What might be more instructive would be to apply a weighting factor to each performance, because you’ll find lesser-credentialed players get more “encouragement” votes in bad losses and the better-credentialed players get smashed because their non-performance is the reason for the loss.
I still think you have to decide what you’re trying to reward and then structure the rules around that.
The current system essentially rewards eye catching type players, the ones who have a noticeable effect on the game, with a hint of young players getting rewarded. The young players thing to me doesn’t really tend to affect the overall too much as they don’t often have a lot of those types of games.
So what type are you trying to reward/acknowledge here? I think in general it’s hard to argue that the actual winners of the Nobby aren’t deserving, let’s look at the recently posted Cumulative top 10:
Hard to argue with the top 3, maybe Ridley has a better (but less eye catching) overall season than Stringer, but they’d probably be my top 3 for the Crichton. Ridley and Hind as 4 and 5 feels pretty reasonable, then Redman, Laverde, Draper, McGrath, Heppell. Not a massive issue with those last 5 names, maybe the ordering is a bit off. McGrath and Draper are the two that stand out as maybe lucky to make the top 10 based off missed games. Actual Crichton probably has Wright or Langford in those positions?
I’d have to go through the history to be sure, but based off recollection the top few vote getters in the Nobby tend to align reasonably well with the Crichton top few. The big difference between the two is that the Crichton has much better scope for rewarding the consistent role players who aren’t typically eye catching match winners, but play a lot of games and do well most weeks (Lav and Langford are a couple that come to mind that probably fit this category). I personally find that a little frustrating, but that’s just one point of view.
At the end of this I kind of feel like I’ve argued myself out of the idea that the Nobby should be changed (which is an opinion I’ve held for years), it seems that it actually delivers on the intention of rewarding the fan-judged best player(s) for the season.
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Yep - but really hard if not impossible to do.
I think the only way to even out the ‘weighting’ based on things like sympathy votes, new recruits, very high usual level, etc, would be to increase the range of votes given. So for example, if Merrett begins to gradually receive less 1st/2nd/3rd votes because his ceiling is so high, he would perhaps still get votes as 4th or 5th. Nothing will completely even out a voting system of course, but when you have 3 slots to put put performances into, it amplifies the weighting.
Edit:
To take this to the extreme just to clarify what I mean - imagine that there were 1st to 22nd votes for the playing group. Then you would find that because every player received a minimum of 1 vote, it would even out the flashy games that draw many votes with the stable, less flashy but solid performances.
Snelling!
Yeah definitely one who may well make the top 10 of the Crichton, have loved his season.
I think it works pretty well, and two of the reasons for that are the number of people who vote and the fact that the voting is spread over four or five days.
I think people who open the thread to vote tend to scroll through and get an idea of who people are voting for. The number of voters means that pretty much every player who deserves consideration gets a vote from someone, and people who come afterwards see all the names and think about them all before casting their votes. So over the course of the four or five days you get a pretty fair result.
If anything could be changed it might be to try and reflect somehow the quality of the performance. When we win, nearly every player plays pretty well and does his bit, so the ones who end up getting the cumulative votes really do play well. This year the losses, with only literally a couple of exceptions, have been in games where the team still played well, but lacked experience or steadiness at crucial times and ended up losing. But certainly in past years, and in those couple of games this year, the whole team has played abysmally and on an objective view nobody really deserves a vote. Yet even in those miserable games someone has ended up with 5 cumulative votes worth exactly the same as, say, Peter Wright’s sensational performance in the Footscray game or Darcy Parish’s 5 against West Coast.
But I wouldn’t change things. I think it works as well as these things ever can.
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No changes for mine.
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Elimination Final vs Western Bulldogs
Darcy Parish 5
Sam Draper 4
Zach Merrett 2.5
Jordan Ridley 2.5
James Stewart 1
Final
Zach Merrett 59.5
Darcy Parish 55
Jake Stringer 30
Jordan Ridley 28.5
Nick Hind 21
Sam Draper 18
Mason Redman 16
Jayden Laverde 14
Andrew McGrath 13
Dyson Heppell 13
Peter Wright 13
Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti 10
Kyle Langford 10
Cale Hooker 9
Nik Cox 8
Aaron Francis 6
Archie Perkins 5
Devon Smith 5
Sam Durham 3
Andrew Phillips 3
Harry Jones 2
Tom Cutler 2
James Stewart 1
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Discussion on revised voting system to come.
After tabulating the votes, I strongly feel that the current system in inadequate.
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Thanks for your work on this
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Fair enough.
BUt I don’t think anyone could argue with the 4? And even the order…
The only player that looks out of place is Laverde - should be a couple of places higher
Looking forward to your proposals. From my years of collating I think the end results were a fair representation of what actually happened.
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Didn’t get the 4’s and 5’s the others did.
Nice work AN, I’m sure that’s not a delightful gig going through some of those votes threads.
Just a completely irrelevant and random observation about that list;
23 players polled in the Nobby. Of those, all of them bar 6 (Hind, Draper, Tippa, Hooker, Durham, Phillips) originally got drafted in the first two rounds of the National Draft.
Cool story.
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What pick was Redman
Are you seriously telling me Stewart and Cutler were 2nd round picks?
Geez, you’re right all three I just mentioned were 2nd round picks
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Nice to see Stewart scrape in for a last-gasp vote! Copped a lot of flack earlier in the season, but I reckon he’s done pretty well over the last month or so.
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He has, since they stopped playing him on quality forwards.
Redirecting Blitzmind is like steering a cruise liner toward the positive but like a Zodiac toward the negative 