We talk a lot as supporters about the need - at this stage of our rebuild - to be developing a high quality midfield for the future (something we don't have now) which will allow us to contend for and win premierships in our next 'window'.
Part of this development is necessarily making the right 'investments'. Invest list spots on players who can be dynamic midfielders of the future. Invest games in players who may not necessarily be in your best 22 at this stage. Invest game time in their preferred midfield position in order to fast-track both their development and our assessment of them as players.
It seems to the naked eye that we aren't doing this but I want to do some analysis to see if this could be proven or not.
There's no single perfect measure but I came up with this as a proxy - what proportion of our centre bounce attendances (CBAs) were we allocating to players with 50 games or less? The rationale is fairly clear - if a player is at the CBA then they're generally playing midfield and if they've got 50 games or less experience they're generally young and developing. Put the two together and you can get a decent metric from publicly available info. For example if O'Brien (66 games), Keays (79 games), Laird (192 games) and Hately (23 games) attend a centre bounce then only one of out four players (i.e. 25%) of that CBA went to 'young' players. Then extrapolate that out for each CBA in each game and you get a trackable measure.
The chart below shows what the proportion has been for the period from Round 1, 2021 until the game on the weekend Round 12, 2022. Although it bounces around a little bit the trend is clearly down and has plateaued at about 20% (i.e. 1 in 5 CBAs to a young player).
Some of the volatility comes when a player (e.g. O'Brien or Keays) goes from the young bracket to the older bracket. Selection also effects it as you can see in Round 9-10 this year when Strachan came in for O'Brien and the number spiked. But it went back down again when Crouch came in and Hately and Berry's combined CBA% went from 131% in Round 10 to 61% in Round 12.
What this doesn't show (as I didn't have time) is how this benchmarks against other teams but surely we can see our way clear to get more meaningful experience into our next generation than we have done to date.
Part of this development is necessarily making the right 'investments'. Invest list spots on players who can be dynamic midfielders of the future. Invest games in players who may not necessarily be in your best 22 at this stage. Invest game time in their preferred midfield position in order to fast-track both their development and our assessment of them as players.
It seems to the naked eye that we aren't doing this but I want to do some analysis to see if this could be proven or not.
There's no single perfect measure but I came up with this as a proxy - what proportion of our centre bounce attendances (CBAs) were we allocating to players with 50 games or less? The rationale is fairly clear - if a player is at the CBA then they're generally playing midfield and if they've got 50 games or less experience they're generally young and developing. Put the two together and you can get a decent metric from publicly available info. For example if O'Brien (66 games), Keays (79 games), Laird (192 games) and Hately (23 games) attend a centre bounce then only one of out four players (i.e. 25%) of that CBA went to 'young' players. Then extrapolate that out for each CBA in each game and you get a trackable measure.
The chart below shows what the proportion has been for the period from Round 1, 2021 until the game on the weekend Round 12, 2022. Although it bounces around a little bit the trend is clearly down and has plateaued at about 20% (i.e. 1 in 5 CBAs to a young player).
Some of the volatility comes when a player (e.g. O'Brien or Keays) goes from the young bracket to the older bracket. Selection also effects it as you can see in Round 9-10 this year when Strachan came in for O'Brien and the number spiked. But it went back down again when Crouch came in and Hately and Berry's combined CBA% went from 131% in Round 10 to 61% in Round 12.
What this doesn't show (as I didn't have time) is how this benchmarks against other teams but surely we can see our way clear to get more meaningful experience into our next generation than we have done to date.
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