Resource 2021 Stats Thread

JakeNeadeFan

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Starting the stats thread for this year. Some resources below if you want to contribute:


If you use the programming language "R", the package "fitzRoy" is really good for data sourcing and interfaces with the "fryzigg" API which is easily the best source of AFL data you can find publicly for free.


If anyone has a request for an interesting stat they would like to know requests are also welcome!

Goalless Quarters

My first statistical deep-dive of the year is on the Hinkley trademark goalless quarters. Since the 2015 season, which most consider to be the inception of the HinkleyBall mode of football, Port has had a total of 29 goalless quarters. This puts us having the ninth most in competition since this point in time. Carlton has had the most with 49 and Geelong have had the least with 18.

1612063369494.png


Last year many people noted that we had a significant amount of goalless quarters for a minor premier. Last year we had 5 goalless quarters (anecdotally I thought it was more...), which ranks us as having the equal second most goalless quarters for a top ranked team at the end of the minor round for seasons after 1980 (in the early 1900s teams had way more goalless quarters) with West Coast having the most with 6 in 2006. The least is 1 goalless quarter shared by 20 different teams (including the Port 2004 side). No team has ever gone an entire season without a goalless quarter.

Note that we played less games last year than previous seasons, so the 5 looks a bit better than it is.

Since 2015, we have had 8 goalless 1st quarters, 6 goalless second quarters, 3 goalless third quarters and 12(!) goalless last quarters. Interesting that over a third of them occur in the last quarter.

When we have a goalless quarter our win rate is only 22% which is significantly below our overall win rate since 2015 of 52%.
 

Powerage

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You may choose to take this on or not. I'd like to know what our kicking for goal is like compared to other clubs, and, if possible, how many games it has cost us.

Those goalless first quarters are devastating, particularly if the other side kicks a couple of majors. It appears we have not had as many though compared to other clubs as some would have thought.
 

JakeNeadeFan

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You may choose to take this on or not. I'd like to know what our kicking for goal is like compared to other clubs, and, if possible, how many games it has cost us.

Those goalless first quarters are devastating, particularly if the other side kicks a couple of majors. It appears we have not had as many though compared to other clubs as some would have thought.
Yes sounds like a good area to have a look at. One way of looking at it is altering our scores to some sort of league average in terms of goal accuracy (I think this is what Champion Data so with their expected scores) and then seeing how many games we would win. But is this really realistic? When you score a goal the ball goes back to the centre and its less likely you will score again. Particularly with our style of locking the ball in the front half.

Nonetheless would be interesting to see general accuracy in a few different ways. Will look at it on the weekend.

Anything similar for Python?
Unfortunately I don't think so. Maybe a good opportunity to learn R!

Pretty sure all 12 of those goalless last quarters were at Adelaide Oval, trailing by 7 points at 3QT, having had 43 inside 50s in the last quarter, and most of the games were against West Coast.
Hahaha. I had a look at this and it turns out West Coast only come up once! Round 21 2018, the Jeremy McGovern goal after the siren. What an awful game.

Here is the rest of the 12 games:

1612335070076.png
 
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Hahaha. I had a look at this and it turns out West Coast only come up once! Round 21 2018, the Jeremy McGovern goal after the siren. What an awful game.

Here is the rest of the 12 games:

View attachment 1050610
How often are no scoring quarters likely in close games (under 2 goals) in general? Surely they are usually in one sided contests. That we have 3 (with 2 of them losses) is an extra black mark against Hinkley on top of the sheer numbers.
 
Hahaha. I had a look at this and it turns out West Coast only come up once! Round 21 2018, the Jeremy McGovern goal after the siren. What an awful game.

Here is the rest of the 12 games:

View attachment 1050610

I'll take half a point on 9 of the 12 being at home lol.
 

JakeNeadeFan

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How often are no scoring quarters likely in close games (under 2 goals) in general? Surely they are usually in one sided contests. That we have 3 (with 2 of them losses) is an extra black mark against Hinkley on top of the sheer numbers.

About 30% of games with a margin 2 goals or under have at least one team with a goalless quarter (in games including and after the 2015 season). This compares to a 37% rate when looking at all games. So not a huge difference.

If you look at goalless last quarters, only 12% of games with a margin 2 goals or under have at least one team with a goalless last quarter. It's about the same rate (12%) looking at all games.

Now, if you look at Port Adelaide, about 17% of our close games had a goalless last quarter. So it is a little bit over the mean, but not too much considering a very small sample size (only 28 of our games since 2015 have had margins less than or equal to 12 points, with 5 of them involving a goalless last quarter).

Here are the 5 games spoke about above, all 5 at home! Interestingly 3 in 2018, 2 in 2015 and none since if my analysis is correct. I remember all these games vividly.

1612510467612.png
 

JakeNeadeFan

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Scoring Efficiency

As requested, the next aspect I'll look at is scoring efficiency. I'll start by looking at some general stats and might get a bit more specific in a following post.

Inside 50s

I think any discussion about scoring efficiency needs to be prefaced with a word on inside 50s. After all, you can be the most efficient team in the competition but if you are not getting the ball inside 50 it will not amount to a score.

Port ranked 2nd for average inside 50s per game in 2020 (only second to Richmond). This follows from being ranked 1st in 2019 and 7th in 2018. So we do very well with respect to this part of the game. One of the reasons that we do well is that we don't overuse the ball. We only have about 6.7 disposals per I50, ranking us 4th in the league for this stat in 2020.

But does our lack of disposals lead to junk inside 50s that don't lead to scoring shots?

1612653879130.png


Converting I50s to shots

**Note** Shots include all shots on goal, including OOFs and shots that are smothered/don't make the distance etc.

The next step to scoring is converting entries to scoring shots. There's nothing worse then getting repeat inside 50s which end up in the hands of intercepting defenders. It turns out we rank very highly in this stat, with us having about 0.46 shots on goal per I50. This places us 7th in the league, with West Coast being the benchmark.

1612654211303.png


This was the big improvement offensively in 2020. In 2019 we were ranked 15th in this stat, in 2020 we were ranked 7th. It's reasonable to suggest that this was one of the big drivers in our rise up the ladder in 2020.

Notably, Richmond don't do very well in this stat at all, but when they get a shot they get a goal more often, as shown in the next section.

Converting shots to goals

The end goal is getting the ball through the big sticks, and the measure of this is how well you convert scoring shots into goals. And unfortunately, this is the area we are lacking. Our goal accuracy was about 45% in 2020, which placed us 13th in the league. This puts us with the cellar dwellers of the competition, with Brisbane, who also suck in this category. Richmond and Geelong perform significantly better than us here.

1612654974519.png


Notably this is an area we have been deficient in for some time. In 2018 we were 12th, 2019 16th and 2020 13th.

If we are to win the premiership you would think this is a good area to target improvement.
 
Thought I would compare 2021 scoring to 2019 over the first 2 rounds to see if the game has been opened up by the stand rule. The 6-6-6 rule and 8 others were introduced for the 2019 season and are still around.

Decided to look at converted scores rather goals scored as conversion levels aren't great at the best of times.

It doesn't take into account attempted shots like set shots and snaps that don't make the distance or don't score as they out of bounds, but does included rushed behinds by the oppo.

Against North for example we kicked 17.15 from 60 inside 50's, but had 35 shots on goal, 2 were rushed behinds spoils from shots on goal, rather than oppo walking the ball over the line and 3 shots did not make the distance.

Get 30 scoring shots from 60 inside 50's and it has been a good attacking day. But that doesn't meaning you will kick 20 goals. I have put in dark yellow 30+ scoring shots and 60+ I50's. I have highlighted in lighter yellow 28-29 scoring shots and 58-59 I50's.

So Rd 1 2021 v 2019 produced more converted scores from more I50's and Rd 2 2021 v 2019 produced 10% more converted scores from 5% less I50's. It suggests the lets make changes to increase scoring is working.


1616991468974.png
 
Will update the centre bounce attendance stats at this post. These guys don't do it every game it seems.

Port


North




Port


Essendon



Port


Rich



Port


StK
 
Last edited:
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Thought I would compare 2021 scoring to 2019 over the first 2 rounds to see if the game has been opened up by the stand rule. The 6-6-6 rule and 8 others were introduced for the 2019 season and are still around.

Decided to look at converted scores rather goals scored as conversion levels aren't great at the best of times.

It doesn't take into account attempted shots like set shots and snaps that don't make the distance or don't score as they out of bounds, but does included rushed behinds by the oppo.

Against North for example we kicked 17.15 from 60 inside 50's, but had 35 shots on goal, 2 were rushed behinds spoils from shots on goal, rather than oppo walking the ball over the line and 3 shots did not make the distance.

Get 30 scoring shots from 60 inside 50's and it has been a good attacking day. But that doesn't meaning you will kick 20 goals. I have put in dark yellow 30+ scoring shots and 60+ I50's. I have highlighted in lighter yellow 28-29 scoring shots and 58-59 I50's.

So Rd 1 2021 v 2019 produced more converted scores from more I50's and Rd 2 2021 v 2019 produced 10% more converted scores from 5% less I50's. It suggests the lets make changes to increase scoring is working.


View attachment 1089001
Yes, but 24 games are still a small sample.
 
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Thought I would compare 2021 scoring to 2019 over the first 2 rounds to see if the game has been opened up by the stand rule. The 6-6-6 rule and 8 others were introduced for the 2019 season and are still around.

Decided to look at converted scores rather goals scored as conversion levels aren't great at the best of times.

It doesn't take into account attempted shots like set shots and snaps that don't make the distance or don't score as they out of bounds, but does included rushed behinds by the oppo.

Against North for example we kicked 17.15 from 60 inside 50's, but had 35 shots on goal, 2 were rushed behinds spoils from shots on goal, rather than oppo walking the ball over the line and 3 shots did not make the distance.

Get 30 scoring shots from 60 inside 50's and it has been a good attacking day. But that doesn't meaning you will kick 20 goals. I have put in dark yellow 30+ scoring shots and 60+ I50's. I have highlighted in lighter yellow 28-29 scoring shots and 58-59 I50's.

So Rd 1 2021 v 2019 produced more converted scores from more I50's and Rd 2 2021 v 2019 produced 10% more converted scores from 5% less I50's. It suggests the lets make changes to increase scoring is working.


View attachment 1089001
All that just to say there’s been more scoring?
 
See above for some of first 7 rounds.













Vs Bulldogs Port lost centre clearances 13-14 and stoppage clearances 25-30 for 38-44 result.

Centre clearances
Boak 4
Wines 3
Gray 3
Drew 1
SPP 1
Dixon 1

Liber 5
Bont 3
Smith 3
Treloar 1
MaCrae 1
Sweet 1
 
Taken from the media shakes head thread.

Meh, I don’t know where to put this



Before this Leppitsch said;

2020 Port were AFL #1 for clearances and AFL #1 for stoppages. Port won stoppages and went forward and they scored.

2020 Port also were AFL#2 for front half turnovers, so either score 1st or scored 2nd.

Problem for Port in 2020 was AFL#17 for accuracy.

Port's DNA last year and Port's DNA this year is a little different. Then said what is quoted above;

10th in clearances - not getting the field positioning they were getting last year, which means scoring more from the back half of the ground. More end to end scoring this year. Then added;

Now 12th for front half points scored and scoring more from back half than front half.

So their game has flipped from one season to the next. They have to try and get clearance dominance back. Improve inside stuff. Port said they had to improve outside ball, but have robbed one to pay the other.
 

PowerBaz

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Taken from the media shakes head thread.



Before this Leppitsch said;

2020 Port were AFL #1 for clearances and AFL #1 for stoppages. Port won stoppages and went forward and they scored.

2020 Port also were AFL#2 for front half turnovers, so either score 1st or scored 2nd.

Problem for Port in 2020 was AFL#17 for accuracy.

Port's DNA last year and Port's DNA this year is a little different. Then said what is quoted above;

10th in clearances - not getting the field positioning they were getting last year, which means scoring more from the back half of the ground. More end to end scoring this year. Then added;

Now 12th for front half points scored and scoring more from back half than front half.

So their game has flipped from one season to the next. They have to try and get clearance dominance back. Improve inside stuff. Port said they had to improve outside ball, but have robbed one to pay the other.

Feels like Ken and Co rearrange it all every year....
 
This graphic on FootySA this morning shows why we struggle against the best sides who have greater midfield top 4 and midfield depth.

No doubt we are missing Rockliff's output and Butters creativity and SPP has only played 3 games but it shows how dependent we are on Ollie who ie in All Oz form and Boak pretty close to last years form but getting plenty of attention.

Gray goes in there, gets clearances but not the disposals of a top midfielder. We need Houston and Rozee to go in there and get more of the ball.

Amon gets plenty of the ball but plays on the wing more than inside midfield.


1621739205884.png



Below are the stats for what the sides that have beaten us, their midfielders are averaging this year.

I have gone to the AFL stats page and set the position at midfielders, so plyers are defined as mid fielders by Champion Data, and are sorted by average disposals and I have included contested possessions, centre clearances, all clearances to distinguish between inside mids and outside mids of if you are Jack Macrae you are very good at playing both roles.

Stats are for all games played until end of Saturday night 22/5/21 Rd 9.


Of Port's 9 games Wines played 9, Boak 8, Amon 9, Butters 4, Duursma 4, Drew 9, SPP 3, Gray 9.

1621740995448.png



WCE have played 9 games, Gaff 9, Shuey 1, Kelly 9, Redden 9, Sheed 9, Brander 7, O'Neill 4, Ah Chee 3.

If you include Nick Nat as a midfielder he is 7th. 13.2 disposals, 11 contested, 2.9 centre clearances 6.7 total clearances

1621741017287.png



Brisbane have played 10 games Lyons 10, McCluggage 10, Neale 6, Zorko 10, Robinson 10, Bailey 6, Mathieson 5, Robertson 7.

1621741038895.png



Bulldogs have played 10 games Macrae 10, Dunkley 6, Bont 10, Liber 10, Treloar 10, B Smith 10, Hunter 9, Lipinski 8.

1621741062438.png
 
2 sides above us midfield's output so far this year.

Melbourne have played 10 games, Oliver 10, Petraca 10, Langdon 10, Harmes 4, Viney 5, Brayshaw 10, Jordon 10, Jones 7

Gawn has played 10 games 18.8 disposals, 10.4 contested, 1.4 centre clearances, 3.8 total clearances

1621743117990.png




Geelong have played 10 games Guthrie 10, Duncan 8, Selwood 10, Danger 2, Menegola 8, Smith 10, Parfitt 9, Narkle 5

1621743138360.png
 
Big Dix isn't kicking goals but the CD Player ratings Algorithm is giving him plenty of marks for the other stuff he is doing.

Ollie's output this year has seen him rise up the ranks to a top 40 player now.


AFL Player Ratings @AFLPlayerRating
Biggest relative rise in Overall Standing this season.



1621827494365.png
 
This is for the 2021 not 2.5 seasons totals as per above post. Drew's hard work is recognized by the Algorithm.

Top players in 2021
Bont 19.6, Liber 19.2, Oliver 19.0, Naitanui 18.0, Grundy 17.5

AFL Player Ratings@AFLPlayerRating
Club Leaders Rounds 1-10. (min 7 games)

1621828424610.png
 

JakeNeadeFan

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Big Dix isn't kicking goals but the CD Player ratings Algorithm is giving him plenty of marks for the other stuff he is doing.

Ollie's output this year has seen him rise up the ranks to a top 40 player now.


AFL Player Ratings @AFLPlayerRating
Biggest relative rise in Overall Standing this season.



View attachment 1135995
Any system that ranked Taylor Walker higher than Dixon last year doesn't pass the smell test. From memory there is some lag? Surprised it didn't correct more from 2020.
 
Any system that ranked Taylor Walker higher than Dixon last year doesn't pass the smell test. From memory there is some lag? Surprised it didn't correct more from 2020.
It is a cumulative 2 season performance thing which is fair enough. Charlie in 2019 was coming back from a *in serious ankle injury so he didn't rack up many points in the 10 games he played. That's not a flaw, its just cumulative reality.
 

JakeNeadeFan

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It is a cumulative 2 season performance thing which is fair enough. Charlie in 2019 was coming back from a fu**in serious ankle injury so he didn't rack up many points in the 10 games he played. That's not a flaw, its just cumulative reality.
40 games is too long. They should also progressively reduce the weights of the games in the first 20 (they only do it for 20-40).
 
After Rd 10.

As Justin Leppitsch pointed out in his SEN segment last week, Port have changed the way they play and are no longer a dominate forward half team and are generating more scores from defence and not from being #1 clearance side and driving the ball forward, so that's why we are 12th for scoring shots ie inc those that don't make the distance or go out of bounds/on the full. Port have kicked the 9th most amount of goals. After Rd 6 Port were 2nd.

Proof we start too many games slowly then get a kick up the arse at quarter time and do well in the 2nd quarter.


1622080363377.png



The full Team Dashboard appears below, a few of the interesting things from which are that:
  • Western Bulldogs are yet to lose a Q1
  • Adelaide is still yet to win a Q3
  • Gold Coast have scored 31% of their points in Q3s
  • Sydney have scored 57% of their points in Q2s and Q3s
  • West Coast have scored 59% of their points in Q2s and Q3s
  • Geelong have scored 32% of their points in Q3s and 57% in Q2s and Q3s
  • Essendon have scored more goals than every other team except Western Bulldogs
  • Essendon have recorded 58.2% of their Scoring Shots as goals, Fremantle only 45.2%
  • Collingwood’s opponents have registered 57.6% of their Scoring Shots as goals, Sydney only 46.2%
  • The teams in the first four spots on the competition ladder Western Bulldogs, Melbourne, Geelong, and Brisbane Lions, are the only teams to have outscored their opponents in each of the four quarters considered separately
  • Hawthorn, North Melbourne, and St Kilda are the only teams to have been outscored by their opponents in each of the four quarters considered separately
  • Carlton, despite sitting 12th on the competition ladder, have won more quarters than they’ve lost so far this season

1622081074284.png
 
40 games is too long. They should also progressively reduce the weights of the games in the first 20 (they only do it for 20-40).
So you want Tex Walker elevated to greatness because he has had a good 10 games? Great players aren't great for a couple of weeks, they are great for a sustained period. That's what they are trying to show over 40 games.
 
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