Analysis Games Experience - A lesson in tempering expectations

[_Mike_]

It is essentially his fault that we keep fielding such young teams.

There's not enough quality cattle to carry the entire team on the shoulders of a few players. The MC also carries the burden of team selection and the list management under Power has, IMO, deteriorated since Dalrymple left. We have a few under performing players from 2016, in the way of Hunter, JJ and Libba for example who are not playing, IMO, to the level expected since.

Im still perplexed at the decisions with Campbell and Roughead.

 

[lachy]

There's not enough quality cattle to carry the entire team on the shoulders of a few players. The MC also carries the burden of team selection and the list management under Power has, IMO, deteriorated since Dalrymple left. We have a few under performing players from 2016, in the way of Hunter, JJ and Libba for example who are not playing, IMO, to the level expected since.

Im still perplexed at the decisions with Campbell and Roughead.

List management under Power has been 12 months. Our list has been deteriorating each year since 2016, isolating Power seems a bit harsh given he was not even involved in 2/3rds of the time our list has been going backwards.

We have not replaced who we have lost through Retirement, Injury, Fee Agency and Trading out in totality at all and there are multiple people involved in this throughout the football department

 

[Proffessor]

There's not enough quality cattle to carry the entire team on the shoulders of a few players. The MC also carries the burden of team selection and the list management under Power has, IMO, deteriorated since Dalrymple left. We have a few under performing players from 2016, in the way of Hunter, JJ and Libba for example who are not playing, IMO, to the level expected since.

Im still perplexed at the decisions with Campbell and Roughead.

Your not on your own in being perplexed, the Roughead treatment in particular.

Not sure who is driving all the decisions though. I get the impression that Luke would get his way on most list management decisions, but have no inside info to justify it.

 

[_Mike_]

the Roughead treatment in particular.

My criticism of the club in general, over the years, has been the way loyalty has been treated. Now I get that Roughead is not a long term solution for our backline problems, however we've certainly cut the nose to spite the face on this one. Also Campbell should have been moved years ago if he wasnt going to get game time but he too would have been handy to the point that whilst his mobility around the ground is not great - he can contest center bounces and stoppages.

 

[hoianbulldog]

I think the inclusion of gardner straight away speaks volumes.
Volumes of uncertainty. Not saying whether he was a worthy inclusion or not but hints heavily at a plug the hole mentality.
Whatever plans were conceived beginning of the season have now been seen to be quickly changed and modified.
Which is worrying because our injury list is not that deep. Certainly not deep enough to radically include a mid season draftee who hasnt barnstormed selection.
It seems to me to be a revealing of a lot of doubts about the playstyle, the plan and the personnel.

I'm guessing bevo was thinking j schache would keep improving, which he hasn't. Therefore there was a hole that needed filling and mid season draft was the only way to address it.

I would not be suprised if schache's name has a line through it in bevos black book.

 

[Munnez]

To be fair to Power I think at a minimum 3 years is required to see if a List Manager has made a net positive or net negative impact on the list.
Drafted players on the whole need time to develop, and to see where overall list strategy is heading

 

[fronkalicious]

Credit former poster Butane for this table. The % of games each team has fielded a more experienced line up than their opposition.

We created this mess. Time for Power to fix it.

 

[BEaston]

Credit former poster Butane for this table. The % of games each team has fielded a more experienced line up than their opposition.

We created this mess. Time for Power to fix it.

Is that just for this year? Would be interesting to see since 17

 

[fronkalicious]

Is that just for this year? Would be interesting to see since 17

Just this year. Terrible.

 

[BEaston]

Just this year. Terrible.

The silver lining is that we've outperformed our age profile. We've had some decent performances against some more mature teams. Tbh I'd be much more worried if I were Hawthorn, North or Carlton. Freo's list is in decent shape, underrated team.

Inject a couple of mature heads in the off season and I think it makes a big difference to the side. The core of the team is there, just need a couple more veteran role players around the edges.

 

[dogwatch]

Interesting list. There's a rough correlation to ladder position/number of wins but it's no guarantee is it?

There have been diverse responses to this issue (the youth profile existed in 2017-18 too). They include:

A. UPBEAT. Some see it as a cause for hope - "look how well we're doing with such a young senior 22". The implication is that outperforming others with a similar profile means that in 2-3 years we should have a talented squad entering their physical and mental peak and they will dominate the AFL for years after that.

B. PESSIMISTIC. Others see it as a cause for despair - "we are on a treadmill of losing players (or failing to develop them) who should be long term keepers - we can't get quality players in their prime to replace them so we keep drafting 18yos. The result is we keep having the youngest side in the comp year after year".

C. SCEPTICAL. Others reject scenario A as being too naive - "having a young squad doesn't guarantee they will mature to be a champion side - all we can say with certainty is they are young, but many of them probably won't make the grade - I won't embrace the optimism until I see evidence of us really becoming a force to be reckoned with in the AFL".

There are of course other factors to consider, not all of which are related to experience:

• whether the side can come together with passion and belief, like we did in 2016 with a similarly young side - this is only partly a coaching issue and it's difficult to predict
• the lumpiness of any experience profile (e.g. a few 250+ gamers can distort the figures when the rest of the squad is inexperienced - we need to consider median age as well as average age)
• whether there are a sufficient number of natural leaders (of any age) in the group. If there aren't you can still play like headless chooks, whatever the average age is.

I'm an optimist by nature but I find myself more in category C at the moment, the OP notwithstanding. It's been going on too long. However my fingers remain crossed.

Which category are you?

 

[dogwatch]

I should have added that there's another way of looking at the chart in the OP. That is that unsuccessful sides have to keep going back to the draft because their list isn't good enough. (This is pretty much the Category B interpretation).

If it was as easy as just waiting until all your players had matured then every club would go through a cycle of dominance. It's obviously not that simple!

Some clubs are perennially strong and others perennially weak. We need a thesis that accommodates that fact.

 

[ThirdLegUp]

Interesting list. There's a rough correlation to ladder position/number of wins but it's no guarantee is it?

There have been diverse responses to this issue (the youth profile existed in 2017-18 too). They include:

A. UPBEAT. Some see it as a cause for hope - "look how well we're doing with such a young senior 22". The implication is that outperforming others with a similar profile means that in 2-3 years we should have a talented squad entering their physical and mental peak and they will dominate the AFL for years after that.

B. PESSIMISTIC. Others see it as a cause for despair - "we are on a treadmill of losing players (or failing to develop them) who should be long term keepers - we can't get quality players in their prime to replace them so we keep drafting 18yos. The result is we keep having the youngest side in the comp year after year".

C. SCEPTICAL. Others reject scenario A as being too naive - "having a young squad doesn't guarantee they will mature to be a champion side - all we can say with certainty is they are young, but many of them probably won't make the grade - I won't embrace the optimism until I see evidence of us really becoming a force to be reckoned with in the AFL".

There are of course other factors to consider, not all of which are related to experience:

• whether the side can come together with passion and belief, like we did in 2016 with a similarly young side - this is only partly a coaching issue and it's difficult to predict
• the lumpiness of any experience profile (e.g. a few 250+ gamers can distort the figures when the rest of the squad is inexperienced - we need to consider median age as well as average age)
• whether there are a sufficient number of natural leaders (of any age) in the group. If there aren't you can still play like headless chooks, whatever the average age is.

I'm an optimist by nature but I find myself more in category C at the moment, the OP notwithstanding. It's been going on too long. However my fingers remain crossed.

Which category are you?

Any discussion on Bulldogs supporters has to have a Fatalist category, surely. Lightning struck in the mid 20th century, early 21st century, i wonder at what point it will strike in the 22nd century for our third premiership, kinda mentality. i know a few lol.

I'm probably a C currently, with a passion to become an A... but veering into A-hole instead.

 

[ScragCity]

[

Credit former poster Butane for this table. The % of games each team has fielded a more experienced line up than their opposition.

We created this mess. Time for Power to fix it.

It's not a mess if it leads to a dynasty. There is a potential upside to getting games into these kids, believe it or not.

 

[dogwatch]

[


It's not a mess if it leads to a dynasty. There is a potential upside to getting games into these kids, believe it or not.

Of course there is. That's a given.
But are you convinced that's all we need to do now and we're set for a successful dynasty?

 

[ScragCity]

Of course there is. That's a given.
But are you convinced that's all we need to do now and we're set for a successful dynasty?

Nope. We need to bring in some quality mature players. I do think our list management has been a lot better than others seem to think though. Maybe we could have traded aggressively after 2016 but we chose to go to the draft. We have managed to bring in English, Naughton, Richards and Smith who I think will all be better players than the ones we might have gotten from trading those picks. I believe that our list management strategy will bring us great success over the next decade at the expense of a few down years. It's certainly not the only way to go about building lasting success (see Geelong), but for a club who manages to attract star players I think it was the right call. Draft our core and add mature role players. However, with the huge amount of cap space that is opening up for us I expect our list management strategy to change and that will be the correct move now. It's time to get aggressive and find those quality talls to complete what I think has been a great list build.

 

[WallyStringhaus]

I should have added that there's another way of looking at the chart in the OP. That is that unsuccessful sides have to keep going back to the draft because their list isn't good enough. (This is pretty much the Category B interpretation).

If it was as easy as just waiting until all your players had matured then every club would go through a cycle of dominance. It's obviously not that simple!

Some clubs are perennially strong and others perennially weak. We need a thesis that accommodates that fact.

This is a great point DW and I think most clubs are pretty good at finding that tipping point where things should be going better than what they actually are. When those expectations and reality don't align is when coaches find themselves in trouble.

If we take B-Mac's last game in charge as an example. We were two games clear of GWS on the ladder, at our home venue and had a games played experience advantage of 2326 to GWS' 1195. We should never have lost that match and it became pretty evident that the coach had lost the playing group...tipping point reached, coach gone.

As has been mentioned, in addition to the Moyd/Murph retirements we have had five players forced to retire prematurely due to injury/illness...absolutely unprecedented. Throw in injuries to Moz/Dicko/Liber over the past few seasons and imo the narrative changes from excuses to very valid reasoning.

If in 3 years time our list profile has changed and our experience level creeps up to where it should be and we are still performing poorly then I'll be the first to agree that the tipping point has been reached and that Bevo needs to go.

 

[TempletonTheRat]

This might be of interest

 

[dogwatch]

This is a great point DW and I think most clubs are pretty good at finding that tipping point where things should be going better than what they actually are. When those expectations and reality don't align is when coaches find themselves in trouble.

If we take B-Mac's last game in charge as an example. We were two games clear of GWS on the ladder, at our home venue and had a games played experience advantage of 2326 to GWS' 1195. We should never have lost that match and it became pretty evident that the coach had lost the playing group...tipping point reached, coach gone.

As has been mentioned, in addition to the Moyd/Murph retirements we have had five players forced to retire prematurely due to injury/illness...absolutely unprecedented. Throw in injuries to Moz/Dicko/Liber over the past few seasons and imo the narrative changes from excuses to very valid reasoning.

If in 3 years time our list profile has changed and our experience level creeps up to where it should be and we are still performing poorly then I'll be the first to agree that the tipping point has been reached and that Bevo needs to go.

I wasn't really focussing on the coach here Wal, although I understand that was the point behind your OP. What you say is of course quite legit.

My point is - regardless of the coach - sometimes the list build just isn't good enough. There could be many different reasons for that, or a combination of them. Most of them have been discussed many times here over the years. In our case we've had a fair bit of bad luck since 2016 with injuries etc, which has left us with a weaker list than we had expected. We are re-building sooner than we thought.

So being raw and young is only part of the explanation for a club performing poorly. It can't be a sufficient excuse on its own. If the cattle aren't that good then no amount of games experience is going to turn them into a top 4 side. Coaches can of course be part of the overall problem but the quality of the list build is the issue here.

As individual draftees develop it becomes fairly clear within 2-4 years whether they are going to make it. The perennially good clubs (Hawthorn, West Coast, Sydney, etc) will offload them if not. Other clubs, including ours, will either keep them (that's usually a mistake and one we've made far too often) or they too will offload them.

Now we know that all clubs have player attrition due to age, injury or not being good enough. The key difference is that the perennially good clubs often find a way of replacing these types with players from other clubs (like ours or GCS) who fit the bill. Meanwhile the weaker clubs struggle to attract those finals-ready players so they go back to the draft more often or they are forced to make inferior trades. Hence they are at risk of forever being among the least experienced sides in the comp. Meanwhile the clubs like Hawthorn mature to a well-rounded list with a solid core of regulars in the 24-29 age range. That's the point I was trying to make about your chart in the OP.

It's not a 100% correlation of course. If you look at the list that Fronk/Butane posted above you will see that North have lots of experience but are still struggling. And Freo are relatively inexperienced but are doing well this season (as we also did with a young list in 2016). However the general rule is reflected in your OP chart.

How does this relate to us?
In 2019 we have a diminished core of the 2016 players who helped us win a flag (Suckling, Wallis, Bont, Dunkley, Hunter, Macrae, Cordy, McLean, Libba, Daniel, JJ) plus a few from that year who are in decline or on the fringe (Moz, Dickson, Wood, Roberts). We've added a small number of genuine quality players in Naughton, Smith, English - and possibly Lipinski and Richards. We've also had some handy trades, most notably Crozier (the right age profile) and Lloyd (only a couple of years left I'd guess).

I feel we are still about 3-4 quality players short of a list that can really challenge. They don't all have to be elite level, just your regular contributors who are automatic selections each week. We all know where these holes are because it gets re-hashed every day in the trades thread. They are:

• a small aggressive goal scoring forward,
• a KPF
• a KPD
• a high possession player with a bit more burst pace in the midfield (perhaps Richards could become this in time).

We also have to make sure we retain our star players and don't let the likes of Hawthorn and Geelong pick them off just when we are starting to get maximum returns from them.

If we can do both we'll see our age and experience profile creep up and we will soon become a regular performer in September. Fail in either and we'll be back on the high draft picks treadmill.

 

[dogwatch]

This might be of interest

View attachment 695121

Interesting chart. If it's easy to do I wouldn't mind seeing how a club like Hawthorn, Geelong or West Coast compares.

 

[TempletonTheRat]

Interesting chart. If it's easy to do I wouldn't mind seeing how a club like Hawthorn, Geelong or West Coast compares.

I did this from data I had kept/collected on our list so i don't have access to do other teams

I'll have a look online and see if I can find the relevant data.

 

[TempletonTheRat]

Interesting chart. If it's easy to do I wouldn't mind seeing how a club like Hawthorn, Geelong or West Coast compares.

found some data - I thought it might be interesting to see Hawthorn from '08 to now

stay tuned

 

[TempletonTheRat]

Note: Lists have been restricted to 44 players (B Rookies excluded)

 

[perro_loco]

Experience wins.

The problem is, we’ve pro-actively chosen to create such a young list. Terrible list management.

Stringer had to go. And we need class and goal-kicking, so I was happy to see dahlhaus gone too.

But not parlaying all of that cap space into quality, mature talent, has been an epic fail, and wasted golden Bontempelli years.

Stringer is doing worse at Essendon than with us. moving him on was a good move. i really do not miss him..

 

[dogwatch]

View attachment 695381

View attachment 695383


Note: Lists have been restricted to 44 players (B Rookies excluded)

Thanks TTR. What do you make of it?

The no-gamers (pink) is pretty similar across both clubs. No surprises there as it will always include new draftees and some from the previous year who have yet to debut.

The crucial bits are how high the green goes (<75 games) and conversely how much blue there is (75-199 games - blue is the sweet spot). Generally Hawthorn has more blue and black (200+) while we have more green, although we looked OK in our years of 3 successive PFs. The two flags regarded as "premature" (2008, 2016) look like outliers.

We generally average just over 30% of our list with 75 or more games with a max of 38% (pre 2012).
Hawthorn seem to average about 38% with 75+ games, and a max of about 48% (pre-2015).

I reckon it supports the points I was making. Hard to know whether it's conclusive on the charts alone though.