Apex36
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Fairly sure Harvey is the defense line coach
Analysis Pies by 14 pts over the doggies - Round 4, 2019
- Thread starter Magpie Girl
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Haha what ever you say buddy. If you knew anything about rucking you know where your mids are heading, where they set up and the fact as you tap the ball you can pan down to see and follow up your work mostly (something Grundy does very well might I add follow up work). You would also know that generally when you get a clean hit to it (like a lot of Grundys last night) you can direct it fairly well and often he chooses to tap in close ie the phone box.
Grundy often chooses the close tap even when clearly winning this gives the opposition a very good look in to shark him, obviously when 2 rucks compete and neither gets purchase creating a dead ball then this is not what Im referring to....also you seem to fail to grasp this conversation is about the cohesion and strategy of the entire midfield group and the lack of centre clearances as a whole (over a period of time as well as last night) really for such a domination and make no mistake he smashed English, how low of a conversion it was in terms of clean taps and clean clearances.
If the midfield and Grundys cohesion were so elite how come they were so low on the centre clearances last year despite being lauded the number 1 midfield and number 1 or 2 ruck and being a GF team?
Cmon NFI enlighten me.
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- Mar 29, 2019
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Longmuir is the defense coach
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I agree it doesn’t work but I understand the idea behind it.
sr36
Hall of Famer
With the way the business world is viewing the value of data at the moment, this sort of thing is a matter of time I think. Personally, I'm not too keen on it, but it's the way things are going.
yeah, nah.
Went down early.
And from then on we played absolute putrid football.
Coincidence?
I don’t know. I’m not that intelligent.
But I’ve got to ask, why did we go into our shell when a player who has a record of pressure plays, ball winning and balls into F50, goes down do we suddenly become a crab team?
Got to think deep about that.
People really need a better understanding that the majority of the official CD stats are simply descriptive stats.
A hit out is when a ruckman clearly knocks the ball from a ruck contest.
A hit out to advantage is simply defined as a hit out that reaches the intended team mate. The team mate is also credited with a gather from hit out, which counts as a contested possession.
You don’t have ‘negative’ hit out to advantage stats, as by definition they are only counting hit out gathered by an intended team mate.
They do track hit outs sharked, which are HOs that result in opposition taking clean possession.
It is all a nonsense anyway, there have been studies into centre clearances, and across the course of the season it comes out that it is basically a coin flip across all teams. And there was actually a negative correlation in terms of positive clearance differentials and actual effectiveness in scoring equity of each clearance.
Makes you question, are clubs that invest too many resources in centre clearance work actually doing themselves a disservice? They are potentially neglecting other areas of the game and ground where you can actually have a measurable impact... outside of luck.
In 2018 Pies were bang in the glut for centre clearance differential, - 0.7 a game over the course of the season. In 2017 it was - 0.3. So far in 2019 we are 0.8!!
Against the Dogs we were +3 for centre clearances.
Grundy is the best ruck in the game because of how great he is all around the ground. He is great at stoppages (there are many more stoppages a game than CBs), and his ability to involve himself in general play is immense for a ruck.
Ignore what happens at CBs, as it is all random noise, it balances out across the season and from week to week it is all over the shop.
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sr36
Hall of Famer
Great post. My point on the negative hitout to advantage stats is that recording that statistic is just as easy as recording the positive ones . At the moment, without factoring in the hitout to disadvantage stats, the hitout to advantage stat is completely meaningless. It'd be like measuring Treloar's blind handballs and knock ons out of packs and conclude that he's great at it because he hits 5 a game to his teammates, whilst ignoring that it's complete luck because he also hits 5 a game to the opposition.
People suggesting that Grundy (and Gawn and any other ruck today) cannot palm the ball to their mids the way that greats of the past may have done are forgetting one thing. Since the inception of the centre line (and then the constraining circle) ruckmen cannot use their bodies in the air as they once did, nor can they create a path for their mids to run into and shield them from being tackled. Great ruckmen of the past (Nicholls, Farmer, Dempsey, Thompson, Moss) were masters of this body craft and it gave their rovers an armchair ride getting taps straight down their throats. Nowadays the Centre bounce is a chook raffle. Rucks try to nullify the oppositions chances of a clean clearance MORE than they try to make the play themselves. No team's hit out stats are helping their mids this season. The 6-6-6 allows Grundy to make more clearances himself but the "scragging and holding" that occurs amongst the mids pretty much nullifies the hitouts to advantage.
The overall numbers are that about 40% of HOs are ‘sharked’ by the opposition.
It isn’t a completely meaningless stat at all. The ruck contest, by nature of bounce, is intended to be a random restart of the game. Tracking how many times a ruckman can cleanly hit it to an intended team mate and somewhat clear the mess is note worthy.
The majority of HOs afford no advantage or disadvantage, as it is simply a ruck getting there hand to a ball with no real control.
And a ‘sharked’ HO isnt necessarily the fault of the ruckman, as the ball wasn’t in their possession prior to the HO, unlike a disposal error. They can tap to a specific ‘coached’ zone, but have it ‘sharked’ anyway.
The Dogs was our best game in terms of centre clearance differential all year anyway.
sr36
Hall of Famer
Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Sorry, I'm a skeptic at heart and I don't really understand how these things are measured, so am very skeptical about it. Is there a lower bar set for "sharked" than for hitout to advantage? How do they work out whether it was the "intended teammate"? Is it if it goes to any teammate, they assume it was intended and thus it's a hitout to advantage? Because if rucks only hit 30% to teammates but 40% are "sharked" it doesn't sound like hitouts are a particularly good stat to win. To me if you only measure how often they help clear the mess in a positive way by hitting it to an intended target and ignore how often they help clear the mess negatively by hitting it to an opponent, it's really skewed to the positive and not a very good measure of the effectiveness of ruck work. See my earlier example about Treloar.
I'm not trying to suggest that ruckwork is unimportant. It's just that I don't really watch ruckwork because I don't have the multi tasking abiliity and am more interested in what happens at the fall of the ball. I'm just skeptical about the measurements and whether they say anything at all about effectiveness.
Yep, we are a strong stoppage clearance team. In 2018 we were easily the best stoppage clearance team, Dogs number 2 by the way.
The around ground stoppage is when the actual art of ruck work can come to the fore, Grundy uses his body and can work with our mids to take advantage.
The centre bounce in isolation doesn’t allow this, the numbers across an entire season backs this up. By design it is a random start, no different to tossing a coin. And a negative correlation exists between centre clearance differential and scoring equity...the teams that win more centre clearances aren’t scoring cleanly from them anyway!!
Gawn’s demolition of Sydney on Thursday was the same, Sydney won the centre clearances by 2...but Melbourne won stoppages around the ground by 9 thanks to Gawn.
Anyone inferring anything from centre clearance numbers is barking up the wrong tree.
Hear Hear!
Any other "mid" squad would've destroyed that opposition with the ruck service given to them by a ruckman that dominant.
Grundy is not the problem it's our "best ever midfield of all time" that's the issue. Can't believe some posters on here can't see that.
Almost as perplexing as this supposed can't be defeated midfield that can't beat a vanilla mid team in the dogs.
Best ever? No, *ing basketcase? F*** yes. 2017 all over again, play like that again this year then I've had it re!
Whoops the 40% was HOs that end up with opposition having first possession. It is 50% that your team ends up with first possession. About 10% don’t have a clear first possession and a secondary stoppage results.
Of the 50% of HOs that end up with your team getting first possession, about 55% are rated as HOtoA.
So overall about 28% of HOs are deemed to be to advantage.
Last year Gawn went at 35% HOtA, and Grundy was at 31%.
Ruckman are tracked on the actual proportion of contests they attend, how many contests they win, how many wins are to advantage, and how many wins are cleanly sharked.
Grundy had a great game. A 30% HOtoA rate against the Dogs is a good return, as the Dogs are the second best midfield going.
The other point is that centre clearances are just random, teams are actually more likely to have a negative differential the week after a positive one! Rucks don’t have the influence at centre bounces that they can have at around the ground stoppages.
Teams with a greater centre clearance differential actually have a lower scoring equity from each clearance.
That is why Pies had a negative centre clearance differential in 2018, but were easily the best stoppage team in the league, as at stoppages is where Grundy gets on top.
Are posters not aware that the Dogs have a ******* strong midfield?
They won a flag in 2016 on the back of their dominant midfield, when they were easily the best stoppage team going.
They were the second best stoppage team in 2018, and to date are #1 in 2019!
sr36
Hall of Famer
Ok. If sharked stats are being measured, it's fair to assume that analysts are looking at net results from hitouts. I wonder if these sort of stats are what resulted in the sudden dramatic decline in the value of rucks in the draft?
Are sharked just the opposite of to advantage - eg ruckman hits a tap cleanly to opposition rather than cleanly to teammate? Do you have any % on those for guys like Grundy, Gawn or league averages for those?
sr36
Hall of Famer
And that was without arguably their best stoppage player.
I would imagine that it is more clubs reflecting the greater risk in drafting a ruck with an early pick. You tend to have to invest more time developing them before can get any reward, and hard to judge how a kid will perform up against men when they don’t have a significant size advantage.
Basically, it is about when opponent takes a clean first possession.
It is a similar exercise where of the 40% that end up with opposition having first possession it is a bit less than half of those that are flagged as sharked, so around 15-20%.
But then the question becomes how much credit do you give to the ruck v midfielder for a HO to A? Does it flip for a sharked HO? Obviously both are involved.
And how are you trying to define effectiveness anyway?
If Grundy attends 65 ruck contests, he is awarded 40HOs, with 9 flagged as to advantage and only three ‘sharked’ is that an ‘effective’ ruck performance?
But what if Collingwood only gets 3 direct scoring chances from the 9 HO to A, but each of the 3 sharked HOs results in a scoring chance for the opponent?
Is that ineffective ruck work by Grundy, or is it more general failings of the team?
sr36
Hall of Famer
I'd argue that it is effective ruck work. Getting the ball into your teammates hands is better thsn it ending up in the oppositiins hands. Turning it into a clean clearance is about tactics, the execution of the receiving mid and the movements of the other mids and not necessarily related to the original ruck work. Having said that, if playing a higher risk ruck ruck strategy where you're hitting it further you may end up with a lesser positive differential but a greater effectiveness. But the same goes with all stats., which is why i have no faith in the current data measurements we use to discuss a players performance.
But in terms of a positive differential between hitouts to advantage minus sharked, i reckon its better than the other measures we use, regardless of the result of first possessuon. Regardless of whether you kick the resulting goal, a contested mark inside 50 is still an example of effective marking.
Ok maybe vanilla is a little under rating of the dogs mids, not the point though. Posters on here are bagging Grundy for "missed" hit outs when clearly it's our supposed all conquering mids not taking advantage of our Ruckmans dominance.
They have good mids but not the calibre we have currently (supposedly), and their stoppage work is v good.
They won a flag off the back of a "swarm and spread" game style very similar to ours of 18 - that suited their personnel which made them "great" mids.
You mean he gets on top at boundary throw ins? Because I thought around the grounds ball ups would be much the same as centre bounces then because I don't see them getting a big run up and using their body much in those either so they might be random in result largely as well?
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It most certainly is, nothing like a freebie (well, airfares at least).
I’d argue effective ruck work at its most rudimentary is simply beating your ruck opponent.
Yep, which is why a team like the Bulldogs can be the best stoppage team with ‘poor’ rucks.
Teams implemented 3rd man up strategies, or not even sending a ruck to contest a throw in etc.
All stats are simply descriptive stats. They are just telling us how many instances of each event occurred.
The only people who can really judge a players performance are those who are outlining their role and actual expectations...the coaches.
Supporters have our own preconceived ideas of what playing well looks like, and plenty try to use stats as an indicator...despite not actually understanding how the stat is defined or what the coaches instructions were.
Most just follow the media’s lead, and many in the media are nuffies.
Yeah but that would be like saying you can only have an effective long kick if your team mate actually marks the ball. You can kick it long to the advantage of your team mate, but if they fumble the mark and turn it over...it is no longer effective??
That presently still counts as a effective long kick to the kicker.
If the ruckman taps it to a player and they can’t catch it, fumble it and the ball goes neutral, at present the ruck doesn’t get a hit out to advantage...the ruck stat relies on the team mate completing their part of the deal.
