Prediction Round 19, 2025: Changes vs Richmond

[HoneyBadger35]

How is it possible for a player who is in their first year of football and who has playing in his 3rd game of senior footy to cover more ground than any other player? It's just not possible. It takes a human adult 3-4 full preseasons to be ready to finish a game of AFL football, let alone lead the side with his work rate.

Now if you want to know something really crazy. I've seen it happen before multiple times in recent years. The club needs to get its GPS units serviced because there's just not way the likes of Clay Hall, Noah Long, Tyler Brockman, Hamish Davis [to name a few] could be winning or finishing top 3 in our running stats time and time again with scarcely 50 games between the lot of them.

Anyway what were we talking about? Oh yeah Sumich, a moron and! a fat lazy campaigner when he was 20. Gee, how the hell did we and Freo manage to carry him to those Premierships, minor premierships and dreaded runner ups as a player and a coach.

Ah the 50 game milestone axe to grind. Nice one.

Could use the eye test to see that, week in week out, we are blown up by the fourth quarter as we name sides miles younger than the oppo.

Or we could take the fact that the kids CAN cover large distances as a sign that they are capable of doing it at AFL pace for the length of an AFL game, and that covering more ground is inherently a good thing and not a sign of inefficiency or having to chase more than your oppo. Just cause I guess it has the vibes of a fun argument to make? Because Matt Flynn sometimes fit in the under 50 game metric and Ginbey is a senior player closer to retirement than debut so we’re not actually going in young you see.


See, we’re fitter than Port because we covered more ground! The fact they ran over the top of us for essentially the last hour of the game has nothing to do with having an army of children against a bunch of seasoned professionals, it’s all down to a mysterious other thing.

 

[Shuestar13]

I was not of age to fully recall and appreciate the early 90’s, but watching the grand finals and some other old games, it’s clear what a fine player he was. His season in 91 very likely wont be bettered by a West Coast player (maybe A Reid might ) and his finals performances were first class.

It just makes it so sad as to how he has descended into the unhinged WCE reality he now inhabits. There have been many (many) things to criticise the club for and it is good to hear different viewpoints, but at least base them in some facts and coherent logic.

 

[HoneyBadger35]

Here it is right up the front rant central

Finally got around to listening to this. Haven’t gotten to the Harley part yet but he’s just teeing it up.

Very funny to me that the start of the clip is one of the hosts saying that Elijah Hewett rested, “fair enough, he’s looked to be playing sore for a number of weeks now”, and then that’s followed by four uninterrupted minutes of Suma going nuts about it and the hosts all nod along and say yeah yeah good call Suma what are they managing him for.

If this is a sample of what’s to come with Harley chat, here we go.

Edit: Alright Suma, settle down campaigner.

 

[sharps24]

Ah the 50 game milestone axe to grind. Nice one.

Could use the eye test to see that, week in week out, we are blown up by the fourth quarter as we name sides miles younger than the oppo.

Or we could take the fact that the kids CAN cover large distances as a sign that they are capable of doing it at AFL pace for the length of an AFL game, and that covering more ground is inherently a good thing and not a sign of inefficiency or having to chase more than your oppo. Just cause I guess it has the vibes of a fun argument to make? Because Matt Flynn sometimes fit in the under 50 game metric and Ginbey is a senior player closer to retirement than debut so we’re not actually going in young you see.

View attachment 2371411
See, we’re fitter than Port because we covered more ground! The fact they ran over the top of us for essentially the last hour of the game has nothing to do with having an army of children against a bunch of seasoned professionals, it’s all down to a mysterious other thing.

Can't make heads or tails of that I'm afraid. We're being run over because we're covering more ground than the opposition? We need senior bodies because they don't cover as much ground as the younger players? If Jack Graham covers the most ground one week but Jobe Shanahan covers the most the next week it's proof that Jack Graham is fit but also proof that Jobe isn't? What are you trying to say exactly?

I can buy into the hint of a coherent point that you might have been making about us potentially covering more kms in a game because we are chasing more. It could also be because the game plan requires covering a lot of territory collectively. But why is the tendency for younger players to show up on the tracker as having covered the most ground a good argument that they shouldn't be in the team? We chase if we turn the ball over and the players turning the ball over are the senior players, and they aren't the ones doing the chasing it seems, so this is an argument for kicking out the younger players how?

Edit: Also, what army of children against Port? There was no Gross or Allan or Davis or A Reid in the side, Champion was subbed out before he had a chance to gas out, Long only player 1 qtr. Hall and Shannahan have proven they are as fit as anyone. Harley managed to get 27 possessions and had energy enough to spare to roll with JHF between every play. 19 of the 23 have had 3 preseasons or more. None of the 4 younger players had any issue with their fitness. Hewett's issue is soreness not fitness, like Naitanui we have no evidence he'll ever be a 4 quarter player thats probably more just the nature of his body, power over endurance.

I would say that the reason they ran over us was because like the Brisbane game our plan was to ambush them and ask Liam Baker to spend all his tickets in the first qtr to get us out to a lead. Which he did. Add that to the fact that instead of replacing Graham with a mid we played Jack Williams, and Bailey Williams copped a corked thigh in the opening 5 minutes and struggled to do more than stand and ball watch for the rest of the game. Don't really see how this is because "we're an army of kids" the fade out was part of the roll of the dice we made and Port were always going to come storming home given their slow start and home turf. 1000's of games of AFL football have played out the same.

 

[HoneyBadger35]

Can't make heads or tails of that I'm afraid. We're being run over because we're covering more ground than the opposition? We need senior bodies because they don't cover as much ground as the younger players? If Jack Graham covers the most ground one week but Jobe Shanahan covers the most the next week it's proof that Jack Graham is fit but also proof that Jobe isn't? What are you trying to say exactly?

I can buy into the hint of a coherent point that you might have been making about us potentially covering more kms in a game because we are chasing more. It could also be because the game plan requires covering a lot of territory collectively. But why is the tendency for younger players to show up on the tracker as having covered the most ground a good argument that they shouldn't be in the team? We chase if we turn the ball over and the players turning the ball over are the senior players, and they aren't the ones doing the chasing it seems, so this is an argument for kicking out the younger players how?

You seem to be suggesting the adage that having ‘too many’ young players makes you less able to run out games is false, because some of our young players have had nice games on the tracker.

So how is it that we have guys completely blown up every week and absolutely gassed in the fourth quarter, notably the kids?

Not picking on Hall, he was our second best mid last week, but he’s been a very visible example of a bloke who is just exhausted late in games and seemingly running a treadmill compared to his peers. Yet on the tracker he was our second highest distance (14km, behind Shanahan 14.1km). Did 15km the week before, can clearly run out a time trial well, but do we just sit back and pretend that that’s what match fitness is?

Could it be that fitness is more than how much ground you cover during the game? Could be about how efficiently you cover that distance, or your ability to go at top speed for longer, or your ability to have the same physical presence for those final few kms as you had in the early ones?

Or is it just that more ground covered = inherently fitter, and it doesn’t need any further analysis, therefore go as young as you like cause the GPS says they can run.

There’s a reason the ass falls out of young teams late in games consistently across the league across a number of years. I’m happy Hamish Davis can do good Telstra Tracker numbers but a team full of Hamish Davis’ would be losing fourth quarters by 10 goals every week, hence the need for more balance in the selected side (or at least an acceptance that going in so young is going to lead to a fourth quarter overrun week on week).

And then we get onto the point that we’re not actually going in young cause the likes of Ginbey don’t count as a young player anymore and Flynn has been included in the sub 50 bracket so that’s not admissible evidence either and around we go.

 

[jdisc]

anyone whos ever played footy before knows that being physically fit and being match fit are two different things

with that said I'd love to see what the KMs look like at 3QT in games like the port one and the Geelong one

 

[HoneyBadger35]

Edit: Also, what army of children against Port?

Compare that to the other incredibly young/bottom tier sides, or the AFL record for debutants 2025 Essendon side.



That army of kids.

But of course, I know, Ginbey’s not a kid because even though he’s 20 he’s played lots of games. Harley’s too good to count as a kid, good to find out Hall having great GPS stats shows he’s no longer a kid. Champion not a kid as subbed off, Long not a kid as too old and subbed on. Shanahan an elderly 18 because of his Telstra Tracker data.

And we know the games breakdowns don’t count for anything either, because Flynn hasn’t played many games which renders the entire sub-50 game class as an irrelevant stat.

We play the youngest and least experienced list in footy. We blow up in the fourth term, by sheer coincidence, every week. Sharps asks “what army of kids?”. And around we go.

 

[HoneyBadger35]

anyone whos ever played footy before knows that being physically fit and being match fit are two different things

with that said I'd love to see what the KMs look like at 3QT in games like the port one and the Geelong one

AFL present their stats like absolute dogshit but the solid white line and a rough estimate eye test is all we can go off for quarter by quarter breakdown.





All it shows is that we’d run further at each break, no way (that I know of) to actually state how much other than a broad eye test.

Good news is we’re clearly way fitter than Geelong and Port because we covered more ground on the Telstra Tracker, so that’s good to have that solved.

 

[sharps24]

I may return to this if I can be bothered

You seem to be suggesting the adage that having ‘too many’ young players makes you less able to run out games is false, because some of our young players have had nice games on the tracker.

So how is it that we have guys completely blown up every week and absolutely gassed in the fourth quarter, notably the kids?

Not picking on Hall, he was our second best mid last week, but he’s been a very visible example of a bloke who is just exhausted late in games and seemingly running a treadmill compared to his peers. Yet on the tracker he was our second highest distance (14km, behind Shanahan 14.1km). Did 15km the week before, can clearly run out a time trial well, but do we just sit back and pretend that that’s what match fitness is?

Could it be that fitness is more than how much ground you cover during the game? Could be about how efficiently you cover that distance, or your ability to go at top speed for longer, or your ability to have the same physical presence for those final few kms as you had in the early ones?

Or is it just that more ground covered = inherently fitter, and it doesn’t need any further analysis, therefore go as young as you like cause the GPS says they can run.

There’s a reason the ass falls out of young teams late in games consistently across the league across a number of years. I’m happy Hamish Davis can do good Telstra Tracker numbers but a team full of Hamish Davis’ would be losing fourth quarters by 10 goals every week, hence the need for more balance in the selected side (or at least an acceptance that going in so young is going to lead to a fourth quarter overrun week on week).

And then we get onto the point that we’re not actually going in young cause the likes of Ginbey don’t count as a young player anymore and Flynn has been included in the sub 50 bracket so that’s not admissible evidence either and around we go.

First of all it's just dumb to say that there's more to fitness than simply covering more km per game than anyone else or comparing Halls efforts in a match to time trial. Clay Halls 15km game was likely the furthest anyone in this side has run all season, and he backed it up the following week running the second most, and also put his name on the board earlier in the season when he played. You are picking on him if your comment is "yeah but he looked gassed toward the end" Jesus, yeah I'd reckon so he's beating Jack Graham to do that and probably carrying 10kg more weight around.

And yeah they do track other metrics other than distance they do distance at speed, sprints and repeat sprints.

You should go back and take a look at each and every game we have played. It's not a matter of our youngest players occasionally jagging the top distance.

Tabulate the date and this is what it will say: Our fittest senior players are Graham [usually the winner and that correlates perfectly well to the received wisdom over pre-season that he's our fittest player] Hunt, and Baker. Graham is nearly always in the top 3 and Hunt usually features as the sprint king and Baker bobs up depending on the role he plays, with an occasional cameo from Duggan.

Jack Hutchinson and Ryan Maric are the next most consistently represented after Graham and Hunt, those boys [particularly Hutch] have been cracking in week in and week out. But you would classify them as too young for that kind of thing.

Once Sandy Brock made the side he absolutely dominated sprints and repeat sprints taking over from Hunt here. When Hunt went out having Sandy around was a big factor I'd say so likely his running was severely missed in the Port game. Sandy and Hunt are also dueling it out for top speed honours most games but I think Sandy has the offical highest speed.

Noah Long when he has played full games [round 1 and 2] covered a heap of ground, backing up round 1 and 2 with 1st and 2nd. When he's playing his running is huge. Clay Hall in all his games makes the honours list.

Owies and Ryan have features a bit, and Cripps name has snuck in there particularly in the opening games.

The tracker data overall indicates that our top workhorses this season have ben Graham, Hutch, and Hunt. The next rung is Brock, Maric, Baker. Slightly bellow that Hall, Long, Ryan. with occasional cameo's from Hough, Duggan, Ginbey. McCarthy featured straight away as well.

The tracker would be better if they did a top 5 for each side but even just being top 3 you can pretty much see who's working the hardest because its always the same handful of names.

3 of our hardest workers are out of the side at the moment [Brock, Hunt, Long] 2 of which are what you would consider youth. Another 3 of our hardest workers [Hutchinson, Maric, Hall] you count in that too young to fly category as well despite them proving week in and week out that they are doing a power of work and recovering. Graham and Baker are the senior players who round out that mix of 10 or so.

According to the tracker, Cripps on the occasions he's produced elite running, has had his greatest impact, his best 3 games came off the back of getting his name back into the top 3 sprints or repeat sprints.

This adage "having too many young players makes you less able to run out games" just isn't a solid. If you are measuring young by games played then there is poor correlation between age and the ability to run out games because of what Ryan Maric, Sandy Brock, Noah Long and Jack Hutchinson [and now Tom McCarthy] are doing. The players I would consider young, that being first and second year players, are also defying this because Harley and Hall are coping fine, and Hamish Davies is a first year player and could run laps around all of Cripps, Ryan, Owies and Brockman because he' simply a gifted endurance beast. Of the 10 fittest players on the list there are more who have played less than 50 games than more than 50 games.

And despite playing with this youngest side in the league most weeks, we are usually beating our opponent for distance covered and total sprints, so the McWalter brand seems to be about high work rate football and the troops he's asking to do that are doing it. The players going out of the side have included some of the fittest players we have, dropped for skills transgressions not because we needed to get fitter bodies into the side.

Against Port, and against the Pies and Brisbane and others, we spent our tickets early because that gave us the best chance of winning. Having Hunt and Brock out of the side for Cole and Bazzo doesn't really change the list profile much, both are like for like, but it made us much less fit and quick. And sitting Noah Long on the bench for 3 quarters instead of Cripps probably cost us, as did and replacing Graham with a tall. The specifics matter, a lot more than some arbitrary calculation around # players under 50 games or adages about youth.

 

[Carbine Chaos]

That post alone covered 290km according to the Telstra Tracker. Impressive.

 

[sharps24]

View attachment 2371442

Compare that to the other incredibly young/bottom tier sides, or the AFL record for debutants 2025 Essendon side.

View attachment 2371443
View attachment 2371444
That army of kids.

But of course, I know, Ginbey’s not a kid because even though he’s 20 he’s played lots of games. Harley’s too good to count as a kid, good to find out Hall having great GPS stats shows he’s no longer a kid. Champion not a kid as subbed off, Long not a kid as too old and subbed on. Shanahan an elderly 18 because of his Telstra Tracker data.

And we know the games breakdowns don’t count for anything either, because Flynn hasn’t played many games which renders the entire sub-50 game class as an irrelevant stat.

We play the youngest and least experienced list in footy. We blow up in the fourth term, by sheer coincidence, every week. Sharps asks “what army of kids?”. And around we go.

You really are a clown, too petty and vindictive to have a semi functional conversation with 90% of the time. Thanks for posting your favourite analytical tool again. Wouldn't want to look too closely at what actually happens out on the ground though would we.

These 12 players under 50 games, you are saying they are not up to the rigours of AFL football because of their age? It's complete nonsense though. Come out of birdseye view of the 23 and look at the individual players.

1. Hall, probably a top 5 player in the side aerobically. Bigger unit than Harley. Voids your argument.
2. Harley Reid, dominating men since his first game, now at the point he's chasing down 30 possession games at plus 80% game time. Will he be fitter in future, yes. Is his fitness right now holding him back from impacting games or is it some sort of a net negative? No. Voids your argument.
3. Jack Hutchinson, 23 years old and according the tracking data across the season only Jack Graham has worked harder. Voids your argument.
4. Tom McCarthy, 24 year VFL player, immediately into the top 3 for sprints and repeats and plays like a 200 game player. Voids your argument.
5. Jobe Shanahan. 18 year old CHF who in games 2 and 3 is covering the same kind of ground as prime Josh Kennedy. Voids your argument.
6. Noah Long. In the full games he's played, has proven he's in the top 5 fittest players on the ground and has been able to back it up the following week. Voids your argument.
7. Malakai Champion. Hasn't proven whether he can play out a game because he has only been used as a sub. Does not support your argument because his ability to run out a game or not is not a factor in whether the side blows up in the 4th or not, he's either been the freshest player on the field or not out there.
8. Elijah Hewett. He's been in the system as long as Noah Long and Ruben Ginbey who have no fitness issues, possible his foot injuries have stopped him from reaching his potential. Elliott Yeo is in the same position. Could also be that he has a low ceiling endurance wise just due to his athletic profile. Definitely a player who lowers our potential to run out games but these are the tradeoffs you make to have burst players in the centre square, will probably always be the case. I'll give this one to you though.
9. Rhett Bazzo. Played as a KPD so not really sure to what extent this impacted our ability to run out the game. Definitely replacing Sandy Brock with Bazzo robs us of run out of defence. Brock has played less games than Bazzo though so would be counted the same. Nil impact to argument.
10. Jack Williams. The big fella definitely doesn't do the same amount of running as a Jack Waterman or Jobe Shanahan or prime Oscar Allen. As a full forward his game is based on size and strength not speed and running patterns, we for sure cover less distance with him in the side that more mobile options but he was drafted in 2021, 4 preseasons in if he's unable to run out games [no-ones saying that] its on his body type not his age. Nil impact to argument, playing him over Gross was dumb as **** though.
11. Ryan Maric. Same age as Harley and Hall and surprisingly constantly in the top 3 for things like distance covered, sprints, repeat sprints, and top speed. Fit as ****. Voids your argument.
12. Tyrell Dewar. Same boat as Maric, constantly represented in distance, speed, sprint, repeats. Fit as. Voids your argument.

Our problem is not that the 12 players listed above are getting AFL games, or that their bodies can't handle the rigours of AFL football. The problem is that too many of the 11 players above 50 games aren't working as hard as these guys are, and are less talented and having less impact. It's actually the reverse of what people are saying. Where we fall down is that Jamie Cripps doesn't run harder at half forward than Noah Long. Liam Duggan doesn't run harder at half back as Ryan Maric. Tim Kelly doesn't run harder through the midfield than Jack Hutchinson. Tom Cole doesn't run harder than Ruben Ginbey or Bradey Hough. We insist of playing those guys and we have to play them because yes they are more experience and probably fitter than Tom Gross and Luca Greggo or Harvey Johnston, and that is true for now, but outside of Graham and Baker the likes of Cripps, Cole and Duggan are weaker links than most of those listed above.

 

[bzparkes]

Imagine writing posts that long about stuff you have NFI about?

 

[TY24]

 

[PremiershipNo4]

Imagine writing posts that long about stuff you have NFI about?

Imagine writing short posts criticising long posts because you have NFI

 

[GoEaglesGoSGIO]

Ah the 50 game milestone axe to grind. Nice one.

Could use the eye test to see that, week in week out, we are blown up by the fourth quarter as we name sides miles younger than the oppo.

Or we could take the fact that the kids CAN cover large distances as a sign that they are capable of doing it at AFL pace for the length of an AFL game, and that covering more ground is inherently a good thing and not a sign of inefficiency or having to chase more than your oppo. Just cause I guess it has the vibes of a fun argument to make? Because Matt Flynn sometimes fit in the under 50 game metric and Ginbey is a senior player closer to retirement than debut so we’re not actually going in young you see.

View attachment 2371411
See, we’re fitter than Port because we covered more ground! The fact they ran over the top of us for essentially the last hour of the game has nothing to do with having an army of children against a bunch of seasoned professionals, it’s all down to a mysterious other thing.

Distance covered will alot of the time be us higher because we are flooding numbers back as we lose the contest surely? You are going to run further in the sense a team covers more distance when they dont have the ball.

 

[GoEaglesGoSGIO]

Imagine writing posts that long about stuff you have NFI about?

Imagine trying to argue that we need Tim Kelly in the team because he runs harder then well anyone else would...

 

[PremiershipNo4]

Imagine trying to argue that we need Tim Kelly in the team because he runs harder then well anyone else would...

Just imagine

 

[PremiershipNo4]

Midfield line ups worry me a bit,

Flynn, Kelly, Hough
Vs
Nankervis, Taranto, Hopper

Our Achilles heel all year, I’m hopeful but certainly not confident in the slightest.
A real shame that Hewett isn’t playing.
I hope the boys get up they’ve been working hard and deserve it.

 

[Farmer Lister]

He has been there and done it so his opinion is probably pretty good. I have no idea also why we are resting Hewit, if he is injured fine but a rest?? Fair dinkum you have to be kidding.

You rest him to stop him from getting an injury come on man it's not rocket science

 

[FKASC]

Santa Maria

 

[Zuma]

Much of our problem had been effectiveness related over 4 quarters rather than fitness or covering the ground.

 

[Farmer Lister]

Hamish Davis can do good Telstra Tracker numbers but a team full of Hamish Davis’ would be losing fourth quarters by 10 goals every week,

How dare you. We should be so lucky to have a team full of Hamish Davis running around.

 

[ghostbat12]

Anyway, are bazzo and petch in team to basically let them have one final go before being delisted? Like Zane trew last year.

 

[PremiershipNo4]

I’m an unashamed Hamish Davis fan, a hard working roaming HFF is his gig I reckon.

 

[ghostbat12]

Much of our problem had been effectiveness

Good analysis. I couldn’t get to bottom of our issues over last 4 years until now.