- Sep 22, 2008
- 25,524
- 34,634
- AFL Club
- Western Bulldogs
- Banned
- #326
The only data that is relevant for us is our team, every team has a different style of play, some don’t focus on clearance dominance but prefer to play turnover footy, or have strong rucks but weak midfield etc so doesn’t really relate to usThanks OG, appreciate the effort.
I thought these stats would be random, but not to this degree.
There’s some consistency amongst some teams. Brisbane through almost all categories and a few of the bottom 8 teams have generally poor performing rucks and midfields at stoppages.
Beside that, there’s almost no consistency suggesting any sort of correlation between an effective ruck and effective midfield at stoppages. Going on the clearance (first disposal) figures. So many variations involved with midfield influence at the three different stoppage points.
Melbourne an interesting one. Has mid table ruck effectiveness with a drop off for first disposal. This is with the best ruck combo in the league and the best midfield in the league.
There’s a group of 8-10 team across all games that have a fair discrepancy between hit adv and first disposal. That’s going either way. With a spread across ladder positions also.
It goes a long way in explaining our coaches attitude on the influence rucks have on a game. And going on the data as a whole, there’s no real evidence to suggest having a “genuine ruck” playing as the first or second ruck role being pivotal to a teams midfield success.
Our team being the best example. Which is pretty ironic
I just hope the ruckman fanatics take the time to go through the data and acknowledge it as it’s quiet obvious theres been a lot of wasted energy spent on this discussion by a few of them.
We play a midfield heavy game where we rely on midfield dominance, so the only data that is relevant is our stats with 2 rucks and our stats with 1 ruck - obviously 2 games for Sweet is not enough of a sample size to make a conclusion off but if the next few go the same way then the results are quite clear imo - and that’s not even taking into account the huge advantage we get of English > Cordy in the 2nd ruck utility role