Bluey44 wrote:
Maybe these guys ?
Recruiting based on sabermetrics could work in Australian Rules Football - but not in the same way as baseball. Nearly every event in baseball can be categorized and quantified: walk or strikeout, homerun or flyout, ball or strike. Aussie Rules lacks baseball’s clarity: Did Dennis Armfield execute a good shepherd, or not? When to kick - when to handball. How do you measure that when it's not black and white?
The only way to do it from a coaching point of view is separate the field into three and execute more set-plays from the stoppages. If you viewed each stoppage as a 'down' in American Football parlance, and had set plays called by a midfielder at that stoppage - then you could possibly justify using a data-driven approach to game plans and therefore - enhance your list management based on that. I'm a firm believer that Geelong has been doing that for a few years. Their 'outer circle' at the stoppage changes depending on where they are on the ground - but in essence, all their midfielders have a defined zone and role at the stoppage. Carlton is very ad-hoc depending on the opponent. But anyone who looked at stats from the AFL in 2013 saw that many of the traditional Champion Data stats went out the window.
Our traditional stats look like this:
Disposals: 341.5 (16th)
Contested possession differential: +8.2 (3rd)
Tackles: 64.0 (9th)
Clearance differential: +3.6 (3rd)
Inside-50 differential: +2.0 (10th)
Scoring % inside 50: 51.9% (5th)
Av points for: 96.6 (8th)
Av points against: 90.5 (9th)
Av winning margin: 30
Av losing margin: 18
AS for uncontested possession - only Simpson, Scotland and Walker made the top 50. Gibbs the only other to finish inside the top 100.
Better stats to look at and consider with regard to recruitment of midfielders are metres gained per match and retained possession from disposal. There are a few kids not considered draft worthy until the second round of this draft who fare very well in the aforementioned areas. But because they're south of 180cm and the current vogue is big-bodied mids, they slip down the order rather than go up.