Mega Thread Nick Daicos - Can he be the GTWEB? Part 2

[threenewpadlocks]

In this whole debate I just find it so strange how much Pies fans want to insist that Daicos is the next coming of Jesus, and by doing that, they are actually utterly disrespecting how good their defensive unit was in 2025, and how it missed out in receiving the attention and fanfare and praise from the media and footy public it deserve. It's so strange - for the teams I support, I want the players who are the ones that are contributing to victory proportionally to get the most attention.

Perryman, Maynard, Quaynor, Howe and Moore as defensive-minded defenders are an absolutely outstanding bunch of players as a collective and the footy public and media don't give them enough credit. And it's taking me, a non-Pies fans, to give them their recognition above and beyond the Pies fan in these threads, all because Pies fans may not maybe want to be curious and have an open mind and think that there's convincing arguments that one of their players is not as outstanding as they claim to be (even though that's from the same person that's willing to claim that many other Pies players, their defenders, are massively underrated).

Just so it's abundantly clear just how, how much better the Pies defenders were than the Dogs last year, take these statistics among all defenders for both clubs and see how many players from each club were top ranked in these categories:

Tackles: Pies 5, Dogs 0
Groundball gets: Pies 3, Dogs 2. Next 2 also Pies
Intercept possessions: Pies 3, Dogs 2. But 5 of next 6 also Piies
Defensive 1 on 1 loss percentage - Pies 6, Dogs 0

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Nek Minit....

Pies finished 4th and played in a Preliminary Final, whilst the Dogs finished 9th, and missed finals.

Tell us again how much better the Doggies were than the Pies?

10% you reckon?

I make it abundantly clear about 10 million times that I'm only stating that the Dogs were 10% better than the Pies purely in the context of points for and points against - the act of kicking goals and points and preventing the opposition - as tallied up in its totality across the 2025 season. The whole purpose of ratings points is to try and credit and track against contribution to that final margin, distributing points for individual actions that can be measured on a football field to correlate to the actual final margin.

But it's an equity measurement that is meant track directly to margins of victory, so the fact that the Dogs had a percentage of 137% and Pies had a percntage of 120% (after 2 finals games) is directly relevant here.

If the Dogs were a 5% worse each points for and points against team to be a 10% overall worse team, their percentage would have dropped from from 137% to 123% - still above Pies' 120% on the season.

in direct proportion to their average margins across the season compared to Pies.

Dogs 137%, Pies 120%. Dogs 10% better team (purely in average margin). Dogs percentage would be very close to 120% as well if they were a 5% worse team in each of points for and points against (and therefore a 10% worse overall team).

But instead, in a complete showing of bad faith and complete ignoring of me making it abundantly clear about 50 million times in my above I'm purely talking about margin of victory, you go bUt DoGs FiNiShEd 9th HoW cAn tHeY be better THAN A PRELIM FINALIST. A point I already addressed. What's the point of replying to you when you're just going to ignore the fact I preempted the very point you're making here? I'm not saying the Dogs had a better year. I'm saying the Dogs had a better year in a statistical, points for minus points against across the season statistical sense. Because they did. We know the points for and points against for both teams in 2025. Dogs were 10% better by that measure.

If you want to make a point about Bont (and the Western Bulldogs team generally) generating footballing output purely in the context of running up scores against other non-finals teams in meaningless game situations (ie, Bont kicking a goal in the last quarter of a game the Dogs are already up by 70 points in, and getting the ratings points for doing so), fine, that's a fair enough and separate point about how we translate past output to a sense of football "goodness" in a more meaningful contexts, like output if and when a finals game is close in the last quarter.

But even getting to that point would be admitting that Bont's footballing output was superior (even if generated in easier contexts like I listed above), a point that you haven't yet been willing to even get to that point to concede here at all.

In any case, for that argument, I'd like to also point out that Bont played an absolutely outstanding game and was brilliant despite the Dogs losing in their virtual elimination final in a loss vs Freo last round last season.

Also, keep in mind that the Dogs went 2-3 in the games that Bont missed with injury - worse than their record with Bont - and therefore would have made finals had Bont been fit for the whole year. Which is directly relevant to the discussion about how good Bont is.

 

[TiAn_]

Pretty simple explanation for Daicos Player Ratings on his two games this year. Daicos has the most HB receives in the comp, 2 per game clear of second and only 18% CPs, but still 8 turnovers per game, second most of all players.

He’s also 147th for average pressure acts, and only averaging 1.5 tackles, both way, way, behind the elite mids.

If you’re getting all of your ball outside but still turning it over a lot, and also don’t do any of the defensive work, then you’re not going to rate well.

 

[Fadge]

In this whole debate I just find it so strange how much Pies fans want to insist that Daicos is the next coming of Jesus, and by doing that, they are actually utterly disrespecting how good their defensive unit was in 2025, and how it missed out in receiving the attention and fanfare and praise from the media and footy public it deserve. It's so strange - for the teams I support, I want the players who are the ones that are contributing to victory proportionally to get the most attention.

Perryman, Maynard, Quaynor, Howe and Moore as defensive-minded defenders are an absolutely outstanding bunch of players as a collective and the footy public and media don't give them enough credit. And it's taking me, a non-Pies fans, to give them their recognition above and beyond the Pies fan in these threads, all because Pies fans may not maybe want to be curious and have an open mind and think that there's convincing arguments that one of their players is not as outstanding as they claim to be (even though that's from the same person that's willing to claim that many other Pies players, their defenders, are massively underrated).

Just so it's abundantly clear just how, how much better the Pies defenders were than the Dogs last year, take these statistics among all defenders for both clubs and see how many players from each club were top ranked in these categories:

Tackles: Pies 5, Dogs 0
Groundball gets: Pies 3, Dogs 2. Next 2 also Pies
Intercept possessions: Pies 3, Dogs 2. But 5 of next 6 also Piies
Defensive 1 on 1 loss percentage - Pies 6, Dogs 0

You really think you need to tell Pies supporters how good their defensive unit is?

Oh boy.

 

[Fadge]

If you want to make a point about Bont (and the Western Bulldogs team generally) generating footballing output purely in the context of running up scores against other non-finals teams in meaningless game situations (ie, Bont kicking a goal in the last quarter of a game the Dogs are already up by 70 points in, and getting the ratings points for doing so), fine, that's a fair enough and separate point about how we translate past output to a sense of football "goodness" in a more meaningful contexts, like output if and when a finals game is close in the last quarter.

But even getting to that point would be admitting that Bont's footballing output was superior (even if generated in easier contexts like I listed above), a point that you haven't yet been willing to even get to that point to concede here at all.

Huh?

How does being a flat track bully to boost a team's percentage whilst being unable to win close games against quality opposition lead to an 'admission that Bont's footballing output was superior'?

You really are clutching at straws....

 

[Fadge]

Pretty simple explanation for Daicos Player Ratings on his two games this year. Daicos has the most HB receives in the comp, 2 per game clear of second and only 18% CPs, but still 8 turnovers per game, second most of all players.

He’s also 147th for average pressure acts, and only averaging 1.5 tackles, both way, way, behind the elite mids.

If you’re getting all of your ball outside but still turning it over a lot, and also don’t do any of the defensive work, then you’re not going to rate well.

And yet... the coaches currently have him ranked at #2.

Good thing they don't assess from a stats sheet or a flawed PLaYeR RaTiNGZ algorithm.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Huh?

How does being a flat track bully to boost a team's percentage whilst being unable to win close games against quality opposition lead to an 'admission that Bont's footballing output was superior'?

You really are clutching at straws....

Because the act of being such a flat track bully is still football output though. It's in a different context, but it still registers a statistics in the same way that doing it in a close game against quality opposition. Of which Bont played well in (for example, his clear BOG dominant game in our R24 loss to Freo).

I notice how you've completely ignored me proving you wrong in all your other points here too.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

And yet... the coaches currently have him ranked at #2.

Good thing they don't assess from a stats sheet or a flawed PLaYeR RaTiNGZ algorithm.

And for the millionth time, the Coaches also "ranked" Bontempelli as having an identically good game as Cooper Hynes in our R0 win over Brisbane. Hanging your hat on that seems kind of amazing.

 

[Fadge]

And for the millionth time, the Coaches also "ranked" Bontempelli as having an identically good game as Cooper Hynes in our R0 win over Brisbane. Hanging your hat on that seems kind of amazing.

How dare someone 'hang their hat' on the coaches view of the game, whilst paying scant regard to an algorithm that proves to me and time again that it is fundamentally flawed...

 

[threenewpadlocks]

How dare someone 'hang their hat' on the coaches view of the game, whilst paying scant regard to an algorithm that proves to me and time again that it is fundamentally flawed...

Algorithm - Marcus Bontempelli played a better game than Cooper Hynes
Coaches - Marcus Bontempelli played an identically poor game to Cooper Hynes, of which their statistical output was no better than if a player had not played the game at all.

Yep, it's the algorithm that's flawed

 

[TiAn_]

And yet... the coaches currently have him ranked at #2.

Good thing they don't assess from a stats sheet or a flawed PLaYeR RaTiNGZ algorithm.

Charlie Comben is #4 on that list

Great stuff

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Charlie Comben is #4 on that list

Great stuff

Hey, don't get ahead of yourself - according to the coaches he's equal fourth.

With Tom McCartin, Justin McInerney and Jake Stringer, who the coaches all believe must be the equal fourth best players of the season so far. I know I trust the coaches, so their ranking of who has had the best season so far can't be wrong, if you also think Daicos is the 2nd best player of the season so far!

 

[sr36]

Did you actually read out my post that actively proved this statement wrong - with actual mathematics - yet you're posting it after the fact?

Huh? Utterly incredible. I literally just proved this statement wrong and you're ... literally repeating it verbatim, again.

In summary, because you seem incapable of understanding very, very basic concepts

Ratings points = track margins of victory

Dogs 137%, Pies 120%. Dogs 10% better team (purely in average margin). Dogs percentage would be very close to 120% as well if they were a 5% worse team in each of points for and points against (and therefore a 10% worse overall team).

Dogs ratings points 230 per game, Pies ratings points 209 per game (10% more)

ie, they scale identically

ie, the points are distributed within the team for how good they were

ie, how high or low scoring dogs/pies to each other is completely cancelled out and plays no factor to how the Pies and Dogs as a team collectively generated ratings points.

ie, the ratings points for the fact that the Pies were a good team and generated 209 ratings points per game on average went to the players that were actually good and contributed to victory - the fact that the Pies have 8 top 100 defenders in the league, the Dogs had only 2 top 100 defenders in the league. Daicos contributed to Pies success far less than what you'd think a top 1 player in the league would suggest, because maybe he isn't actually as good as the top 1 player in the league.

Yeah, you're using a lot of words and doing a lot of maths to show a correlation between dogs and pies percentage and player ratings. Player ratings might effectively measure percentage. Great work. However we already have a 100% accurate measure of percentage.

But you're missing the point. Who cares about percentage? Footy is about wins and losses. Percentage is just a tie breaker if they can't be separated on wins. Brisbane finished 8th on the percentage ladder last year..

You're showing that Bont was involved in more percentage boosting last year. Great.

 

[Fadge]

Charlie Comben is #4 on that list

Great stuff

Because he played a ripper game.

Pretty sure he won't be there at year's end, in the same way Xerri was the #3 player across the entire competition according to the algorithm that is PLaYeR RaTiNGZ.

 

[Fadge]

Hey, don't get ahead of yourself - according to the coaches he's equal fourth.

With Tom McCartin, Justin McInerney and Jake Stringer, who the coaches all believe must be the equal fourth best players of the season so far. I know I trust the coaches, so their ranking of who has had the best season so far can't be wrong, if you also think Daicos is the 2nd best player of the season so far!

Great flex one to two games in.

If they're still there at the end of the season, it will be because they deserve it.

It's not some random number generator like PLaYeR RaTiNGZ.

Because I'm sure you fully support the positions of Marc Pittonet (6) and Ned Reeves (12) in Player Ratings...

 

[TiAn_]

Because he played a ripper game.

Pretty sure he won't be there at year's end, in the same way Xerri was the #3 player across the entire competition according to the algorithm that is PLaYeR RaTiNGZ.

We get it, you don’t like anything that measures how little Daicos is doing other than collecting handball receives and avoiding contact.

 

[Fadge]

We get it, you don’t like anything that measures how little Daicos is doing other than collecting handball receives and avoiding contact.

Yeah, that's right.

It's got nothing to do with the fact it rated the player who kicked more goals in a single season that any other player has in about a decade in 52nd position last year, and also rated All-Australian Tom Stewart in the bottom 25th percentile of all players for the 2019 season.

Those two examples, from millions of others, have absolutely nothing to do with it.

 

[doppleganger]

No, the good players fail to get coaches votes around one-third of the time.

Good players sure - great elite players are usually in coaches votes if they play well.

Do you believe being the best player is worth 5 times more than being the 5th best player?

Is that your interpretation?
You can just focus on matches polled votes if you like to add more nuance.
Which notes last year that he polled in the same number of games as N.Anderson, but usually an inferior rating.

Dogs per game averaged 230 ratings points as a team per game, and the Pies averaged 209. Dogs 10% more.

But it's an equity measurement that is meant track directly to margins of victory, so the fact that the Dogs had a percentage of 137% and Pies had a percntage of 120% (after 2 finals games) is directly relevant here.

It is scoring contribution, points for.

Adelaide in 2025 had a better % than the Dogs, but inferior points for...and much lower team rating points.

Port in 2024 had a better % than Carlton, but inferior points for...and significantly lower team rating points.

Rd1 last week, Adelaide benefitted from a larger % boost in their win over Collingwood in a low scoring battle compared to Melbourne against St. Kilda.

BOTH Melbourne AND StKilda had higher team rating scores than Adelaide...because both had more points for...even StKilda who lost.

It is a scoreboard contribution rating.

Score more, get more scoreboard contribution rating points.

A low scoring slug fest, BOTH teams don't get points...but you improve your scoring differential more in a low scoring win.

So I just proved you wrong that Dogs generated more points as a team because their games were higher scoring - wrong, they generated more points in direct proportion to their average margins across the season compared to Pies.

Na you still have it all arse about.
It ain't scoring differential.
It is just score board contribution.

Margin is irrelevant, you get more team rating points in a high scoring loss than you do in a low scoring win.

Tl:dr: More bunkum

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Player ratings might effectively measure percentage. Great work.

Yes, and Bont's more superior football output is both how we know he's the better footballer and contributed to the Dogs' ability to run up the score against bad teams.

If it was so easy to run up scores against rank bad teams, why didn't Pies' do it as well? Where was Daicos' last quarter goals in the matches that they won by big margins? Pies clearly were trying to get percentage as well by running up scores (and indeed, they got the double chance on percentage), so we can honestly say both Pies and Dogs were equally as motivated against all opposition to maximise their team's margin of victory.

Footy is about wins and losses.

Sure. Dogs were 12-6 with Bont in 2025, and 2-3 without Bont.

Bont would have helped us get more wins.

Percentage is just a tie breaker if they can't be separated on wins.

An absolutely improtant one that got Pies the double chance last year. The Pies also won 6 games by at least 40 points - should we also discount Daicos' (important) role in gaining those margins that gained you the top 4 spot?

Brisbane finished 8th on the percentage ladder last year..

Sure. And I would have said that they would have had better players in their team collectively had they played in such a way that they had better than the 8th percentage last year. An example of this is why I think Nick Daicos is a better footballer than Hugh McCluggage - if McCluggage had had a better 2025 season, if he was a better footballer, maybe Brisbane's percentage would have been closer to Collingwood's.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Because I'm sure you fully support the positions of Marc Pittonet (6) and Ned Reeves (12) in Player Ratings...

Bad faith bad faith bad faith bad faith bad faith because it's been said a million times here that I don't think it's a particularly good system of measuring involvement in ruck contests, but thankfully, given the virtually zero ruck contests Bont and Daicos attended in 2025, your bringing it up constantly is just bad faith.

 

[Cdog71]

If you adopt a Malcolm Blight Geelong style shootout game where happy to win kicking 20+ goals whilst letting opponents score 18 it should be obvious that BOTH teams had players who were involved in heaps of scoring, and so ALL players would get large score equity ratings.

But what outcome is that driving?

Score equity ratings will give players in the team that kicked 18 goals in a loss higher ratings than players in a team that kicked 14 goals in a win.

It should be obvious that in a defensive low scoring team, scoring opportunities are limited by design...so it is much harder to be involved in scoring and build score equity ratings.

But all that being said, Bont is a superstar. He plays attacking midfield for an attacking team and is their #1, and enjoys huge score equity ratings as a result, not as big a gap back to the other Dogs midfielders in 2025 (as they all run forward and score).

Daicos is a superstar. He plays attacking midfield for a defensive team and is clearly their #1 scoring threat and has been every year since 2023. He had a huge gap in scoring ratings back to next best Pie mid (3.2 in 2025), but as the team priority is winning not scoring, ALL Pies tend to have lower score equity ratings.

Dunno referencing an era that was built on one on one football illustrates the “Daicos” style of midfielder

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Na you still have it all arse about.
It ain't scoring differential.
It is just score board contribution.

Margin is irrelevant, you get more team rating points in a high scoring loss than you do in a low scoring win.

Why did Collingwood's team collectively get within 10% of the team player ratings points to the Dogs when their matches were more than 20% lower scoring though? Explain that to me please.

 

[Fadge]

Yes, and Bont's more superior football output is both how we know he's the better footballer and contributed to the Dogs' ability to run up the score against bad teams.

If it was so easy to run up scores against rank bad teams, why didn't Pies' do it as well? Where was Daicos' last quarter goals in the matches that they won by big margins? Pies clearly were trying to get percentage as well by running up scores (and indeed, they got the double chance on percentage), so we can honestly say both Pies and Dogs were equally as motivated against all opposition to maximise their team's margin of victory.

You really are still going with this?

Oh boy.

Collingwood actually got top 4 due to their number of wins, first and foremost.

In your world, the better footballers are the biggest flat track bullies (such an appropriate phrase!)

 

[Fadge]

Sure. Dogs were 12-6 with Bont in 2025, and 2-3 without Bont.

Bont would have helped us get more wins.

How many of those losses, with and without Bont, were against top 8 teams?

 

[Cdog71]

And yet... the coaches currently have him ranked at #2.

Good thing they don't assess from a stats sheet or a flawed PLaYeR RaTiNGZ algorithm.

It is comparative to the rest of your players