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Analysis Disposal Efficiency

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Oct 7, 2005
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Adelaide
AFL Club
Port Adelaide
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I have done a statistical analysis of 2015. I have cherry picked the key stats and it seems we have one major problem we have to fix if we are to improve in 2016. Here's my work.

Getting The Ball- Average to Good

The first important part of footy is getting the ball. We did this well- 3rd in Centre Clearances Average and 2nd in General Clearances. This may be a little skewed because our games had more stoppages than others. We were 7th in Contested Possession Average but our opposition had more contested possessions than us over the course of the season by a small margin.

Marking-Average

Football has two major skills- kicking and catching. Marking stats can be deceptive if you look at total numbers because short kicks to an unmarked player in the back pocket count as much as a pack mark hanger 10 meters out from goal. The key stats are Contested Marks (9th) and Marks Inside 50 (11th). Respectable.

Defensive Actions- Excellent

Key stats here are 1%ers (3rd) and Tackles (2nd). All good here.

Keeping The Ball- Very Poor

After you get the ball, you have to move the ball. Our Disposal Efficiency ranked 15th (no surprise Hawthorn were first by a couple percent). Our stats here are even worse when you consider there was an emphasis on this last pre-season and when you consider our defenders mostly had above average Disposal Efficiency when compared to defenders at other clubs. This probably means two things:

1. Our defenders played it too safe and did not move the ball on quickly enough and

2. Our forwards and midfielders can't kick or at least were close to the worst kicks in the comp in 2015.

What To Do

We have tried to fix our disposal efficiency by putting our best kicks (Hartlett and Krakauer) in the backlines. But this is in fact the area of the ground where these players are getting less value for their kicks. It's time to move our elite kicks further up the ground as more attacking options. I know I've said this before but how many great kicks can you recall from Hartlett in the back half of the ground. Up forward its a different thing.
 
Champion Data says that for 2015 our kick rating - kicks attempted divided by kicks expected to be made - was exactly on the league average, making us neither good kicks nor bad kicks (we were 8th in this stat). Remember that disposal efficiency also records handballs, and if those handballs don't hit a target because the players are in a contested situation, that percentage is going to be way down.

That low DE number is more to do with the pressure that is being put on the team in key areas to force them to cough the ball up rather than any perceived weakness in terms of skill...although being able to perform under pressure is definitely something our players need to learn! I'm in the process of doing a real in depth analysis of the key stats - there's more to the story and you can actually see through numbers exactly how opposition coaches did the number on us through the season.

It's actually a testament to the skill level of our players that we won as many games as we did.
 
Polec is surely going to help the kicking DE no end, and Dixon will have something to say about the CM and Mi50.

Nice summary dude, but stats games always seem a bit like trying to win a game of tennis by focusing on the scoreboard.

Also the variable "degree of difficulty" of the draw makes certain comparisons less valid than they may seem. 1st 2nd or 3rd or the other end of the spectrum sure, there's a bloody undeniable pattern. But comparisons of the middle 6-8 finishing and or middle-tier ranking teams are less... solid.
 
Low DE is a symptom rather than a cause. There are a lot of things that would effect it.

It is definitely a major problem, but the path to addressing it is surely very complicated.
 

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We said DE was a focus last pre-season but we also said that we didn't want to stop taking risks and taking the aggressive switch options so our DE may never be the best in the league for this reason. The major differences last year to 2014 was that our Contest possession differential was far worse which meant we weren't tough enough in the contest to win the ball, our inside 50 numbers and differential was no. 1 in 2014 and wasn't even close last year, the drop in inside 50s then translated to a drop of inside 50 marks which we were clearly no.1 for in 2014. Get back to tough contested footy and we'll be hard to stop.
 
We said DE was a focus last pre-season but we also said that we didn't want to stop taking risks and taking the aggressive switch options so our DE may never be the best in the league for this reason. The major differences last year to 2014 was that our Contest possession differential was far worse which meant we weren't tough enough in the contest to win the ball, our inside 50 numbers and differential was no. 1 in 2014 and wasn't even close last year, the drop in inside 50s then translated to a drop of inside 50 marks which we were clearly no.1 for in 2014. Get back to tough contested footy and we'll be hard to stop.

But we did stop taking risks- at least we were much slower moving forward. The stat that surprised me was that while our DE was 15th, most of the defenders had above average DE (players like Hombsch, Trengove, Pittard, Carlile). That means our midfield was even worse. Our average result for marks inside 50 also indicates a slower build up.

So we seem to have taken less risks, tried to hold on to the ball more and still had woeful DE.

Maybe we should resign ourselves to the fact that we don't play like Hawthorn and never will. We play contested footy and we run. Unfortunately even our contested footy wasn't top 8 stuff last year.
 
But we did stop taking risks- at least we were much slower moving forward. The stat that surprised me was that while our DE was 15th, most of the defenders had above average DE (players like Hombsch, Trengove, Pittard, Carlile). That means our midfield was even worse. Our average result for marks inside 50 also indicates a slower build up.

So we seem to have taken less risks, tried to hold on to the ball more and still had woeful DE.

Maybe we should resign ourselves to the fact that we don't play like Hawthorn and never will. We play contested footy and we run. Unfortunately even our contested footy wasn't top 8 stuff last year.
I know Bass is our defence coach but if he is as good a teacher as I have heard, I think he will make a massive difference this year.
 
Getting The Ball- Average to Good

The first important part of footy is getting the ball. We did this well- 3rd in Centre Clearances Average and 2nd in General Clearances. This may be a little skewed because our games had more stoppages than others. We were 7th in Contested Possession Average but our opposition had more contested possessions than us over the course of the season by a small margin.

We were 12th in clearance differential. 12th!

This figure you report isn't just skewed it's a total misrepresentation.

We had the most clearances because teams realised how poor we were in the contested ball/clearances and they realised by making it a game based on clearances they could beat us.

This was our biggest weakness and issue last year. It impacted our ball movement, increased turnovers, decreased our run, impacted our inside 50's, etc. All of this was affected heavily by our lack of clearance ability.

If we can return to a top 4-6 team in clearances (we were 6th in clearance diff in 2014) we will finish top 4
 
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We were 12th in clearance differential. 12th!

This figure you report isn't just skewed it's a total misrepresentation.

We had the most clearances because teams realised how poor we were in the contested ball/clearances and they realised by making it a game based on clearances they could beat us.

This was our biggest weakness and issue last year. It impacted our ball movement, increased turnovers, decreased our run, impacted our inside 50's, etc. All of this was affected heavily by our lack of clearance ability.

If we can return to a top 4-6 team in clearances we will finish top 4

Centre clearances were good though. This figure can't be skewed unless our games had more goals than others which they didn't.

For us to have the second most general clearances but the 12th best differential, our games must have had the most stoppages by a country mile. If so, perhaps we need to devise ways to reduce stoppages in our games and make them more free flowing.
 
We were 12th in clearance differential. 12th!

This figure you report isn't just skewed it's a total misrepresentation.

We had the most clearances because teams realised how poor we were in the contested ball/clearances and they realised by making it a game based on clearances they could beat us.

This was our biggest weakness and issue last year. It impacted our ball movement, increased turnovers, decreased our run, impacted our inside 50's, etc. All of this was affected heavily by our lack of clearance ability.

If we can return to a top 4-6 team in clearances (we were 6th in clearance diff in 2014) we will finish top 4

This really is a personnel issue more than anything. Full seasons out of Wines and Polec plus the expected continual improvement of S.Gray and Ah Chee gives our midfield much greater depth which will boost our clearance numbers immensely.
 
Centre clearances were good though. This figure can't be skewed unless our games had more goals than others which they didn't.

For us to have the second most general clearances but the 12th best differential, our games must have had the most stoppages by a country mile. If so, perhaps we need to devise ways to reduce stoppages in our games and make them more free flowing.
I did do some research on this, interestingly our centre clearances were significantly better than our general clearances. This stat isn't readily available as a differential so I had to go through each game manually. This probably indicates our top echelon are great at extracting the pill, but when we're reliant on more of the team to be involved we struggle. Interestingly also 16 of our 22 games were won by the team who won the centre clearances.

But yes in reply to your second point, firstly the amount of stoppages we had in our game highlights how the opposition worked us out. Secondly the idea of 'let's make the game more free flowing', is exactly what the problem is. That's what the opposition has stopped because they know if they choke us and make it a clearance based game that gives them the best chance of winning. The only ways to change this are to start winning the clearances so that teams stop using this tactic as they find it doesn't help them, or alternatively we become so good with our ball movement, disposal and decision making that it doesn't matter what happens with the game, when we get the ball we can move it wherever we want whenever and totally control the game. This is highly unlikely, but winning the clearances isn't. We get the clearance battle sorted and we're set.
 
For us to have the second most general clearances but the 12th best differential, our games must have had the most stoppages by a country mile.

There were 85.7 clearances a game in Port games. Only other team in the 80s was Brisbane.
 
Centre clearances were good though. This figure can't be skewed unless our games had more goals than others which they didn't.

For us to have the second most general clearances but the 12th best differential, our games must have had the most stoppages by a country mile. If so, perhaps we need to devise ways to reduce stoppages in our games and make them more free flowing.
I wrote about this after the Walsh Showdown in the The footy department's PRIMARY focus for the rest of this year thread and at the end of the season, with the clearance stats in total of the 18 clubs which showed it was just the differentials that were so bad but that we had more clearances than other teams, around 200 more than the top 4 teams and 100 more than Brisbane who were second on the list. See
July breakdown
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threa...est-of-this-year.1104671/page-2#post-39746293
September end of Rd 23 breakdown
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threa...est-of-this-year.1104671/page-4#post-40615494
 

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Champion Data says that for 2015 our kick rating - kicks attempted divided by kicks expected to be made - was exactly on the league average, making us neither good kicks nor bad kicks (we were 8th in this stat). Remember that disposal efficiency also records handballs, and if those handballs don't hit a target because the players are in a contested situation, that percentage is going to be way down.

That low DE number is more to do with the pressure that is being put on the team in key areas to force them to cough the ball up rather than any perceived weakness in terms of skill...although being able to perform under pressure is definitely something our players need to learn! I'm in the process of doing a real in depth analysis of the key stats - there's more to the story and you can actually see through numbers exactly how opposition coaches did the number on us through the season.

It's actually a testament to the skill level of our players that we won as many games as we did.
If we are average on kicking stats, then wasn't a 12-10 season reflective of being average? ie shit kicking skills wins 4 to 5 games, great kicking skills win 17 to 18 games, average skills give you a middle of the pack number of wins around an 11-11 type season, ie average = dictionary definition of average, not the modern vernacular definition of ordinary or poor.

Edit we were 9-8 against the other 17 sides, and in the 5 double up games went 3-2 including a win against Peel Thunder which probably has to be eliminated from any true sensible analysis of our season.
 
If we are average on kicking stats, then wasn't a 12-10 season reflective of being average? ie shit kicking skills wins 4 to 5 games, great kicking skills win 17 to 18 games, average skills give you a middle of the pack number of wins around an 11-11 type season, ie average = dictionary definition of average, not the modern vernacular definition of ordinary or poor.

Edit we were 9-8 against the other 17 sides, and in the 5 double up games went 3-2 including a win against Peel Thunder which probably has to be eliminated from any true sensible analysis of our season.

Average = 9th. It doesn't mean we were shit, but it doesn't mean we were good either.
 
Our skill level was always a sore point with me but under Ken, it has improved and hopefully will be better again this season, that should improve our over all efficiency. Sometimes it's not how many times you touch the footy, it's how you use it when you do. Wingard and Gray are a good example, they rarely waste a possession.
 
Considering we never really switched on until the end of the season, those stats are not to bad, not that all stats are a true indicator of how a side is traveling. There is plenty of room for improvement and with the return of Wines and Polec, i am sure that will come.
 
Average = 9th. It doesn't mean we were shit, but it doesn't mean we were good either.
I guess I was questioning your statement or maybe I have misread it - "It's actually a testament to the skill level of our players that we won as many games as we did." I reckon we won the right amount of games given the skills we displayed over a season. When we kicked at 51-53% efficiency range we lost, when we went at 70%+ we won. Our players showed average AFL skill levels over the whole season, and we won about the right number of games for those average skills rather than punching above our weight and that it was some surprise that we won as many games as we did.

Are you saying the data shows that it was a surprise that we won as many games as we did?
 

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Analysis Disposal Efficiency


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