The Victorian sporting media have been talking about two things this week. The first was the Cadelebration, the second was blowouts. Not of the tubular bicycle tyre variety (and thank your favourite deity that Cadel didn’t have another one of those at a crucial moment), the Australian Rules footballing kind.
A sequence of lopsided matches has started a discussion on whether the draft and salary cap are as effective as they once were at evening up the competition. It’s something I’ve been wondering about for several years now. Notably absent from this has been any attempt to present long-term evidence for this proposition, one way or the other.
Here’s my modest attempt at a corrective – a chart looking at the premiership points scored, and the for-against percentages, of the top two teams on the ladder from 1990 until 2011. The percentages for 2011 are taken as of a few hours ago (I haven’t looked at Geelong’s result today yet), and I’m assuming that both Geelong and Collingwood will win until round 21, and draw in their round 22 matchup:
Clearly, the top two teams are exceptionally strong this year. But, at least from the chart, it does appear to be something of a multi-year trend, too.
robert, do you think this is the draft, or the style of play? Until geelong came into their prime, the standard wisdom was that teams needed to play a defensive game. Think of West Coast and Sydney 2005/2006. The successful teams did not aim at blowing teams away, just winning week in and week out.
The team no one wanted to be was Malcolm Blight’s Geelong: Brilliant, high scoring, but never premiers. But it was another Geelong that broke that mold, and we are in a period of high scoring successful teams.
The real test of whether the draft works or not is whether dynasties can be created. Brisbane could not do what Hawthorn did in the ’80s. 4 grand finals and it was all down hill from there. Will there ever be a team in 7 straight grand finals again?
It is certainly going to have plenty of lop-sided results as teams that are lower on the ladder blood ever younger players.
An idea of the change of effectiveness evident with West Coast this year, and how the Crows youngsters, with the adrenaline via a home crowd starved of something to cheer, made a good account against Geelong today.
Some fine tuning of the draft may benifit but I am appalled at the slack rule interpretations and constant changes to the laws of the game.
Collingwood, Geelong, Hawthorn and to a lesser degree Carlton have taken the intellectual arms race to the next level. The efficiency of the transition from defence to attack dwarfs their opponents and far outshines the best of only five years ago. Remarkable is the fact that all these teams perform this task differently.
There has never been better time to watch football played at the highest pitch of excellence.
It is up to other teams to catch up with the intellectual achievements of these four teams.
Look at the 20 year trend from 1990 to 2010, book ended by Collingwood wins coincidentally. 11 teams won flags. Another 2 made GFs and lost. Out of 14 to 16 teams.
The 23 years before that 5 teams won flags, with 4 others making a GF but losing. Tho most of that time there were only 12 teams.
Clearly over a long period of time the competition has been evened out, and really there can only be so many really dominant players at any one time. I reckon that has more effect than you’d credit. I’m reluctant to comment too much cos I’d rather argue about footy over beers with some mates than here, but I think its really too early to tell right now.
You could just be seeing really good coaching systems and a strategic change – athough it appears its just well drilled, well disciplined sides. Plus, this year there is the sub system. I think thats having an effect on the scoring.
Katz, it can’t be that simple. Tactics, in and of themselves, are one of the easiest things for other teams to replicate.
Perhaps the current tactical state of the art – beautiful as it is to watch when done well – magnifies the scoreboard effects of the difference between strong and weak teams, whereas the flooding tactics of a few years ago shrank those differences. That might be a major contributing factor.
But I think it’s worth considering other explanations.
Yes Robert, the explanation isn’t monocausal.
Here’s another. Notoriously, several teams have proven to be incapable of building and developing a balanced team. I point the finger especially at Melbourne, Richmond and Fremantle. This is a cultural issue because two struggling smaller clubs, Bulldogs and North field competitive squads despite a lack of spending power. And these clubs have had plenty of opportunity to select early draft picks and priority picks.
Successful teams are more capable than ever before at punishing severely the cultural weaknesses of these clubs. Hence the lopsidedness of many recent blowouts.
Carlton, Collingwood and St Kilda made good use their tanking by picking up some excellent talent.
All I know about this is what Malthouse wrotea few days ago and his proposal for a three-tier draw. Which on the face of it looks like a decent idea, from the point of view of a Queenslander who kind of vaguely follows AFL. I think there’s merit in his argument that any system that has Geelong playing Gold Coast twice in a season, is pretty stupidly broken, and tinkering with the draw seems a very easy and consequence-free way of adjusting the comp, at last compared to fiddling with the salary cap and the draft.
d
I don’t really watch much AFL anymore, too much like glorified circle work. But still appreciate watching the SANFL (the way the game used to be) and it really all depends on the culture at the club. Central District have played in the last 11 consecutive GF’s for 9 Premierships and are sitting top of the ladder again this year.
Only two players (the Gowans twins) have been a part of all nine of those Premierships for Centrals. Hopefully they and all the other Finals teams from the SANFL last year don’t snub the Foxtel Cup again next year, Centrals would be the raging favourites for that.
The Crows tried to talk Centrals coach Roy Laird (seven premierships from 9 GF’s in 9 years as a coach) into applying for their vacant Head Coach job after the resignation of Neil Craig but he turned it down saying he doesn’t have the time for AFL and barely even watches it, gotta love that old school mentality.
It’s probably a smidgeon off-topic, but I think there’s a case for the AFL to abandon the top eight finals format and return to a top six. I cannot recall a recent finals series in which the seventh and eight teams did anything more than make up the numbers, and this season is going to be pretty much in that mould.
Of course, a reversion to a top six finals format would probably have implications for some of the other proposals canvassed regarding the draw, etc.
I’d be interested to see an age-weighted performance analysis. Westcoast is an obvious example of my thesis that if you cull your older players hard over aperiod of two so years and build a core of young talent to develop together, all things being equal, there is going to be a time when they are dominant – worsfold publicly talks about the current window of opportunity for Westcoast based on its currrent player list.
Darryl, I’m not in favour in using a deliberately lopsided draw as a way to equalize the competition. Would you support an Australian Open tennis draw that puts all the seeded players in a quarter of the draw to give the other players a chance?
Paul, if I had my way there would be separate cup and league competitions, and we’d dispose of the finals series entirely. But I doubt I’d get much support for that!
I suppose the question is what do you lose or gain by a final six instead of a final eight. For neutrals, it does mean that some of the games in the first week are of limited interest. But I’m not sure that you’d get more interesting games in the first week with a final six.
Having Final Eight is about money – the hope that a team ranked 5 to 8 getting up is small consideration.
I think the season, with the expanded competition should become a straight home and away spread over two years.
Plus ça change:
West Coast have some tidy youngsters, but their good year to date is based around Cox, Kerr, Embley & Glass.
“Would you support an Australian Open tennis draw that puts all the seeded players in a quarter of the draw to give the other players a chance?”
Sorry, I don’t know what that means. I don’t follow sport.
Twiddling with the rules of the draw seems like an easy experiment. Do it one year and see how it works. If it’s no good, change it the following year. Incidentally, what are the rules of the draw?
d
Darryl, historically, the draw has never been used as an equalization tool.
To do so would be a fairly radical departure from 150-odd years of Australian Rules Football club competition.
If there is a problem, there are much less radical ways of dealing with it.
“Twiddling with the rules of the draw seems like an easy experiment. Do it one year and see how it works. If it’s no good, change it the following year. ”
Yes that is what happens – every goddamn year.
A minor premiership doesn’t mean anything. Its all about finals now and it’ll have to stay that way. Nothing else has the orgasmic potential.
Robert,@14 Well, what is the draw for? Was it just chance that GC played Geelong twice? Or was that a decision that served some purpose in keeping with the way people’s great-grandfathers would have run a nationwide professional competition?
Jules@15
I was finally motivated to look up on wikipedia what ‘minor premiership’ actually meant. That’s 20-something years of idle curiosity deal with, so thank-you. But seriously, was there a time that people cared about that? How odd.
d
Actually, the compromised draw is much more recent than anyone’s great-grandfathers. It arose in the 1990s with the advent of a plethora of “blockbusters”.
Before that, opponents were either played twice per season or were fixtures on a firm rotational basis, assuring that all teams eventually played each other an equal number of times. That can’t happen now.
GC had to play one of the high-fliers twice. Why not Geelong?
In any case Geelong was touted to fall in 2011. And Geelong’s fixture was front-loaded with tough opponents to maximise the possibility that this presumption would come true. Disappointingly, Geelong defied the AFL script.
It seems that the salary cap is no longer sufficient. Free agency will make the landscape even more uneven. There will always be the success-breeds-success factor. Players will accept less money to play at a potential premier club (e.g. Luke Ball). I wonder whether the simplest method might not be to have a salary cap that is inversely related to ladder position. Currently it is flat theoretically , but the poorer clubs only spend about 90% of it.
Interesting to see of the moderators strip my comment again. Since this is not a gender or reffo-thread, they might let it through.