Analysis Champion Data articles

[Teriyakicat]

I took a few screenshots of some tables from an article on the AFL site- there have been a series of articles that have as their headline "The Enquirer".

The first two sets of stats look at how the game has changed over the past 15 years
*date of article was Aug 7th- (after Round 18) Final pic uses data up to and including R 17






and wowee! Look here!!! Which team is the only team to appear in the top 8 in every single year on the chart?? Hmmm???
Go CATS!!!!

 

[Baudolino]

Very interesting Inquirer piece today on the AFL website appraising the best and worst field kicks in the competition using a statistic known as "kicking ratings". While kicking and disposal efficiency - statistics most of us are familiar with - simply measure the percentage of times a kick reaches it's intended target, kicking ratings provide a more nuanced assessment of a player's footskills by measuring how they use the ball by foot relative to expectation according to many factors taken in to account by Champion Data such as distance, direction, target type and pressure. So a player able to regularly hit difficult targets under pressure will have a high kicking rating. It's a shame this data isn't fully available to the public as it would furnish us with much better tools that we currently have with which to analyse kicking skill.

Sidenote: this infographic confirms my opinions about Duncan, Guthrie and Walker.

 

[Teriyakicat]

Very interesting Inquirer piece today on the AFL website appraising the best and worst field kicks in the competition using a statistic known as "kicking ratings". While kicking and disposal efficiency - statistics most of us are familiar with - simply measure the percentage of times a kick reaches it's intended target, kicking ratings provide a more nuanced assessment of a player's footskills by measuring how they use the ball by foot relative to expectation according to many factors taken in to account by Champion Data such as distance, direction, target type and pressure. So a player able to regularly hit difficult targets under pressure will have a high kicking rating. It's a shame this data isn't fully available to the public as it would furnish us with much better tools that we currently have with which to analyse kicking skill.

Sidenote: this infographic confirms my opinions about Duncan, Guthrie and Walker.

It might be a little subjective but as long as the method of evaluating the kicks is consistent, it stacks up. I've often noticed that our defenders have very good disposal efficiency and that might be because they can be under less pressure moving the ball to running targets or 1o1 contest rather than getting out of contested situations where the traffic can be very heavy or kicking into a flooded forward 50. The article you've quoted above has picked apart the disposals and yes, it'd be amazing if we could all get our hands on those stats, and highlighting just the kicking aspect.

I'm disappointed with those Walker stats. He had really improved his goal kicking but has really slid over the past month or two.
Clever players who can't kick straight need to work out that they should handpass, and not kick, to their teammates and their teammates need to help them out by staying within handpassing distance.
Mark Blake springs to mind here- he used to handpass about 4 x more than he kicked and he'd always find a target running close by (didn't mean he'd always hit the target up but that there was always someone nearby).
Walker needs to take a leaf out of Blake's book.

 

[Teriyakicat]

Some midfield data for the season- some surprises (especially the rocketing up from the bottom of the clearance "ladder" plus our clearance king) and some stats as expected.

 

[Teriyakicat]

Last year I posted a table which showed our hitout stats for each game and our clearances stats- both totals and per player. Can't recall where I posted it and cbf'ed looking right now so will post both last year's data and this year's data here, though it's not a CD article, it is their data. I think you might be interested, 10lana.



I thought that just looking at the group of players who were winning clearances this year- and comparing them with last year's crop, was interesting. The emergence of Blicavs and Stanley, the improvement of Caddy, Duncan getting more clearances per game, etc etc. was great. Hopefully George will make it back into the middle next year and we can have more young fellas picking up the clearances now that SJ, Stokes and Kelly have departed. Apart from Stokesy being lively at the stoppages last season, those three players have been getting phased out of the midfield over the past few years. Mots picked up some centre clearances this year and hopefully will be fit enough to work in there next season. Lang got clearances at stoppages- he might take Stokesy's role as the stoppage clearance guy

I found it difficult to simplify the stats enough to show a picture that wasn't too complex - hopefully I haven't left out too much.

 

[SJ]

http://championdata.fansunite.com.au/2015/12/02/25046/the-best-kicks-2010-2015

Scarlett and Duncan are both in the top five kicks in the past six seasons.