MVP 2020 Nick "426" Smith Memorial Trophy | Petracca Gets His 1st

[Headless]

This might be my favourite thread.

 

[FootyGuy13]

Headless I promised you to get this on Sunday, here are the longest streak of scoring games on the left and the longest streak of BOGs on the right.

Starting to not give myself time to give the tables a bit of colour

 

[FootyGuy13]

You know what's funny, since Petracca's BOG performance against Richmond, Viney had been our best player. Getting concussed won't help his charge towards the top, though neither has Petracca always finishing in the Top 6 every game this year. Also, still can't get over May being in the Top 3. I mean, who had that happening this year?​

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Segway into the topic of BOG Performances, ever wondered who has the most BOGs? Jones okay who has the 2nd mo-Gawn alright who is in the Top 10? While this might only be since 2004 since since that's how far the 426 goes, it does give you an idea as to how many BOG performances one gets in their career. Sure you could look at Brownlow 3-vote game tallies, or you could take out the 3 hour wait for the obvious answer and look at this...​

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Definitely does a disservice towards Yze, Neitz and Johnstone, but Jones' 34 a.k.a. a season and a third worth of being the best is quite the effort, no matter how bad the rest of the team is seen to be.​

Now, why do some players have a + in their score? That's their current 2020 tally, I wanted to keep that separate without making another column.​

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Now, enough about talking about the best week-in, week-out. What about the worst?...​

 

[Headless]

Great work as always, FootyGuy13.

From memory, players tied for fifth in the past split the votes. So Jackson and Weid this week, for example, would have received three each. Is that not the case this season?

 

[A11dAtP0w3R]

Viney has been excellent for most of the year, easily our second best mid this season imo, was terrible against Port but responded as you expect Jack to do.

 

[A11dAtP0w3R]

Really surprised there haven't been more BOGs than that. Shocking really.

Guess it just shows how much of a part fan favouritism plays.

 

[A11dAtP0w3R]

Thought for sure Mitch Clark would have had quite a few from the Neeld days

 

[FootyGuy13]

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Great work as always, FootyGuy13.​

From memory, players tied for fifth in the past split the votes. So Jackson and Weid this week, for example, would have received three each. Is that not the case this season?​

Last year, you'll notice I put the tie-brake under the scores. This year I've been doing that in the vote threads but I'll try and explain in full here.​

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Step 1) Arrange players from most votes to least, give out points to the Top 5 in that order accordingly. If there's a tie, go to Step 2.​

Step 2) Arrange players from most voters to least, if there is still a tie, go to Step 3.​

Step 3) Determine how many people gave Player A more votes than Player B. If still tied, go to Step 4​

Step 4) I give up, split the votes.
Haven't had to go past Step 2 this year so far.​

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Also, I should say in case you're wondering, I will post updated and, where possible, full lists on what I've shown here at the end of the season. So if you're wondering where on lists such as the BOG list above a certain player is, you're gonna have to wait until Spetember-October to see.​

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But also I'll just answer the question put forth, A11dAtP0w3R Mitch Clark had 3 BOGs out of 9 scoring games. The other 75 (and counting) shall be revealed in time.​

 

[A11dAtP0w3R]

If Chris Dawes is one and Cam Perderson isn't I'm going to be so disappointed in this board

 

[FootyGuy13]

There is a big gap in the voting between the Top 5 and everyone else. Gawn missing games might make him destined for 5th, depending how the next month goes. Petracca pretty much has 1 hand on the trophy, Oliver has gone from 5th to 2nd in 2 games and Brayshaw, Lever and Weideman all got their 2nd scoring game for the year.​

But instead of focusing who got points, I found out something about the guy who finished 6th, Charlie Spargo, who had his best voting game in his career. Spargo got 6.94% of the votes this week, the only other time he's gotten a proper chunk of votes was Round 6, 2018. Now before this game gone, I was gonna look at the players who have struggled to get a point anyway, what a coincidence that Spargo topped that list.​

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That list being that Spargo has gone 27 games without finishing in the Top 5 of any vote thread, more than any other player. Now, that doesn't make him the worst, since the proper worst players wouldn't get on the field much less got on the grass 27 times. The other thing being that he's polled votes 7 times now, therefore making Dom Barry our worst player, having never polled a vote, even after given 5 chances to do so. Or maybe he was unlucky with circumstances that I can't remember, You Be The Judge.​

Also, this list might have revealed why this voting rigmarole is named after Nick Smith... among other reasons.​

 

[Headless]

Brilliant.

 

[A11dAtP0w3R]

* some of those name make me shudder, in particular, Bode, White and Gillies.

 

[FootyGuy13]

Alright, time to do something that's SirSwampThing level of niche. I decided to look at which player gotten the most 426 career points by their 23rd birthday, to see who really is the definition of an early bloomer. Totally no reason why I chose 23rd

And it definitely shouldn't be a surprise that Oliver is that player. In fact, the Top 5 either won a Bluey, 426 and/or both by their 23rd birthday.
The other thing of note are the 2 players I found that were voted BOG on their 23rd Birthday, Ricky Petterd and Colin Garland. I mean, that's rare by itself, let alone twice, let alone twice in a year! And before you ask, it's confident to say that all players in age between Oliver and this year's debutants won't reach 50 points by the time-frame.

Alright, time to think of something for next week.​

 

[Headless]

Brilliant. Some interesting names there. How about most votes when aged 30+?

 

[FootyGuy13]

How about most votes when aged 30+?

Much of the same story really...

Except now there's less winners...down to 0.
What James McDonald does have, however, are 2 Top 3 finishes at the age of 30 and 33. Daniel Cross got 2 Top 5 finishes at 31 and 32 while Bernie Vince finished 6th at 30.
Long story short, unless they came to club at 30+, or they're James McDonald/Nathan Jones, don't expect much from a Melbourne player once the Big 3 0 comes around, should they reach Big 3 0, kinda a small list.

P.S. Having a look, I think Brad Green is the oldest winner, being 29 in 2010.

 

[Headless]

Awesome.

James McDonald - what a player.

 

[Topkent]

Alright, time to do something that's SirSwampThing level of niche. I decided to look at which player gotten the most 426 career points by their 23rd birthday, to see who really is the definition of an early bloomer. Totally no reason why I chose 23rd
View attachment 939135
And it definitely shouldn't be a surprise that Oliver is that player. In fact, the Top 5 either won a Bluey, 426 and/or both by their 23rd birthday.
The other thing of note are the 2 players I found that were voted BOG on their 23rd Birthday, Ricky Petterd and Colin Garland. I mean, that's rare by itself, let alone twice, let alone twice in a year! And before you ask, it's confident to say that all players in age between Oliver and this year's debutants won't reach 50 points by the time-frame.

Alright, time to think of something for next week.​

How s**t is our development lol, managed to * the career of almost every player there.

 

[saj_21]

How sh*t is our development lol, managed to fu** the career of almost every player there.

Not to mention we cooked 90% of our picks from 07-13 so those players would be 25-31 now.

2008;

Watts
Blease
Strauss
Bennell


2009,

scully
Trengove
Gysberts
Tapscott
Gawn

nail 4more of those picks along with Gawn (Jetta at 51 in 08) and things may have been a little different*

Maybe we would of been a middle of the road flat track bully 3 years earlier

 

[FootyGuy13]

Now, here's an interesting concept that I've been waiting until it was relevant to bring out. We see that those who hit the ground running in seasons usually go on to win the award overall, but what about the opposite side of the season? Those who go into the pre-season/finals being in team-based form but maybe not best overall. Have a look...

While you are somewhat guaranteed of a Top 5 finish, it's only been since the Nathan Jones years that the best player of the last 6 games has been the best player overall regularly. The other thing is that 2008 and 2012 are actually tied results, I singled out McDonald and Jones in those years due to having more BOG performances than Bruce and Grimes. It doesn't change that Nathan Jones is a 6-time winner of this, hence why he gets it named after him.

Notes: This is one of just a few ways I can include 2001 results, 2008 includes the 3 games that were determined with board votes and, like the Fast Starter, 2020 will only include the last 4 games.

 

[Headless]

So good. Awesome work.

Could this thread be stickied by any chance btw?

 

[FootyGuy13]

And we're back to the bland looking tables...
This week we look at how close each season has been, now that we're getting to the pointy end of the season.

Interesting that we've had the winner decided before the last round every year since 2012, except for 2018 when we had finals but Oliver was always gonna have trouble not knowing how many games he had left.

The table on the right represents 17-games season, to compare how the 2020 season in going. Interesting to note that the margin at Round 17 have generally been closer than what it is at Round 22 and, obviously, can throw up different winners (look at 2002-2011, nearly every year it's different).

Note: The "Round" column represents how many rounds were left when a winner was definite. If there's a decimal, it means that 1st place has won, but someone else can still tie the result. Also, the "Diff" for 2002-05 is the margin divided by 3, 2006 is divided by 5 while 2007 onwards in divided by 10. Basically, it's divided by the highest amount of points you can get in a round of that season.​

 

[FootyGuy13]

Alright, with the season most likely to finish against Essendon, there's 2 ways the 426 can end this year:
1) Christian Petracca finishes anywhere in the Top 5 to have a big enough gap to be declared the winner with a game in hand.
2) Steven May finishes anywhere in the Top 5, and Petracca doesn't, to bridge the gap enough to still be a shot to win going into the last round.
If May finishes 5th, and Petracca doesn't place, Petracca will win but May will have a chance to tie.

So, with that in mind, here is every other year.
I've included the teams on top to spell it out, in case there were any that were a bit tricky.

Spoiler: Full History

You know an idea I had that someone with better skill should do? A cover of "We Didn't Start the Fire" about the MFC. Perfect song title as well.

 

[FootyGuy13]

Guys, it's official. After 3 years and 33 games for the club, Charlie Spargo has finally scored in the 426! This leaves James Strauss to be, once again, be the player to have the most games at Melbourne without polling in the Top 5 once.

At the other end of the leader board, I could call Petracca the winner now (such are my hopes of finals right now). I will save it until we are no chance of progressing further so either I'll be announcing a winner on Saturday, Sunday or just some time in the future. The terms of which May needs to catch up haven't change except now he has 2 less points to make up. Not to mention May's battle with Langdon for the Late Bloomer Award.

So, while we wait for that, I'm gonna post about something I did last year. How good is the 426 at predicting the Brownlow?
I found 6 Brownlow Predictors and took an average. I then took the placings from each, put them through the 426, and took that average. Then, on Brownlow night after the votes were revealed, I took those placings and put that through the 426. The results were so...

The 426 was the only place I saw Hore mentioned as getting a vote against the Suns for his match-saving goal. The 426 also predicted all of Viney's votes. What the 426 got wrong, however, was having Melksham, Jones and Preuss being vote-getters, missed Tom McDonald being called BOG against Freo, overestimated Gawn, underestimated Oliver and didn't have Fritsch in the Top 5 against Carlton, let alone Top 2.

But then again, it's still just another prediction. No one knows how Brownlow night is gonna go. I mean, you can have a idea of what will happen, but you'll never have the full picture until the night is won and done. When the 2020 Brownlow thread up, I'll post the 426 Brownlow predictions there to see how they were.

 

[A11dAtP0w3R]

Thank goodness Charlie got some votes, I'll finally be able to get some sleep!

 

[FootyGuy13]

And just like that, we have a winner!
After a dominant pre-season, an even better start to the main season before finishing with regular scoring games, the winner is
CHRISTIAN PETRACCA

Petracca was never in doubt after taking the lead in front of empty stands and created what would be an unassailable lead.
Steven May left the run a bit late and still needed another game to catch up, unfortunately we lost to Freo and Footscray didn't so it's second place for him (though May does get a few awards this year...)
This also means I'm gonna have to create a bigger, better summary on Tuesday night, plenty of time.

Also, nows the time I ask TheDarkDwarf TheCount to sticky the thread.​