Title : Footballistics
Author(s) : James Coventry [Coventry, James]
Publisher : ABC Books
Comments : How the Data Analytics Revolution is Uncovering Footy's Hidden Truths
Go easy on me - this is my first book review since the late 1980s!
I read Footballistics over the Christmas holidays after receiving it as a present.
I must begin by saying that I am no serious student of the game, but I am interested in psychology and how people think. I routinely place in the bottom half of my football tipping competition at work, and don't play supercoach or fantasy football leagues. I do however have an interest in expertise and decision making, and this book covers a lot of these topics in an Australian Rules Football context.
The book is a good read if you are interested in the psychology of assessment (i.e. how you assess a player or team) and the biases and heuristics we bring into judgements we make, and if you are interested in sports economics and the various models that are being developed to try to give teams an edge over the rest of the competition using data science.
Footballistics contains fifteen chapters covering various statistics, metrics and myths in the AFL from goal kicking, momentum, player ratings and the draft.
The book is let down, in my opinion, when Coventry focusses too heavily on the statistics while neglecting the underlying story - at these points I tended to turn off and skim those sections.
The highlights of the book come from the interweaving of the stories with the statistics. Some examples include:
- Introduction: An insight into how stats were used to determine Hawthorn's tactics in the 2015 Grand Final
- Chapter 1: Port Adelaide's kicking woes
- Chapter 1: crunch time
- Chapter 4: Craig Jennings at Melbourne knowing the probability of whether Melbourne could beat West Coast
- Chapter 5: David Rath's influence on developing the cluster
- Chapter 10: The shared experience model of premiership success applied to recent premierships
- Chapter 11: umpire bias and how it probably cost Greg Williams a Brownlow medal in 1993
- Chapter 12: the South Australians who aren't in the Hall of Fame
- Chapter 13: team ratings - is Hawthorn of 2008-2015 comparable to the Collingwood "Machine" that won 4 premierships in a row?
What appealed to me about the book was the fact that it highlighted the emerging "Moneyball" approach to AFL, and how I could potentially be a more knowledgable fan than the average punter (and perhaps a better tipper) by understanding some of the stats rather than simply following my gut/heart/toss of the coin. It also mentioned or paid hommage to a few of my favourite authors - Michael Lewis (of Moneyball and the Undoing Project), Tversky and Kahneman, and Malcolm Gladwell of Outliers and Tipping Point fame.
I highly recommend you get your hands on a copy of this book if you're interested in understanding AFL football from a more rational, data-driven point of view.
Love to hear other people's take on the book!
Author(s) : James Coventry [Coventry, James]
Publisher : ABC Books
Comments : How the Data Analytics Revolution is Uncovering Footy's Hidden Truths
Go easy on me - this is my first book review since the late 1980s!
I read Footballistics over the Christmas holidays after receiving it as a present.
I must begin by saying that I am no serious student of the game, but I am interested in psychology and how people think. I routinely place in the bottom half of my football tipping competition at work, and don't play supercoach or fantasy football leagues. I do however have an interest in expertise and decision making, and this book covers a lot of these topics in an Australian Rules Football context.
The book is a good read if you are interested in the psychology of assessment (i.e. how you assess a player or team) and the biases and heuristics we bring into judgements we make, and if you are interested in sports economics and the various models that are being developed to try to give teams an edge over the rest of the competition using data science.
Footballistics contains fifteen chapters covering various statistics, metrics and myths in the AFL from goal kicking, momentum, player ratings and the draft.
The book is let down, in my opinion, when Coventry focusses too heavily on the statistics while neglecting the underlying story - at these points I tended to turn off and skim those sections.
The highlights of the book come from the interweaving of the stories with the statistics. Some examples include:
- Introduction: An insight into how stats were used to determine Hawthorn's tactics in the 2015 Grand Final
- Chapter 1: Port Adelaide's kicking woes
- Chapter 1: crunch time
- Chapter 4: Craig Jennings at Melbourne knowing the probability of whether Melbourne could beat West Coast
- Chapter 5: David Rath's influence on developing the cluster
- Chapter 10: The shared experience model of premiership success applied to recent premierships
- Chapter 11: umpire bias and how it probably cost Greg Williams a Brownlow medal in 1993
- Chapter 12: the South Australians who aren't in the Hall of Fame
- Chapter 13: team ratings - is Hawthorn of 2008-2015 comparable to the Collingwood "Machine" that won 4 premierships in a row?
What appealed to me about the book was the fact that it highlighted the emerging "Moneyball" approach to AFL, and how I could potentially be a more knowledgable fan than the average punter (and perhaps a better tipper) by understanding some of the stats rather than simply following my gut/heart/toss of the coin. It also mentioned or paid hommage to a few of my favourite authors - Michael Lewis (of Moneyball and the Undoing Project), Tversky and Kahneman, and Malcolm Gladwell of Outliers and Tipping Point fame.
I highly recommend you get your hands on a copy of this book if you're interested in understanding AFL football from a more rational, data-driven point of view.
Love to hear other people's take on the book!
