Roundabout: Finals Week 2
How Port climbed off the canvas in one of the games of the year.
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It all looked so predictable. The Hawks were riding so high they were almost in the stratosphere following their dismantling of the Dogs in the Elimination Final. Port, meanwhile, were on the canvas after being hammered by the Cats. Betting markets thought Hawthorn would win. Jack Ginnivan thought Hawthorn would win. A plurality of Port fans did too.
So of course, in a season so full of surprises that I’ve lost track of whether this result even counts as one or not, Port ground out a nail-biting win. But they did it in an unusual style. Port’s strengths under coach Ken Hinkley are obvious: using their dominant midfielders to win field position, press high up the field to win repeat inside-50 entries, and let talented back-half ball users deliver precise kicks to forward marking targets. However, Port’s feast or famine approach has often come unglued in the intense heat of finals, which tends to favour systems which can reliably generate pressure and opposition turnovers.
Hawthorn have just such a system. Most smart analysis of Sam Mitchell’s side has focused less on their celebrations than on their ability at ground level. Even when they were otherwise a bad team last year, their numbers in areas like ground ball gets, loose ball gets, and handball receives jumped off the page. This year, as those already-impressive numbers have improved, so have the Hawks. Their superiority comes from different sources: an excellent forward press, efficient front-and-centre spacing, the talent of midfielders like Jai Newcombe and small forwards like Dylan Moore, and the ability of their talls to regularly halve aerial contests. Once they win the ball on the inside, players like Newcombe and James Worpel quickly move it on to fast, skilled outside players like Massimo D’Ambrosio to either find targets downfield by foot or start elaborate handball chains. Bring the ball to ground, win it, then shovel it out to guys who can do damage with their disposal. It’s not rocket science. But the Hawks’ game plan has proven very hard to beat.
So how did Port manage it? How did the side ranked 15th for ground ball gets differential and 11th for intercept possessions differential have the better in both of those categories against the side ranked 1st and 2nd, respectively? Well, let’s not downplay the role of luck. As I’ve written more than once in these pages, it’s the main ingredient in close wins. Hawthorn hit the post twice in the dying stages of the game. Had just one of them gone through, I’d probably be writing a different post today. But luck isn’t very fun to write about. And it wasn’t because of luck that Port were able to create a game played largely on their terms. No. Port won on Friday night because they did the following three things.
Dialling down the risk
Regular readers will know I often write about the importance of scores from turnovers. In the frenzied arena of modern footy, where pressure is king, they constitute around 55 percent of all scoring (55.8 percent this season, to be exact). Maximising your own ability to score from them while restricting your opponent’s ability to do so is pretty much Footy 101. Here are some numbers: 46.83, 45,83, 67.08, 52.35, 66.47. Those are the scores from turnover as a percentage of total scores in the five finals games prior to this one. This game was different. Just 32.65 percent of the score – less than a third – came from turnovers.
That’s precisely how Port wanted it. One of Hawthorn’s major strengths is winning the ball back and doing damage the other way. The Hawks are ranked second in the AFL this season for intercept possession differential (how many times they win the ball back minus how many times they lose it) and have been the best at scoring from turnovers over the last five weeks. Their ability to win the ball and quickly spread to maximise the playable area of the field is, frankly, pretty scary. In the 15 games the Hawks won this season, they averaged 7.53 more intercept possessions than their opponents. Meanwhile, in the 10 games they lost, they averaged 2.8 fewer.
Port knew all this. So, in order to mitigate the damage Hawthorn could do from turnovers, they went against their instincts. No team uses the centre corridor coming out of defensive 50 more often than Port does. It’s a cornerstone of their style. But they knew that if they tried that strategy against a team as good at generating intercepts as the Hawks, especially without Dan Houston or Kane Farrell, they’d probably get torched. So instead, Port largely refrained from using the corridor. Take a look at this visual match report. Zoom in and look at the map of where Hawthorn generated intercepts. Of the 64 intercepts Sam Mitchell’s side managed (only two less than their season average), just four were clearly in the centre square. Expand the parameters slightly and you still only get about a dozen. Port instead funnelled play up the wings, closer to the sanctuary of the boundary line. Even if you concede a turnover out there, it’s much easier to box in your opponents and either force a stoppage or eventually win the ball back.You can tell it was a deliberate tactical instruction because Port, who are normally just about league-average in terms of playing on from a mark or free kick, were noticeably more circumspect against the Hawks – for example, they handballed directly after a mark or free kick at about half their usual rate. Port are usually happy to embrace risk. But on Friday, they knew that discretion was the better part of valour.
Intense inside pressure to disrupt chains
Little-known fact: they don’t let you go on TV to talk about footy if you don’t say the word “pressure” at least once every five minutes. Without doubt, pressure is important. It’s the basic currency of modern footy. But I think the way we talk about it needs to improve. Because if you listen to mainstream pundits, you’d believe that the amount of pressure a team applies is purely a function of effort. I don’t really buy that. In my view, most teams play at or near their maximum effort levels in most games. Maximum effort is the minimum requirement, as they say. Instead, I believe that the ability to effectively apply pressure is mostly tactical. It’s about how players position themselves around the ground. How effectively they can anticipate opposition movements. How efficiently they can create contests. Et cetera.
On Friday night, Port applied ferocious pressure right out of the gates. Perhaps there was an extra application of effort, fuelled by adrenaline, the sting of embarrassment from the Qualifying Final, and a certain cheeky Instagram post. But adrenaline fades. And once it did, Port’s pressure remained. I’m calling that a tactical win. The tackle chart from the game tells an interesting story. Hawthorn actually laid more tackles (81 to 75). But the details matter. Port won seven holding the ball free kicks in the first half of the game, compared to just three for Hawthorn. There’s no better example of the intense tackling pressure than the first goal of the night:
Port had clearly gone to work studying Hawthorn’s preferred patterns to extract the ball from contested situations. So many times, they got a hand in or applied just enough tackle pressure to prevent Hawthorn from a clean extraction. The proof is in the stats: Port registered 317 pressure acts, significantly higher than their season average of just over 292. And the Hawks took just 60 uncontested marks, a staggering 42 less than against the Dogs in the Elimination Final. Port’s pressure knocked the Hawks out of their stride, forcing them into some uncharacteristic errors even on the rare occasions they did turn the ball over in dangerous positions. Here’s one such example, which ended with Josh Weddle spraying the ball out of bounds on the full. I daresay that, on a sunny day at the MCG, the Hawks players might have made better decisions.
All night, Hawthorn struggled to create outside run and chain up in their characteristic fashion. They ranked fifth among all clubs this season for handball receives (Port are 16th). And although, unfortunately, I don’t have access to the per-game stats, I daresay the Hawks were well below their average of 120.6. A small part of that was undoubtedly the pressure of playing in a big final in front of a hostile crowd. But it’s also because, as mentioned, Port largely succeeded in their objective to box them in uncomfortable parts of the ground. As a result, Hawthorn’s players were forced to kick it long down the line to contests more often than they’d have liked. That suited Port, who are fifth in the AFL for contested marks differential (Hawthorn are 14th), just fine.
Last week, I wrote about Champion Data’s Dan Hoyne’s framing of chaos vs. control. A reminder: Chaos Games are those which feature more ground ball gets than marks. Control Games are the opposite. And finals games are much more likely to be chaotic than controlled. For years, Port have preferred the latter. They’re an excellent kick-mark team but only an average one at ground level. Playing kick-mark footy in finals is risky because, for a bevy of reasons (nerves, pressure, etc), it’s harder to execute. On Friday, Port succeeded in doing both: they went chaotic when needed, while maintaining control by keeping the ball in areas where Hawthorn’s preferred style couldn’t do as much damage. It’s what allowed them to record the most decisive stat in a tight game: a +20 differential in scores from turnover.
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Lesser lights standing up
I wouldn’t have started One Percenters if I didn’t believe that tactics matter. But moments matter. And so do players. A common criticism of Port’s list is that it’s too lop-sided: an island of elite players surrounded by a sea of mediocrity (a more generous appraisal would call it the AFL’s version of Zidanes y Pavones). And, in an era where opposition coaches are getting better at exploiting weak links, that feels like a risky list management strategy. But Port’s less-heralded players went some way to dispelling those doubts. Look at their 10 highest-rated players on the night and some familiar names are there: Drew, Rozee, Horne-Francis, Georgiades. But there’s also Jordon Sweet (who recorded his seventh-highest player rating ever), Lachie Jones (11th-best), Jase Burgoyne (fifth-best) and Logan Evans (third-best). I thought Willie Rioli was possibly the best player on the ground. Here’s a highlight reel of some of those players impacting the game in key moments:
Star players win you close games. But often, it’s the performance of the lesser-heralded ones that determine if you’re in the position to win them. Winning 50/50 and even 40/60 contests is a really big deal in a low-scoring game. Maybe luck was the biggest factor: the ball bounced the right way, the tackles stuck, and the marks were held. But I’m willing to believe that a couple of other factors were at play. The first is, yes, Jack Ginnivan’s Instagram comment. As I’ve said, I generally believe that most teams apply maximum effort in most games. But it’s hard to just ignore Jason Horne-Francis’ claim that Port’s players drew extra motivation from it. The difference between 99 percent effort and 101 percent effort can be enough to decide a game. The second factor is Ken Hinkley himself. In an age where, increasingly, senior coaches – in all major sports – are enamoured with advanced analytics, he’s a bit of a luddite. He sees building strong relationships with his players as more predictive of success than complicated tactical schemes. The approach has its downsides, like not being able to easily arrest momentum shifts within games. But, at the risk of forming a hypothesis to fit around the data, I think it’s one of the main reasons why his players talk about him with such warmth: he trusts them to be themselves. For young players anxious ahead of one of the biggest games of their career, knowing that your coach unconditionally has your back can help clear your mind.
This game was a great reminder that players don’t just execute tactics – they shape them. Probably the main reason Port seek the corridor more than any other side is because it’s usually Dan Houston kicking it there. Would they have been so reticent to use the corridor during build-up on Friday night had he and/or Kane Farrell been available? Would Hawthorn’s defence had held up just a little better if Josh Battle and Tom Barrass were back there manning the barricades? Both those things seem likely. But ultimately, we’ll never know. No one steps into the same river twice, and no two games of footy are exactly alike.
Despite the fact I’ve just written more than 2,000 words describing what Port did, maybe they didn’t actually need to change anything. In all 11 previous Semi Finals where one side had lost their Qualifying Final by more than 50 points, the temporarily embarrassed top 4 side had won. Port just made it 12 from 12. But all 11 of those teams have lost their Preliminary Final. Let’s see if the trend continues.
Back next week with a Grand Final preview.