Originally posted by Tas
What I find a little odd is that for a team that went wide a fair bit last year I am surprised that Adelaide only had four players in the top 100 for disposals for 2003, those being Ricciuto, McLeod, Edwards and Bickley.
I don't think we went all that wide last year, to be honest.
Overall, Adelaide ranked 12th in kicks per game, 3rd in handballs per game, and 6th in disposals per game. Meantime, they were 9th in points for over the season.
Interestingly, the #1 team in disposals per game was the Doggies, and #16 (by a long, long way) were Carlton. Both were ordinary in '03 - one because they overused the footy, and one because they couldn't get the footy.
The fact that Adelaide had only 4 players in the top 100 for disposals but finished 6th in the league suggests two things to me:
1 - Regular high possession midfielders (Burton 20.5 touches per game in 03, Goodwin 18 per game) missed big chunks of the year with injury and didn't finish up so high in aggregate possessions as, say, some Sydney players (who had 14 players who missed at most one game). Matthew Bode also had an injury and form slump that took him down 200 touches from the previous season.
2 - Depth in the second tier. Plenty of players who don't get it 30 times a game, but very few who only touch it 5 times. Johncock, Stenglein, Massie, Ladhams and Begley all averaged around 15 touches per game last year in the games they played, and most other regulars were over 10 per game.