Roundabout: Finals Week 1
Meet the new boss – same as the old boss.
G’day readers,
After 211 games in what’s repeatedly been called the most even season in AFL history, Geelong and Sydney have made it through to Preliminary Finals, with Hawthorn right on their heels. The more things change, eh?
The Cats nibble on a cable, cause Power outage
One of the purest examples of the differences between Finals Footy™ and the Home & Away season – and of how Geelong are the best team in the AFL at forcing their opponents into playing a game they don’t want to play. Here’s a clarifying stat, courtesy of Champion Data’s Daniel Hoyne. Let’s define a “Chaos Game” as one where there are more ground balls than marks. And let’s define a “Control Game” as one with more marks than ground balls. Over the last five years, the Home & Away season has seen an almost 50/50 split between Chaos Games and Control Games. Almost 80 percent of finals games over the same period have been Chaos Games.
Port under Ken Hinkley don’t like playing Chaos Games. This year, they’re ranked second in the AFL for per-game mark differential (16.1) but 16th for per-game ground ball gets differential (-4.6). But of course, finals footy isn’t different from the regular season for some mystical reason. It’s different because coaches implement different systems. Chris Scott implemented a plan to disrupt Port’s preferred style, and his players executed it to near-perfection. First, just like I suggested he do in my preview (you’re welcome, Chris), he inserted an extra defensive player at stoppages – typically Shaun Mannagh – around the ground to prevent Port’s elite midfielders from running through them at speed. That relatively simple tweak helped to turn what analysts predicted would be Geelong’s biggest weakness into a huge strength. The Cats went +54 in scores from stoppages. Denied first use, Port’s midfielders weren’t able to get the ball to the outside to generate their familiar kick-mark game. The absence of Dan Houston and Kane Farrell certainly didn’t help in this regard – even when Port did get the ball, they had huge struggles in advancing it up the field.
Of the 23 games Port had played this season before the Qualifying Final, they’d only taken fewer than the 81 marks they took on Thursday night in five games: their Round 3 defeat to Melbourne, the two Showdowns, the Round 24 game against Fremantle, and the incredible one-point win against… Hawthorn. Meaning that Port are 2-4, and by all rights should be 1-5, in games this year where they took 81 marks or fewer. Arbitrary, perhaps. But telling.
The Cats used the chaos they fomented like a ladder. They exploited Darcy Byrne-Jones’ lack of familiarity with the half-back role he was asked to play and constantly turned the ball over in their forward half. The result: from 31 front-half chains, the Cats piled on a massive 12.6. Port’s defence simply couldn’t cope, and their forwards didn’t do nearly enough to prevent opposition rebounds.
It’s back to the drawing board for Ken Hinkley and Josh Carr. But hey, at least it’s not like their Semi-Final opponent, Hawthorn, excels at forcing teams to play a ground-level game and will be out for revenge after a heartbreaking loss in their last encounter, right?
The Hawks soar to leave flawed Bulldogs floored
If there were people who still doubted that Hawthorn had a legitimate chance of winning the flag, then they’re surely reconsidering their position following this game. The Hawks were supreme on both sides of the ball against Western Bulldogs side that many credible models had pinned as the best team in the competition.
In my preview of the first round of finals games, I mentioned that despite the focus on their flotilla of exciting smalls, it’s actually Hawthorn’s defensive improvements that have most impressed me this season. Mitchell’s merry men have gone from conceding an average expected score of 86.4 per game last year – fourth-worst in the AFL – to just 70.8 this year, the second-best. The reasons for that stark improvement were clearly on show on Friday night.
Even if they lost the first stoppage, Hawks players were constantly able to apply enough pressure to prevent Dogs players from linking up effectively by hand and eventually force rushed kicks, which more often than not, were intercepted by their athletic mid-sized defenders. That’s why, despite being ranked #1 in the AFL this year for converting rebound 50s into inside 50s, the Dogs could only convert one (1) of their 30 rebound 50 opportunities in the first three quarters into an inside 50. This chart, created by Emlyn Breese (give him a follow, folks), shows all the tackles laid by both sides in the game. Two things immediately jump out. The first is the concentration of Hawthorn tackles down their right wing, which corresponded to my subjective impression during the game that the Dogs were funnelling their attacks down that side of the ground. The second is the relative success rate. Of the 54 tackles, just a third (18) resulted in either a stoppage or free kick. Contrast that to the Hawks, who were able to generate a stoppage or free with 40 of their 65 effective tackles – a rate of 61.5 percent.
It’s yet more evidence of perhaps the single biggest factor in the Hawks’ rise to serious Premiership contenders: their skill at ground level. That is itself further evidence of two things: the athleticism of their players, and Sam Mitchell’s ability to identify and disrupt opposition teams’ preferred ball movement patterns. Hawthorn’s ability at ground level was already in evidence last year, when they ranked fourth in the AFL for ground ball gets differential. But it’s gone to a different level altogether this year: their differential of +9.1 per game is comfortably league best. Make no mistake: the Hawks can win it all.
Also, how about that Calsher Dear?
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Sydney outlast GWS in an epic
Ah, wow. What a bloody game. Analysing it feels vaguely sacreligious, as though the appropriate thing to do is simply admire it in awed silence. But we’re here to smash icons. The two features of the game which jumped out at me were the Swans’ superior scoring from their front-half chains, and the ability of their superstars to lift when it mattered most.
The two things are connected. The Giants prefer using physical pressure instead of defensive structure to generate turnovers. No team lays more tackles per game, but only two teams take fewer intercept marks. It’s mostly an effective strategy; only Gold Coast allow their opponents fewer disposals per turnover. But the downside of that is that when your ability to apply that physical pressure declines, either because of the fatigue of a high-octane final, or because your opponents have gun players who can easily slip their lead, you will begin to bleed chances. The Giants have one of the best defensive units in the game, and Sam Taylor and Jack Buckley both had excellent games. But eventually, as the pressure upfield waned (the Giants laid 16 tackles in their back half in the third quarter, but only nine in the fourth), it made the difference downfield.
But the Giants didn’t lose this game (although I’m sure Lachie Ash would like that moment right at the end back). The Swans won it. And they won it because their guns fired at the right time. There was no better example than Chad Warner. In the first three quarters, the Chad had 14 disposals (only two of which were contested), two score involvements, zero clearances, and 310 metres gained. In the last quarter, he had 13 disposals (seven contested), seven clearances, five score involvements, and 356 metres gained. So what changed? The clue is in the contested possession numbers. Because of his outrageous speed and agility, Warner lives on the outside of the contest. Of his average 8.7 contested possessions per game this year, 6.3 of them are ground ball gets. He gathers and he goes, and no one can stop him. Every single one of his nine contested possessions on Saturday was a ground ball get. For three quarters, the Giants neutralised him by sticking close and not letting the ball get to the outside of the contest. But again, as that pressure slipped, and the ball found its way to the periphery of the contest, Warner was there to make hay.
A meagre consolation for gloomy Giants fans – they played significantly better in defeat on Saturday afternoon than they had in almost every game since quarter-time of their Round 17 clash against Carlton. Sydney advance – just.
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Carlton make us laugh, then leave
Unless one is heavily motivated by spite and schadenfreude against Carlton, which, admittedly, accounts for a lot of people, this was by some distance the least interesting of the weekend’s games (Thursday night counts as the weekend when there’s footy on). OK, first a tiny bit more schadenfreude for those that way inclined: this was the first ever AFL game with a 59-0 scoreline.
The difference between the teams which allowed Brisbane to storm the barricades and then cruise for the second half of the game lay in the teams’ abilities to move the ball from their back half. Carlton actually began with the ball in their back half 82 times (eight more than the Lions). From those back-half chains, however, the Blues mustered just 4.3 – with most of that score coming in junk time. The highly simplified pattern of the game was: Carlton attempting to advance the ball (often resorting to long kicks to contests), turning it over, and then being unable to defend in transition. Even at their best under Michael Voss, late last season, Carlton were a blunt instrument. To crib an analogy from the classic ‘90s real-time strategy game StarCraft, they’re like a siege tank: they fire big shots, but they’re slow and vulnerable. The muscular, contested approach works well enough, most of the time, when they have Harry McKay and Charlie Curnow there to win or at least halve marking contests. Attempting the same game plan, against one of the game’s best intercept markers in Harris Andrews, when only one of them is available and there isn’t enough ground-level support… look, I’m not an AFL coach. Michael Voss has forgotten more about footy than I’ll ever know. But yeah.
A word for the Lions: they weren’t at their best, nor did they need to be. Chris Fagan will be pleased with the quality of their centre clearance wins and the efficiency of their ball movement (58.9 percent of their inside 50s resulted in shots at goal, compared to a season average just a tick over 50) and the fact that they were able to play well below maximum intensity for half the game. If you’re being ultra-critical, then conceding 3.1 directly from centre bounces is less than ideal, but it’s rarely a large enough source of scores to influence the result of a game.
So the Lions advance to face the Giants, and the Blues are again left to reflect on what might have been. Next season will mark 30 years since their last flag. Many pundits are giving them a pass this year because of their crippling injury list. I’m not quite so generous. The age of their core means their Premiership window won’t be open for that much longer. And unless they draft more speed, and Voss and his assistants develop a less predictable game plan, I think the Blues may continue to fall short against the very best.
Back next week to discuss the Semi-Finals and look ahead to the Prelims.