If you look at our best 22 (or 25 to allow a bit of wriggle room) the majority of them are also our most experienced. Scanning through player and their games played it does look like a young list but in that good, peaking, zone of young.
Congratulations you’re now on an AFP watch list
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The other interesting thing is that of course Hooker, Hurley, Heppell would all be 20+ games more experienced had they not missed that season
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The experience one is a bit of an outlier with us due to the saga.
If Hep and the rest played in 2016 we would be up around the league average.
Experience is pretty irrelevant when considering us.
No.
His stats on total experience re finals and premierships are bullshit, or politely deeply suss
( Typically of a stats guru he given himself weasel room about this being relevant early in the article.)
3000 games - where’d that come from.
A quick check reveals:
- the Eagles with 2657 games was their most experienced Grand Final side - 7 appearances on the big stage.
Only fractionally more than ours this year.
I couldn’t be farked chasing all the rabbit holes on the web. I disagree with many of the premises anyway.
Though I will remind people that a time honoured time stat re Flags & games played is held to be the experience breakdown of your list / best 25. IE you need a solid core of players around the 75 - 100 game mark.
Hirdy Bomber & Sheedy used to speak about this a lot.
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Oh wow. So he’s just made that 3000 up out of thin air has he? That’s incredible. What a turd.
Cheers for following it up when I cbf as well.
If Hep is carrying an ongoing injury/soreness like people say, i wonder if the year off may have extended his career a little? I’m a glass half full kind of guy.
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Its possible.
Hurley came back lighter so maybe that helps him with injury management.
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I’m pretty sure Richmond weren’t that experienced a list when they won, and I’m sure the Dogs weren’t. Pies in 2010 were a fairly young and inexperienced side.
So it’s clearly not a hard and fast.
Personally I write off sides that can’t put a 3-4 yr/50 game player in every spot on the park. But that’s only freo, Brisbane, GC & Carlton out, which was obvious anyway.
I don’t know if total games is the most usefu measure.
Ie you’d expect 10x 100 gamers to offer more (as a group) than 4 x 250 gamers and 6 x debutants.
maybe a box and whisker plot, to show the spread of median experience of players would be more helpful. You don’t see many flag sides with more than 1 or 2 first years.
Yes but no
It affected 5 guys we still have - Hooker Hurley heppell Myers Bellcho
Conversely Dea, Hartley, Brown - and probably kids like Redman and Long - would’ve played ~20 fewer.
Probably looking at about 50 games difference, all told.
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I have a theory, that sides can surge toward a premiership when their youngest players provide an immediate impact (ie. they get up to speed quickly)…which goes against the games experience hurdles…
Off the top of my head, I’m thinking of:
RICH with Higgins/Rioli/?
WC with Rioli/Ryan/?
COLL with Stephenson/Sier/Appleby/? (COLL were exceptional at covering injuries last year)
Seems that way to me - you have 3 or 4 new guys take spots over from guys who’ve previously been safe, without anyone falling out at the other end. Means really strong selection pressure.
Not sure how you measure that, though.
Every side has 10 or 12 essentially untried guys who could break out: the trick is having multiple of them doing so, what they do working within the gameplan (ie having 4 new ruckmen all playing well is no use), and not having guys fall off w/injury or retirement.
Shrug emoji.
Which is the reason so many best 22’s are trying to move on from some of the older guys such as Myers and Baguley. It is not so much any issue with those players, but rather wanting to see kids push them out, thus making the side stronger.
Look, I’m only an engineer not a mathematician, but I’m not sure about this.
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Welcome home Wim.
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I appreciate that, but I haven’t really changed my position at all.
Yep and you’d be right; because apparently the dude who wrote the article made it up! Which for some reason took me by surprise! Apparently people make stuff up on the internet
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Agree. <3000 Sounds nqr whereas >3000 fits the assertion more logically.
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The guy on the Roar clearly doesn’t know us well enough to deliver a decent roast. It should have been more like this:
- Hooker can’t run, and is close to the tipping point where it becomes an insurmountable problem…will soon have to return to full forward to play out his career.
- Hurley’s wrists are stuffed. So much so that he can’t even drop the ball cleanly to his foot any more…he flails in the air too much, and now relies on Francis to float in front of his opponent and intercept.
- Our midfield still lacks run, hence we get found out whenever we have to play on the MCG. Late last year, COLL ran over the top of us in the back half of each quarter…Hawks smashed us on the GPS…Jok better become a footballer.
- Our best midfielders are still all very small…Stringer isn’t the answer, because his legs only have 15 degrees of motion, and he loves Cornettos too much.
- Mutch/Clarke are no better than Hams/NOB.
- Lots of Blitzers rave about our midfield depth, by including players like Laverde/Begley who are still unproven in there.
- Joey’s groins are unlikely to withstand a whole season.
- Dea/Long/McNiece aren’t good enough to be on an AFL list…heck, Dea even said it himself in his interview this week!
But other than those points, our list is actually pretty good…phew, I feel better!
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