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The obsession with the importance of the contested possession stat is the biggest load of crap in AFL football.
Where AFL coverage is concerned, we can barely turn on the television, radio or open a newspaper or website without an expert telling us that winning the contested possession stat vitally increases your chances of winning the game.
Senior and assistant coaches all tow the line as well. How many times have you heard the coach of your side say “We want to focus on winning contested possession”?
Most often is it deemed the determining factor if a side is losing or has lost. The first stat we hear is “they lost the contested possession by X amount”.
The supposed correlation is that you’re winning because you’ve won this most important of stats. But it’s because you’re winning the game that you would lead the contested possession, not the other way around.
If we take the just-completed Round 13 as an example, five of the nine winners actually lost contested possession, driving a Mack truck through the theory of how important it is.
In fact, the three biggest contested possession differentials were in favour of the losing side – Essendon won the stat 151-119 and went down by a point, Port won it 165-139 and also lost by less than a kick, while Carlton won it 149-124, yet were five goals in arrears when the final siren rang.
For argument’s sake, let call this majority result an anomaly, and look at the four winners from the weekend that won the contested possession and the game.
West Coast, Greater Western Sydney, Adelaide and the Western Bulldogs won contested possession by an aggregate of 39 in their wins. Let’s round it up to 40 and call it an average of 10 per match.
That’s 2.5 contested possessions a quarter, or one every 12 minutes. Are we seriously meant to believe that one contested possession every 12 minutes in a 120-minute game is supposed to determine the result?
I want you to pause and actually think about any quarter of football you’ve watched, and think about how much happens in any given twelve minute period.
We’re being told that one contested possession – which could be a one-metre handball, a knock-on, a pick up, or a scrubbed kick – is supposed to make the game-altering difference?
Bullshit. This is a mass case of groupthink that has never been questioned.
Champion Data has overtaken the sport, and has infiltrated every club to an ever-more minute degree. It has been slow, but inexorable. They have led them, and us, down a more statistical path.
If you have Foxtel, you’ll see David King’s slavish devotion to Champion Data stats at the expense of all else. He’s a charismatic television presence, and speaks with an air of authority. Being a former champion player and ex-assistant coach at AFL level, his every word is taken as gospel. As such, everyone takes the importance he places on these stats as read.
We find comfort in numbers to try and explain the unexplainable. Everyone at clubland and in the media seems to think that analysing and over-analysing these numbers will lead them to unlock the secret to winning football matches.
18 senior coaches want to be number one in contested possession, but only one club can be. Apart from bragging rights and avoiding being called soft, what’s the point? Remember, it’s one every 12 minutes.
As a Richmond fan, I hope to God that Damien Hardwick isn’t spending a disproportionate amount of time trying to figure out how to win contested possession, so the Tigers can gain a one metre advantage every 12 minutes. Sadly, based on the weekly emails and dissections that go out to Richmond members once a week, there seems little doubt that Hardwick is drowning in a sea of numbers and rankings.
How about focussing on ball movement and spreading the opposition, like Hawthorn does? A defensive all ground mentality like Fremantle? Accountability and adherence to defensive structure like Melbourne has shown under Paul Roos?
What about hard, two-way running that the Sydney Swans have made their own? Taking the game on through constant movement like Geelong and Port have done with great success?
We can’t measure Scott Pendlebury’s ability to find time and space where there isn’t any. Nor can we measure the freakishness of Gary Ablett’s exquisite ball handling. The same for Joel Selwood’s iron will and Jonathon Brown’s courage and heart.
There is no accounting for Sydney’s ‘Bloods’ culture that gets them over the line when they have no right. No accounting for why Richmond is doomed to repeat the past. Port’s ability to harness irresistible momentum, especially at home, is a mystery.
There is no measurement for skill, talent, work ethic, footy smarts, knowhow, composure, presence, belief, confidence, desire, and the ability to lift in big moments.
The game is won and lost in the intangibles of football. These can’t be measured, so there is now an over-focus on things that can be.
Every time you hear a media commentator mention the importance of contested possession, or listen to a coach bemoan the differential not being in their favour, I just want you to say one thing – bullshit.