Why it's time to ditch percentage from the AFL ladder

This article is another contribution to the annual state-of-the-game hand-wringing festival, so if you’re over that already, I totally understand and you’re free to go.

As for everyone else, who’s up for some unscientific musing?

Here we go.

My basic idea: ditch percentage and use only ‘points for’ to separate teams on the ladder. Before getting to the reasons, though, I’ll start with some assumptions.

I should first say that I mostly agree with the claim that the overall style of play in the last few years of AFL has not been as flowing or exciting as it could be. I’m saying that not as a comparison with how it was played in some supposed glory years – mostly because I’m too young to have seen all that – but as a comparison with itself.

We all know modern footy is not actually 100 per cent congested 30-man scrums or boringly predictable long kicks down the line – that in fact there are still passages of play that are scintillating in the speed of the ball movement and engrossing in the battle of the one-on-one contests.

So the issue is not that fast, exciting footy is impossible; it’s just that it’s not the structural norm and we only get it when the structure is temporarily broken, either by a fresh young team with new tactics, which will probably get figured out before the end of the season, or in the dying stages of a match when everyone’s too knackered to keep to their positions.

(Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images)

So the aim shouldn’t be to recreate dreams or nostalgia of the past but to point to the brief moments we already have and say: make that the majority, make that the structural norm.

The obvious barrier to that is the coaches. However much AFL House wants to tinker with the rules, the coaches will always rule the structure of the play itself and, as we’ve seen time and time again, they will work around the rules for their own ends.

That’s completely fair enough -they’re not paid to make the game look good; they’re paid to have their team finish as high up the ladder as possible. Nothing new here. Coaches dictate the play of the game and coaches choose certain styles based on their lines of own pressures, so fiddle with the coaches lines of pressure in order to effectively fiddle with the play of the game.

I described the coaches’ main pressure as ‘finishing high up the ladder’ and not ‘winning games’ for good reason. With the current set-up coaches can’t focus solely on winning matches; they need to win matches in a certain way, to improve the team’s percentage.

Given how often teams end up on the same number of wins, percentage becomes crucial for determining one’s ladder position. This can determine if you host or travel to a final (last year’s top three all finished on the same number of wins) or if you even get into the finals at all (Melbourne missed out by 0.5 per cent in 2017).

Playing with percentage in mind requires coaches to balance both attack and defence, whereas I think I’m safe in assuming most fans want more attack than defence. I’m guessing most people would prefer 110-100 (percentage 110 per cent) matches to be the norm instead of 75-50 (percentage 150 per cent), but coaches will always structure their team and tactics to go for the second option.

Instead of focusing entirely on scoring goals, this inevitably produces a style of play whereby scoring goals is only prioritised to the extent it doesn’t damage one’s defence. This is exactly what we’ve seen in the past few weeks, with coaches adopting styles that aim to restrict the other team first and only then score goals (if possible) that aren’t too risky and that favour structure over freedom.

We can do away with all of this by using points scored instead of percentage as a ladder separator. Replace the incentive to produce safe and balanced footy with an incentive to score. Obviously defence will still be important – coaches still need to make sure the opposition doesn’t score more than them, but that’s all. They no longer need to win by a certain amount; they just need to win.

Defence no longer becomes a burden on coaches by demanding equal attention as the attack; it becomes secondary to attack. It’s still there but not warping the structures.

(Michael Dodge/Getty Images)

Having put defence to the back seat, I think we’d see coaches adopt much more attacking tactics to both win games and boost their points tally. It wouldn’t be safe for them to aim for final scores of about 70-80; they’d need to work out ways to get closer to 100 or more on a regular basis. Defenders and the overall idea of defence would still be important, but I’m sure we’d see more goals scored and therefore more ball movement to allow this.

It would also be a more understandable metric than percentage to keep an eye on as the season progresses, easily checking if your team has enough points or how much they need to score in the final few rounds to sneak in. Incidentally, that Melbourne team of 2017 would have made the finals with their superior tally over West Coast. Sorry, Demons.

There are a couple of nice effects I think this could produce, including variety of tactics and variety throughout the season. By fiddling only with elements outside the game itself we’re not dictating, imposing on or restricting the way the game can be played, as some rule changes have done (6x6x6, ahem). Coaches can find their own way to score goals, which could produce a great variety of more unique team tactics and therefore more interest when they clash.

It could produce a variety in game styles not only across clubs but also across the season. Knowing that they need to rack up more points than their competitors, coaches will come up with different methods to accumulate them. Do they use hyper-attacking tactics in the early rounds to bank points and coast through the later rounds with more defensive tactics or do they focus on winning games first and only crank up the scoring at the end if they need to?

This would really reward flexibility in both the coaches and the players and create more interest as these differing storylines clash throughout the season.

(Photo by Graham Denholm/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

There are some potential faults people might find with this overall idea, three of which I think can be dealt with and one of which is pretty valid.

First, what about teams lower on the ladder, the no-hopers? Teams who know they’re not going to make the finals at all? Precise ladder positions aren’t important to them, so this incentive wouldn’t work on them. Well, my response is that at the start of the season not many teams would truly nominate themselves as no-hopers. In any given year I’d say the number of clubs who genuinely think they have absolutely no hope of making the finals would be about four or maybe five? That’s 13 or 14 clubs who have designs on the finals and need to seriously consider the way they play to get there. Heck, even when two-thirds of the season is done there are still ten or even 11 teams still in with a chance.

With all these teams playing in a definitively attacking style and looking to score, say, at least 100 points a game, I’m pretty sure the other teams would not be able to ignore it and would need to buy into it to some degree.

What about defensive-minded coaches? The Ross Lyons of the world, the ones who truly believe the best way to win games is to prioritise defence over attack. Would this get rid of the art of defence and lead to manic sloppy attack at any costs?

Again, I think this will be fine. The ultimate priority is still to win games – that still comes before points. So coaches can still focus primarily on winning games, using defensive tactics if they want, and hope that they get high enough up the ladder that their low points column doesn’t hurt them. Fremantle 2013-15 is a perfect example of this.

Next, what about finals? The ladder incentive goes out the window come finals time, so could we see a four-week relapse where the styles snap back to dour rolling mauls? I think that’s nothing to worry about for two reasons. One, finals bring their own unique tension through their sudden-death nature that home-and-away games simply don’t have. Finals don’t need high scores to be exciting.

Second, I doubt teams would spend an entire season adapting to a certain tactic only to ditch it and hope a completely new and untested one will get them through the most important matches of the season. I think it’s unlikely.

Finally, there is a flaw that could well be valid. What if some coaches flip it on its head and instead of trying to increase their points tally as much as possible try to limit everyone else’s by playing very defensive footy? I could definitely see that happening, especially with the more defensive coaches out there. Perhaps they’ll find they scupper themselves by not boosting their own tally and watching as everyone else climbs high above in the other matches, who knows.

I’m sure there are many more potential faults with this idea, so please crack in and point them out. I’d love to hear them all.

Before finishing I want to say that this isn’t my original idea. I remember glancing at it a couple of years ago and thinking it was a good idea. I have no idea who first proposed it, but I reckon it’s a good time to have a proper think about something like this.