AFL Player 31: Zach Reid

[Lore]

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Agree. It is hard work for 200cm blokes starting at 80 odd kg and needing to get to at least 95 in three years. I have speculated that we did him no favors by pushing him to play early either. Obviously we could not do much about glandular fever but given his lack of footy in 2020 my opinion was we should have just eased him though year 1 but as usual we had to show off our shiny new toys.
It is interesting that his brother Archer coming into this years draft is the same size as Zack is now. 200cm and 90kg.

As a racing fan I’m always impressed with what the top agents and buyers are doing with yearlings.

With as little as a 10 second video of the horse walking, scanned with the appropriate technology, they can get a great insight into the horse’s biomechanics and compare it with an enormous database - showing what correlates with horses that have developed well physically and become elite athletes.

The very advanced tech can tell you - within a margin of error, of course - which horses are more likely to break down as they enter training and develop physically.

Of course, it’s used in combination with more basic measures such as bone scans and the trained human eye.

But I have wondered, with AFL footballers drafted so young, what is done with medical technology to get a better idea. Or is it considered unethical to treat them like animals with predictive technology.

 

[Vander18]

As a racing fan I’m always impressed with what the top agents and buyers are doing with yearlings.

With as little as a 10 second video of the horse walking, scanned with the appropriate technology, they can get a great insight into the horse’s biomechanics and compare it with an enormous database - showing what correlates with horses that have developed well physically and become elite athletes.

The very advanced tech can tell you - within a margin of error, of course - which horses are more likely to break down as they enter training and develop physically.

Of course, it’s used in combination with more basic measures such as bone scans and the trained human eye.

But I have wondered, with AFL footballers drafted so young, what is done with medical technology to get a better idea. Or is it considered unethical to treat them like animals with predictive technology.

This is the logical extension of what I’ve said previously about certain body types being a red flag from a durability/longevity perspective.

Ethically…..you’re entitled to perform due diligence before making a significant investment no? People can refuse to participate….then it becomes about the risk appetite of the clubs considering drafting them. It’s an interesting one.

I also wonder how sophisticated and evolved psychometric testing is across the industry and if certain clubs have better IP around it than others.

 

[jmoo wan]

As a racing fan I’m always impressed with what the top agents and buyers are doing with yearlings.

With as little as a 10 second video of the horse walking, scanned with the appropriate technology, they can get a great insight into the horse’s biomechanics and compare it with an enormous database - showing what correlates with horses that have developed well physically and become elite athletes.

The very advanced tech can tell you - within a margin of error, of course - which horses are more likely to break down as they enter training and develop physically.

Of course, it’s used in combination with more basic measures such as bone scans and the trained human eye.

But I have wondered, with AFL footballers drafted so young, what is done with medical technology to get a better idea. Or is it considered unethical to treat them like animals with predictive technology.

can you tell which yearlings have booked to head over to Ibiza once the Spring racing carnival is over?

 

[Maxabillions]

can you tell which yearlings have booked to head over to Ibiza once the Spring racing carnival is over?

There are signs

 

[Lore]

As a racing fan I’m always impressed with what the top agents and buyers are doing with yearlings.

With as little as a 10 second video of the horse walking, scanned with the appropriate technology, they can get a great insight into the horse’s biomechanics and compare it with an enormous database - showing what correlates with horses that have developed well physically and become elite athletes.

The very advanced tech can tell you - within a margin of error, of course - which horses are more likely to break down as they enter training and develop physically.

Of course, it’s used in combination with more basic measures such as bone scans and the trained human eye.

But I have wondered, with AFL footballers drafted so young, what is done with medical technology to get a better idea. Or is it considered unethical to treat them like animals with predictive technology.

Sounds like really cool technology, but even that wouldn't be a guarantee. The AFL obviously do have medicals, but I suspect it's more like the old fashioned doc tapping knees with a hammer and measuring against a line on the doorframe, than full body scans and sports scientists doing vision analysis.

Also I guess there are 18 clubs fighting over perhaps 2-3 decent talls that come through each year, kinda have to choose from what's available at that point, which probably means assuming more risk based on a smaller pool of choices. It's not like you can take a batch of complete footy noobs and train them from the age of 12 and then draft the best one, or draft 80-90 players and keep them on the list for a decade before they come good. The mechanisms and resources just aren't there to support something like that. Perhaps the game would be better for it if there were longer playing lists...

There'd be a lot more horses around than there are cashed up prospective owners, and if you want a particular dam and a particular sire you can pay for that too and have it in hand within a year or two – I don't think any human sport is at that level of eugenics as it stands

 

[kelvin_sheedy]

Ollie Lord looks like he's coming good and he's the same vintage.

Cross fingers but number one thing is to stay on park and play games.

 

[yodellinhank]

Sounds like really cool technology, but even that wouldn't be a guarantee. The AFL obviously do have medicals, but I suspect it's more like the old fashioned doc tapping knees with a hammer and measuring against a line on the doorframe, than full body scans and sports scientists doing vision analysis.

Just our luck the Doc has aggravated McKay's dodgy knee with a bloody hammer.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Sounds like really cool technology, but even that wouldn't be a guarantee. The AFL obviously do have medicals, but I suspect it's more like the old fashioned doc tapping knees with a hammer and measuring against a line on the doorframe, than full body scans and sports scientists doing vision analysis.

Also I guess there are 18 clubs fighting over perhaps 2-3 decent talls that come through each year, kinda have to choose from what's available at that point, which probably means assuming more risk based on a smaller pool of choices. It's not like you can take a batch of complete footy noobs and train them from the age of 12 and then draft the best one, or draft 80-90 players and keep them on the list for a decade before they come good. The mechanisms and resources just aren't there to support something like that. Perhaps the game would be better for it if there were longer playing lists...

There'd be a lot more horses around than there are cashed up prospective owners, and if you want a particular dam and a particular sire you can pay for that too and have it in hand within a year or two – I don't think any human sport is at that level of eugenics as it stands

The video biometrical scanning - which is still in its relative infancy and held by a relative few at the moment - is absolutory bloody amazing.

You're completely right about the population size. There are tens of thousands of thoroughbred yearlings auctioned around the world every year and these days there is footage of all of them walking or even galloping - it's a basic sales tool - so they have been able to build a database very quickly which gives them pretty good results.

I think it would have some value depending on what footage is available at, say, draft combines. If there's a bank of footage of sprint testing over the last x years then perhaps a database could start to be built but you're still going to have issues with statistical significance, given (I believe) there is less than 100 players at draft combine and a similar number drafted so they have the medical results proven out over a couple of years. You'd need decades of data you'd reckon.

By the by - not related to footy - the other cool data they have is cardiac chamber scanning. They walk around sales with little ultrasound readers and hold them to the horse's side for about 5-10 seconds. It gives them an instant cardiac capacity reading which is downloaded via smartphone into a similarly huge database, so it compares to hundreds of thousands of samples (from champions to duds) and the correlations have been found. Amazing stuff... old mate the wise old horseman, using his trained eye, has less and less of a chance.

 

[ant555]

The video biometrical scanning - which is still in its relative infancy and held by a relative few at the moment - is absolutory bloody amazing.

You're completely right about the population size. There are tens of thousands of thoroughbred yearlings auctioned around the world every year and these days there is footage of all of them walking or even galloping - it's a basic sales tool - so they have been able to build a database very quickly which gives them pretty good results.

I think it would have some value depending on what footage is available at, say, draft combines. If there's a bank of footage of sprint testing over the last x years then perhaps a database could start to be built but you're still going to have issues with statistical significance, given (I believe) there is less than 100 players at draft combine and a similar number drafted so they have the medical results proven out over a couple of years. You'd need decades of data you'd reckon.

By the by - not related to footy - the other cool data they have is cardiac chamber scanning. They walk around sales with little ultrasound readers and hold them to the horse's side for about 5-10 seconds. It gives them an instant cardiac capacity reading which is downloaded via smartphone into a similarly huge database, so it compares to hundreds of thousands of samples (from champions to duds) and the correlations have been found. Amazing stuff... old mate the wise old horseman, using his trained eye, has less and less of a chance.

All of this is why I follow Mahar / Eustice pretty closely . Keep an eye on their horses coming through the maidens as they are using the latest technology on the training front.

 

[fairbump_playon]

As a racing fan I’m always impressed with what the top agents and buyers are doing with yearlings.

With as little as a 10 second video of the horse walking, scanned with the appropriate technology, they can get a great insight into the horse’s biomechanics and compare it with an enormous database - showing what correlates with horses that have developed well physically and become elite athletes.

The very advanced tech can tell you - within a margin of error, of course - which horses are more likely to break down as they enter training and develop physically.

Of course, it’s used in combination with more basic measures such as bone scans and the trained human eye.

But I have wondered, with AFL footballers drafted so young, what is done with medical technology to get a better idea. Or is it considered unethical to treat them like animals with predictive technology.

The ethics are as solid as the quality of the predictive tech

There is no problem assessing physical attributes. There’s a problem if decisions are being made using faulty methods.

Would be a lot if agents and players very reluctant unless the method is well proven by research.. and that can be slow to achieve with cutting edge approaches.

 

[TheGreatBarryB]

As a racing fan I’m always impressed with what the top agents and buyers are doing with yearlings.

Especially the shit ones ….

 

[Bunk Moreland]

The ethics are as solid as the quality of the predictive tech

There is no problem assessing physical attributes. There’s a problem if decisions are being made using faulty methods.

Would be a lot if agents and players very reluctant unless the method is well proven by research.. and that can be slow to achieve with cutting edge approaches.

Yep… I think everybody would be very reluctant. Some kid working to his dream and gets told his bio doesn’t measure up, sorry mate.

Particularly given there will always be at least a small margin of error.

Then again, I guess somebody will risk a late pick or a rookie pick… or they go and dominate state league for a couple of years and some club will have a shot… the risking of the high picks is the issue I think.

 

[Lore]

Yep… I think everybody would be very reluctant. Some kid working to his dream and gets told his bio doesn’t measure up, sorry mate.

Particularly given there will always be at least a small margin of error.

I would think that you don't let the AI make the decisions, in the same way that when you do an MRI scan a doctor still has a look at it and advises the club what it would take to fix or develop that attribute and the club decides whether they're willing to take that on.

It's kinda like using fingerprints as forensic evidence for a court trial – despite TV court dramas telling you they put the scientist on the stand to say "yeah it's him", they don't actually do that. All they can tell you is percentage of reliability and it's up to the judge or the jury to decide how much weight to give that evidence alongside other factors.

Also you'll get the odd freak like Pharlap with his weirdo giant heart, but a lot of the other athletic attributes can be developed if you have the time and motivation to develop it. You don't get 8-15 years to train a horse before it hits the peak of its powers, but with people you can develop it in a 12 year old and have them in good nick at age 20-27 if you know what you're about.

With a small pool of candidates you're still going to have to take a risk at some point, either you take the kid with the big heart and lungs that has a risk of spinal problems, or you take the one with good bones that's a bit short and has better pace off the mark with less endurance.

Ultimately it should also mean tailored development plans for each player, rather than someone not getting drafted, which should mean less injuries and better career longevity. (Short of discovering they're at massive risk of a heart attack, in which case that data might've saved their life. You could argue that they never should've been drafted and it stopped the league from making a mistake, in that case!)

So more data doesn't necessarily mean bad outcomes, it should mean better outcomes if deployed properly. But therein lies the problem – even with the data we currently have, we are obviously terrible at interpreting and using it to identify what combinations of traits are actually most needed for the type of player we're targeting. When you're told to "draft a KPP" you don't just mean any bloke over 200cm (who went to a private school and comes from a "good family" etc etc)

And then I guess the other thing is that horse racing is a relatively straight forward sport, while footballers are more complicated because there isn't one right way to be a KPF - you can be Buddy or Tomahawk or Lloyd or Plugger still have success in that role, but in different eras and with vastly different traits that wouldn't necessarily serve them well now anymore. So your dataset is limited by the fact that the game changes, and you actually need to predict what is coming next, rather than looking for another John Coleman with better knees.

 

[fairbump_playon]

In utero screening for Norm Smiths

 

[Lore]

Expected to be ready for day 1 of pre-season after surgery on that hamstring.

Dons pair to resume full training in January after injury-hit years

Essendon's head of performance Daniel McPherson has provided an update on several players.

www.essendonfc.com.au

 

[faible]

In utero screening for Norm Smiths

Barcelona signed Messi at 13, and that was way back in 2000 when tech was pretty bad.

 

[Pweter]

Given he's available for day 1 of the preseason I hope that means he's gradually increasing his loads now so he's ready to hit the offseason with relative confidence so he's not too far behind the 8 ball from day 1 (no doubt he'll be on a modified program though).

 

[fairbump_playon]

Barcelona signed Messi at 13, and that was way back in 2000 when tech was pretty bad.

Wow.

They probably took a photo of him with a digital SLR and used that to decide

 

[Lore]

Wow.

They probably took a photo of him with a digital SLR and used that to decide

In 2000!

probably a regular old SLR.

 

[fairbump_playon]

In 2000!

probably a regular old SLR.

Cutting edge Lore LOL

 

[fishardansin]

Humans eat, poo, do the horizontal tango and eventually die, sometimes all at once. That makes them animals, so there should be no ethical dilemma about treating them as animals.

 

[Lore]

Humans eat, poo, do the horizontal tango and eventually die, sometimes all at once. That makes them animals, so there should be no ethical dilemma about treating them as animals.

maybe the problem is that we don't treat animals as we expect ourselves to be treated.

 

[fishardansin]

What freaky websites have you been visiting?

German ones.

 

[justlookingaround]

I walked past him at Emporium today and he looked in good Knick

 

[fairbump_playon]

I walked past him at Emporium today and he looked in good Knick

I am on height watch because I reckon he was still growing the last couple years.

Could you please comment on his massiveness?