Football is a game of opportunities. How did your team use theirs in 2017?

Roar Rookie

4th January, 2018

1430 Reads

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Adam Ritchie new author

Roar Rookie

4th January, 2018

1430 Reads

Sometimes you become acutely aware that something you are doing is objectively odd.

Once I went through the checkout at Woollies with several blocks of chocolate and potato chips and little else. The cashier looked upon my haul and remarked I must’ve been having a party. I laughed in agreement.

I was not having a party.

I’ve had a similar feeling over the past few weeks as I wondered when it was safe to start talking about the football again, and by ‘safe’ I mean socially acceptable to people who don’t devote a single second of their time to wondering when it is safe to talk about football again.

Pondering this is odd. Perhaps I was tired of contemplating this when I arbitrarily decided there was no better time than now. The annual AFL trade period hope-a-palooza has long passed and the AFLW season remains weeks away. Why not smack bang in the middle of the turgid AFL offseason?

Armed with my flimsy justification and acute footballing withdrawal, I thought I would spend some of the holiday season trying to decipher what exactly football is.

Now I’m no David King. I possess no stats lab. I’ve not calculated a premiership trapezoid for you. But I have attempted to distil Aussie Rules football into a very basic idea – one I hope will prove insightful, though I’d settle for moderately interesting.

I posit that football is a game of opportunities and execution. How many opportunities did a team create? How many did they give their opposition? Did they execute once they created an opportunity? Do they let opponents maximise their opportunities?

If we accept this premise, then we can reasonably easily compare teams across these measures. An opportunity can broadly be defined as any time you enter your attacking 50 – after all, this is where most of the scoring is done. How often you hit the scoreboard shows how efficient you are at executing those opportunities, and that efficiency can be refined even further if we measure how often a scoring shot amounted to six points. The same is true of defence.

These measures make for interesting reading for season 2017. I’ve noted some observations that stood out to me, and hopefully you might find others of interest to you.

(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Attack

Attack (higher is better)		How many opportunities did they create?			How often did their opportunities turn into scores?			How often did they maximise their opportunities?
Team	Games	Total Inside 50s Earned	# per game	Rank	Total Scoring Shots	% of inside 50s = scoring shots	Rank	Total Goals	% of inside 50s = goals	Rank	% of scoring shots = goals	Rank
(1) Adelaide	25	1437	57.48	2nd	720	50.10	2nd	395	27.49	1st	54.86	4th
(2) Geelong	25	1324	52.96	8th	632	47.73	6th	343	25.91	7th	54.27	8th
(3) Richmond	25	1396	55.84	3rd	639	45.77	14th	331	23.71	12th	51.80	13th
(4) GWS	25	1359	54.36	7th	641	47.17	7th	336	24.72	10th	52.42	12th
(5) Port Adelaide	23	1363	59.26	1st	629	46.15	12th	323	23.70	13th	51.35	14th
(6) Sydney	24	1263	52.63	11th	608	48.14	5th	329	26.05	5th	54.11	9th
(7) Essendon	23	1182	51.39	12th	596	50.42	1st	319	26.99	3rd	53.52	10th
(8) West Coast	24	1189	49.54	13th	555	46.68	9th	309	25.99	6th	55.68	2nd
(9) Melbourne	22	1206	54.82	4th	525	43.53	16th	319	26.45	4th	60.76	1st
(10) Western Bulldogs	22	1203	54.68	5th	557	46.30	10th	260	21.61	18th	46.68	18th
(11) St Kilda	22	1160	52.73	10th	570	49.14	3rd	271	23.36	14th	47.54	17th
(12) Hawthorn	22	1064	48.36	14th	499	46.90	8th	273	25.66	8th	54.71	5th
(13) Collingwood	22	1197	54.41	6th	554	46.28	11th	278	23.22	15th	50.18	16th
(14) Fremantle	22	1044	47.45	16th	452	43.30	17th	231	22.13	17th	51.11	15th
(15) North Melbourne	22	1163	52.86	9th	533	45.83	13th	290	24.94	9th	54.41	7th
(16) Carlton	22	1026	46.64	17th	434	42.30	18th	232	22.61	16th	53.46	11th
(17) Gold Coast	22	1062	48.27	15th	471	44.35	15th	257	24.20	11th	54.56	6th
(18) Brisbane	22	1012	46	18th	497	49.11	4th	276	27.27	2nd	55.53	3rd

Adelaide were an elite offence and nobody else was particularly close. They were the only side to rank top four in each category. They got the ball into attacking positions often, and when they did they tended to score, and what they scored were goals. They, along with the Bombers, were the only sides to score from more than 50 per cent of their forward entries, though the Crows broke the forward-50 barrier six more times a game on average.

Port Adelaide moved the ball inside 50 more than anyone else, but they were very inefficient once they did, finishing well below average in each of those measures. Premiers Richmond were similar.

The real surprise here is Brisbane – they are in the inverse of the premiers. They created the fewest opportunities each game, but when they did manage to create them, they were very efficient. It will be interesting to see if this holds in season 2018.

The Western Bulldogs’ campaign was extremely wasteful, almost in the top bracket for total opportunities but dead last in converting for goals. Collingwood followed a similar pattern.

Fremantle are the only side in the bottom bracket for all four categories. Carlton’s slightly better accuracy in front of goal spares them from the same fate.

Essendon were below average in terms of creating opportunities but converted them into scores at a better rate than any other team. They were slightly below average in terms of accuracy, though.

Melbourne produced a very odd mix. They got forward often (4th), but were extremely poor at turning their entries into scores (16th). When they did manage to score, they were the most accurate side in the competition.

The Giants were decidedly middle of the range in the attacking facets of the game.

(Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images)

Defence

Defence (lower is better)		How many opportunities did they concede?			How often did their opponents turn opportunities into scores?			How often did their opponents maximise their opportunities?
Team	Games	Inside 50s given up	# per game	Rank	Scoring shots given up	% of inside 50s given up = scoring shots	Rank	Total goals given up	% of inside 50s given up = goals	Rank	% of scoring shots given up = goals	Rank
(1) Adelaide	25	1258	50.32	5th	547	43.48	3rd	292	23.21	6th	53.38	10th
(2) Geelong	25	1270	50.8	7th	589	46.38	8th	299	23.54	7th	50.76	3rd
(3) Richmond	25	1263	50.52	6th	531	42.04	1st	264	20.90	1st	49.72	1st
(4) GWS	25	1295	51.8	10th	567	43.78	4th	298	23.01	5th	52.56	8th
(5) Port Adelaide	23	1125	48.91	1st	494	43.91	5th	251	22.31	3rd	50.81	4th
(6) Sydney	24	1197	49.88	3rd	505	42.19	2nd	260	21.72	2nd	51.49	5th
(7) Essendon	23	1240	53.91	15th	590	47.58	12th	307	24.76	8th	52.03	6th
(8) West Coast	24	1292	53.83	14th	584	45.20	6th	295	22.83	4th	50.51	2nd
(9) Melbourne	22	1125	51.14	8th	534	47.47	10th	280	24.89	9th	52.43	7th
(10) Western Bulldogs	22	1091	49.59	2nd	518	47.48	11th	279	25.57	11th	53.86	12th
(11) St Kilda	22	1146	52.09	11th	531	46.34	7th	291	25.39	10th	54.80	16th
(12) Hawthorn	22	1126	51.18	9th	550	48.85	14th	301	26.73	14th	54.73	15th
(13) Collingwood	22	1107	50.32	4th	528	47.70	13th	287	25.93	13th	54.36	14th
(14) Fremantle	22	1163	52.86	12th	575	49.44	15th	317	27.26	16th	55.13	18th
(15) North Melbourne	22	1215	55.23	16th	609	50.12	16th	331	27.24	15th	54.35	13th
(16) Carlton	22	1165	52.95	13th	543	46.61	9th	299	25.67	12th	55.06	17th
(17) Gold Coast	22	1233	56.05	17th	626	50.77	17th	337	27.33	17th	53.83	11th
(18) Brisbane	22	1339	60.86	18th	691	51.61	18th	367	27.41	18th	53.11	9th

Richmond were the clear standouts on defence. They prevented their opponents from entering the attacking 50 at a good but not elite rate (6th), but they top the rankings across the board in snuffing those opportunities out. Their opponents’ entries turned into scores less often than any other side, and when they did score they were behinds. Richmond was the only team in the league to concede fewer goals than behinds in 2017.

Sydney are the next best defensive outfit, ranking top four in three different categories and only just missing out on the opponent accuracy measure. Their defensive efforts in the middle of the park appear superior to Richmond’s in that they let their opposition inside 50 less often, and they weren’t far behind Richmond in the other groupings.

Port Adelaide also excelled in this facet of the game. Their midfield deserves a lot of credit for their showing in 2017. Nobody controlled field position better. They got the ball into their opponents’ defensive 50 at a better rate than anyone else and also conceded the fewest entries into their own.

The Western Bulldogs’ attacking inefficiencies are replicated in defence. They were very good at preventing their opponents from getting forward, but once they did break through they often conceded. Like Port Adelaide, they controlled field position reasonably well in 2017 but were very inefficient at both ends of the ground.

West Coast’s midfield owes their defenders a drink. They were almost in the bottom tier when it came to preventing their opponents from getting forward but elite at preventing those entries becoming goals.

Brisbane and Gold Coast reside in their own defensive pits of despair. They can both be grateful their opposition wasn’t more accurate in front of goal.

(Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images)

Final observations

Geelong had a good but not great season and were a picture of stability. Across both attack and defence, they ranked between fifth and eighth in all but one category.

Essendon and West Coast fit similar profiles – quite good and often elite in facets of the game at either end of the ground but quite poor in the middle of the park. Collingwood and the Western Bulldogs are the inverse in that they’re strong in the middle but inefficient at both ends of the ground.

Fremantle didn’t finish higher than 12th in any of the measures. Yikes.

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