teams average a similar amount of goals per game, unless they're unusually good or bad. Most of the forwards you've named simply aren't great forwards (or in Kennedy's case, isn't anymore).

Fewer goal kickers, means more goals to individual players from the same share of goals.

Better teams tend to produce a wider variety of goal kickers, because it's harder to defend multiple targets.

When a team is unusually good, kicking an unusually high number of goals (e.g. Hawthorn 2013) you can have a very high scoring KPF and multiple avenues to goal, but it's unusual to have a team kicking drastically more goals than any opposition side across an entire season.

You're too smart to pretend Mihocek is in the same stratosphere as a Reiwoldt or Hawkins, let's not be disingenuous here.
 
May 5, 2016
43,464
48,498
AFL Club
Geelong
If I were to look at the negatives of Hawkins it would be he gives away a lot of free kicks, he can't get far off the ground and he is next to useless when the ball hits the ground.

He’s actually not - he’s not as good at ground level as Riewoldt and plenty of other key forwards like Cameron and Buddy etc but since his back got better he’s been more than adequate, like it’s not a major handicap for him anymore. It’s a fair point in comparing the two, though as Jack is easily better in that respect
 

Falcon3518

Norm Smith Medallist
Mar 13, 2022
5,350
3,235
AFL Club
Richmond
He’s actually not - he’s not as good at ground level as Riewoldt and plenty of other key forwards like Cameron and Buddy etc but since his back got better he’s been more than adequate, like it’s not a major handicap for him anymore. It’s a fair point in comparing the two, though as Jack is easily better in that respect

It’s just height and build that makes Hawkins not as good at ground level. Vice versa for Jack in contested marking. Jack also jumps higher cause he’s lighter. I don’t think these things are contributed to skill levels and they each suit different teams play styles.
 
Sep 15, 2005
13,075
20,637
AFL Club
Geelong
I think if his name was Greg he wouldn’t get called junktime Greg, it is only the alliterative nature of it that leads people to believe this.

I don’t know how many ‘junktime’ goals he’s kicked but I do know he leads the ‘first goal of the game’ stat by so far it isn’t funny. If the first 5 minutes of the game is junktime then play on.

Garbage Goal Greg - even better, triple alliterative threat!
Junktime Jack will have to do though ..
 

AstuteTiger

Norm Smith Medallist
Mar 22, 2009
6,903
15,736
Melbourne
AFL Club
Richmond
Not trying to start an argument - I’m fairly neutral on the subject, natural bias would probably make me choose Tom but there are multiple arguments you can make the other way.

Just prompted by a comment in the Hawkins 700 goals thread

Agree they are both great players. I could easily say jack has some attributes better than tom and vice versa.
Unfortunately, these types of polls show if you dislike a player or club more you won't vote for them.
 
Feb 4, 2008
12,957
27,929
Melbourne
AFL Club
Richmond
The key is that the forward has to actually be good, and their team not utter trash. Most teams average a similar amount of goals per game, unless they're unusually good or bad. Most of the forwards you've named simply aren't great forwards (or in Kennedy's case, isn't anymore).

Fewer goal kickers, means more goals to individual players from the same share of goals.

Better teams tend to produce a wider variety of goal kickers, because it's harder to defend multiple targets.

When a team is unusually good, kicking an unusually high number of goals (e.g. Hawthorn 2013) you can have a very high scoring KPF and multiple avenues to goal, but it's unusual to have a team kicking drastically more goals than any opposition side across an entire season.

You're too smart to pretend Mihocek is in the same stratosphere as a Reiwoldt or Hawkins, let's not be disingenuous here.

Oh yeah so if a talented forward wants to kick a hatful just go to a team who don’t have any other forward targets, and is bad but not utter trash. And from there any decent forward will stroll the Coleman. Well, so long as he doesn’t mind having 3 defenders hanging off him regularly. Sounds like a plan. 😂😂

“Most teams average a similar amount of goals per game.” So you say.

But do they? In 2010 when Jack got his 78 goals, 2nd bottom Richmond scored 246 goals at a shade over 11 per game, the least in the AFL. Top team Geelong scored 372 goals in the regular season. Bottom team Eagles kicked 255 goals that season. They had a key forward target who went by the name of Joshua J Kennedy, and he somehow miraculously only got his snout in the trough to the tune of 41 goals from 22 games. Someone forgot to explain to him that ass a quality forward in his 5th year in the system, there were more goals to go around to him, because there was no viable second tall target in his team. He must be kicking himself he missed out so badly when he had his chance to go large in such a weak but not utterly trash team, percentage 77%.

“It’s unusual to have a team kicking drastically more goals than any opposition side across an entire season.” So says you.

Yet here we are in 2022 when one team averages around 14 goals per game and two other teams average around 8 per game approaching 60% of the season completed. And last season we had a team kicked 313 goals in the regular season while another team got 201 goals for the entire season. And, every year you look at, including the year Jack kicked 78 as a 21yo in the second bottom team, it’s a pretty similar story, there is a drastic difference between the top and bottom goal scoring teams, normally where the highest scoring team kicks roughly 50% more goals than the lowest scoring team. So only you could explain where you got that statement from. It is nonsense.

And it is with such nonsense you attempt to explain the inexplicable, ie your belief that it is easier for a forward to score more goals in a weaker forward line in a weaker team than it is for him to score more goals in a stronger forward line in a stronger team.
 
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and yet when non-Richmond or Geelong fans say "Hawkins" it doesn't count as apparently we are biased against Richmond or something.
Personally I reckon they are different types of players ever so slightly.
Jack is more nimble but Hawkins is more powerful.
Both champions.
Hawkins just for mine.
 
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