Tag Archive for 'afl'

Sleepness nights begin

Published
by
Robert Merkel
8 months, 3 weeks ago
in Sport
. 71 Comments

It’s going to be one of those weekends where too much sport will indeed barely be enough, if you’re a sports-watcher.

In the AFL, it’s the home-and-away matchup of the year. While there have been longer winning streaks in the league’s history, never before have two undefeated teams met in the fourteenth round of competition. Geelong is the benchmark team of the competition, winning a premiership in 2007, narrowly missing out in 2008, and hasn’t lost a game this year. St. Kilda’s season has been remarkable not only for its undefeated streak but the margins of its victories; its percentage of 177.5% is the kind of thing you expect to see in the Manangatang District League third-division competition, not the elite competition with its player draft and salary cap as balancing mechanisms.

The Championships will come to their climax at the renovated Wimbledon. While Lleyton Hewitt’s run has ended in the quarter-finals, the prospect of two more displays from the most elegant player of the modern era, Roger Federer, should be worth waiting up for.

But, unsurprisingly, my eyes will be on Monaco for the start of the three-week carnival of cycling that is the Tour de France. If the drama and intrigue during the race gets anywhere close to the pre-race fun and games we’ve had, it should be a cracker.

Continue reading ‘Sleepness nights begin’

It’s more important than the CPRS…

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 3 months ago
in Sport
. 40 Comments

Ben Cousins has been drafted by Richmond.

For those of you from the rugby states who haven’t been following this rather embarrassing saga, Ben Cousins is one of the most talented AFL footballers of the modern era. As a midfielder with the West Coast Eagles, he captained the side from 2001 to 2005, won the Brownlow medal in 2005, won his club’s best and fairest award four times (in a team that also included Chris Judd, amongst other champion players), and played in two Grand Finals, with a win in 2006. Cousins, however, has a taste for mind-altering substances of various kinds, legal and illegal. He’s also had friendships with a number of Perth’s more colourful “underworld identities”; as summarized here. He was sacked by the Eagles in 2007, after being arrested by police driving driving around “erratically” with various prescription tranquilizers and – wait for it – Viagra – in his car. He was then deregistered by the AFL for 12 months, after an apparent cocaine binge while supposedly seeking rehabilitation in Los Angeles.

After lengthy debates on whether the AFL would let Cousins play again, the imposition of an onerous testing drug testing regime, and Brisbane, St. Kilda and Collingwood all considering drafting Cousins before dipping out. It seems that, in most cases, the footballing staff were keen, the club management decided that it would antagonize sponsors too much. Richmond, it seems, are prepared to take the risk of sponsor opprobrium, to pick up a proven champion, still potentially near his peak, for virtually nothing.

Continue reading ‘It’s more important than the CPRS…’

How good are Geelong – and why?

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 6 months ago
in Australiana and Sport
. 56 Comments

Now that the quadrennial gumboot-tossing, yak-dancing, and passport alteration championships are over, let us (or at least that fraction of the population who cares about such things) turn our minds back to that most local of sports, Australian rules football. At the end of the home and away season, Geelong are almost unbackable favourites ($1.40 at the TAB, to be precise) to win another premiership, something which I suspect probably slightly underestimates the chances of bad luck striking over a finals series.

It’s worth considering, for a moment, just how successful their home-and-away season campaigns have been, and comparing them to other dominant teams of the recent past – an exercise made easy by finalsiren.com’s historical result listings. Geelong’s home-and-away season performance has been considerably better than last year, winning 21 of a possible 22 games, and with a percentage of 160 (that is, they have scored 1.6 times as many points as their opponents over the course of the season). Statistically, it is a (marginally) better home-and-away season than Essendon’s 2000 season, and well in front of any other team’s home-and-away record. Over a two-year period, Geelong’s home-and-away win-loss record in 2007-08 equals Essendon’s 1999-2000 record, and their overall percentage is considerably higher – they have won as many games, but by bigger margins. While some other teams have enjoyed longer periods of success – Essendon topped the ladder again in 2001 – Geelong have been as dominant in regular games over the past two years as any team we’ve seen (note: with the exception of the 1929 Collingwood team)

Given that the AFL draft and salary cap is supposed to even out the competition, it is interesting that two of the most statistically dominant teams seen – the Essendon team of 1999-2001, and the present Geelong team – have played in the last decade under this structure. Throw in Brisbane’s three consecutive premierships of 2001-03, and – while no team has managed continuous domination of the kind that the Melbourne Demons managed through the late 1950s – you start to get a picture that the current structure might just be leading to single, dominant teams more than one would expect.
Continue reading ‘How good are Geelong – and why?’