Last week a particularly stupid but handsome columnist proclaimed the greatness of the national game using the fact that “13 of 18 teams are at least 4-4 right now – we have plenty of good teams!”
The conclusion reached was that Round 9 was “going to be an exciting week”.
Yeah. About that…
The tightest of the nine games was a 28-point Collingwood victory, where the Saints were basically never any closer than that throughout the fourth quarter.
The other options were Essendon by 34, Adelaide by 37, Port by 40, North by 43, and Sydney by 59.
And we haven’t even reached Sunday’s debacles. The Eagles 47-point ‘nailbiter’ was the highlight, as expected, following Brisbane’s 56-point upset of Hawthorn (exciting only for the form reversal) and Melbourne’s 18-goal annihilation of the once-proud Carlton Blues.
109-point margins are for the state leagues. And two-goals-fourteen should never happen on the Friday night showcase of the AFL – or at any level of footy.
So, rather than whine or pontificate about any of this… Let’s talk about the Meta-Player of the Year standings.
As many of you already know, I compile the various ‘team of the week’, ‘top three stars of the game’, AFLCA votes, and anything else I can find that identifies the outstanding players that week, into one large database and keep the running total as the ‘Meta-Player of the Year’ scoreboard.
It’s like the Brownlow, except that it’s everyone’s opinions combined.
After Round 9 is a great time to take a look, because with the China break this week for our two world travelers, we won’t have all 18 teams having played the same number of games for the next six weeks. So here we go!
Nat Fyfe: 229 points 2 D / 3 P
Jack Macrae: 195 points 2 D / 1 P
Tom Mitchell: 187 points 0 D / 5 P
Dustin Martin: 180 points 3 D / 0 P
Max Gawn: 173 points 0 D / 6 P
Jack Darling: 167 points 1 D / 2 P
Patrick Cripps: 163 points 1 D / 2 P
Lance Franklin: 159 points 1 D / 2 P
Trent Cotchin: 147 points 2 D / 2 P
Steele Sidebottom: 135 points 0 D / 2 P
Brodie Grundy: 134 points 2 D / 1 P
Rory Laird: 131 points 0 D / 2 P
Ben Brown: 130 points 1 D / 2 P
Dayne Zorko: 129 points 2 D / 1 P
Robbie Gray: 124 points 2 D / 1 P
Joel Selwood: 123 points 1 D / 0 P
Stephen Coniglio: 121 points 2 D / 0 P
Clayton Oliver: 111 points 1 D / 1 P
Patrick Dangerfield: 110 points 1 D / 1 P
Jesse Hogan: 109 points 0 D / 3 P
For those unfamiliar with our ELO-Following Football statistics, the ‘D’ and ‘P’ stand for ‘dominant’ and ‘prominent’ performances. These are (somewhat arbitrary) designations for a player’s game that receives recognition from 90 per cent of our sources (for dominant) or 80 per cent (for prominent), and are rough ways of noting particularly significant performances by a player.
So, for a curious example, Gawn has had six of his nine games recognised by 80 per cent of sources, but none were so dominant that 90 per cent of those sources recognised it. And, oddly, it was rarely the same sources which excluded Gawn.
For Tom Mitchell, who similarly has five prominent but no dominant performances, it is almost always the fantasy ratings which find fault in his game and keep him from the 90 per cent threshold.
For comparison, here’s the top ten after Round 4:
Mitchell and Franklin – 130
Martin – 128
Coniglio – 100
Grundy – 99
Fyfe – 95
Laird – 85
Brown – 83
Sidebottom – 80
Hogan – 70
Photo by Daniel Carson/AFL Media/Getty Images
Nat Fyfe’s move up the ladder shouldn’t surprise anyone: he’s had one prominent game (Round 7) and two dominants (Rounds 5 and 8) since this table.
Lance Franklin’s only played two of the five games since this table’s origination, thanks to a bum foot. Jack Macrae doesn’t even appear on this Round 4 list – in fact, after Round 5, he was at just 49 points, not even leading his own 1-4 team (that honour was Lachie Hunter’s). Since then, he’s had two dominants (Rounds 7 and 8), one prominent (Round 6), and a great game in Round 9 that missed recognition by just one source.
Stephen Coniglio’s drop from fourth to his current 17th parallels his Giants team’s floundering over the last few rounds, which points out the sad overriding truth about this and by extension every evaluative tool we use – whether it’s human or statistical – a player’s perceived greatness is contingent on how good his team is.
There are corollary versions of this, of course. Should Gary Ablett have won a Brownlow in 2013 playing for the 8-14 Gold Coast Suns? More generally, does ‘most valuable’ imply the team has high value overall, or that the player imparts the most value to his team?
In the NFL, quite often the de facto leader in the MVP race is the quarterback of the team with the best record in the league. Yet it’s easy to argue that Tom Brady had more impressive seasons when he was carrying an 11-5 on his lonely shoulders, throwing to college rejects for receivers, than when the Patriots went 16-0 and he had a bevvy of talent around him.
Was LeBron James more valuable when he had Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh alongside him in Miami and won two titles, or when he had almost nobody next to him of value (as has too often been the case in his career) and made the finals anyway, only to be smashed by the Warriors or Spurs?
On our current list, the top three players are from Fremantle (currently 12th), Western (13th), and Hawthorn (ninth). Not coincidentally, none of the three men have a teammate with even half their point totals; they’re at least perceived to be the lone wolf in a side that’s not playing well enough so far to make finals. How valuable can you be if your team is still losing?
The next three, by comparison, are from Richmond (second), Melbourne (third), and West Coast (first), and have at least one other teammate in the top 25 (Shannon Hurn is just off the top 20, in 24th, at 99 points for the Eagles). Are they really more valuable because they’re the linchpins on winning teams, or less valuable because they’re not quite as critical to their club’s success?
On the other hand, Nat Fyfe is probably garnering the three Brownlow votes every time the Dockers win; does that make him more important on a 4-5 team than the brightest star in a 7-2 constellation?
The floor is open for discussion.
In the meantime, as always seems to be the case, the ELO-Following Football crystal ball was correct two-thirds of the time last week (it missed the two upsets, plus our shared preference for Richmond). In Round 10, I’m taking Collingwood by 16 on Friday night, and on Saturday it’s Richmond by 42, Sydney by 28, Geelong by 61, the Giants by 12, and West Coast by 20.
On Sunday, my system prefers Melbourne by seven over Adelaide up in Alice Springs, and the Kangaroos by 11 over Fremantle in Perth. Both picks make me nervous (the Demons are 1-4 in Alice Springs, and Freo is unbeaten in Optus), but the system’s record is better than mine this season, and momentum means something in this league, so I’ll roll with it. Good luck!
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