Disposal efficiency

[CarnTheTiges]

A large part of the 2 losses to start this season has been lack of skill by foot and poor decision making. The RFC has suffered from these for years and it just never seems to improve. Until it does the Tigers will never be better than mid ladder battlers.

 

[jimmy jess]

with regards to foley, keep in mind that many inside midfielders should perhaps be judged differently.

They have a split second to flick out a handball or lay the ball in boot. It is not like a wingman missing a kick under no pressure.

You have seen how good foley is when he has space.

I think when in a pack you just cant judge players the same way.

totally agree

 

[Ian4]

A large part of the 2 losses to start this season has been lack of skill by foot and poor decision making. The RFC has suffered from these for years and it just never seems to improve.

not sure what people will think of this statement, but while we are 0-2, and we did give up a bit of the ball when the game was there to be won, i think overall there has been an improvement in the way we move the ball. i feel in the first 2 games the turnovers haven't been as blatant. can't say if the stats will back me up though...

This disposal efficency stat is very misleading. In pennalises high skill players who go for ambitious kicks and rewards players who do a lot of safe, dinky passes.

Players with noteriously bad disposal such as Gas and Andy K come up quite well in this stat.

Don’t take it too seriously.

well really they need to separate the stats into 2 categories: contested possesions and uncontested possesions. this would be much more fair and accurate.

 

[Brettstigers]

well really they need to separate the stats into 2 categories: contested possesions and uncontested possesions. this would be much more fair and accurate.

Why? Would that change our position of having more players with lower efficiency percentages than any other? Happy to compare a Foley and a Tuck with other in-and-unders like Macdonald and West for example. Bet when you do that you still find a noticeable difference.

Our precision passing levels are low, we are a young side, we are fairly scrawny as sides go and we aren't exactly the paciest team in the league either. If our senior players aren't on the park and playing at their best we are going to struggle. It would appear that we also aren't the fittest side running around at the moment either. Tough year coming up.

 

[tigertim]

The Sunday Herald Sun stats now has a disposal efficiency column in the game statistics. It will now become a very important part of MY viewing of the stats as it will definitively show up those who regularly fail to dispose effectively as we are team that is universally known as great turnovers of the ball.

Looking at it and making an efficieny rate of 75% a pass mark we had 11 players with a % under this mark.

They are:
J Bowden 72% ( now I've come to love JB over the last few seasons but I've always thought his "silky skills" has been over-rated and we are may see some facts to back it)

N Foley 64% (again Foley looks like he has beautiful disposal but yet again he's been shown up as a poor disposer. There's another article listing the best and worst kicks in the AFL and Nathan gets rated the worst!)

G Polak 64% (He's done well in his 2 games but it's no secret that his kicking can be ordinary)

P Bowden 67% (again PB lets himself down with his kicking but I think it's more a laziness in his kicking than skill)

A Krakouer 71% ( I was surprised to see Krak with a low % as I thought he was usually pretty good with his disposal)

A Pattison 67% (an awkward kicking style would probably explain this one)

L McGuane 70% (again Luke has doen well in his 2 games so far but yet another one with an awkward kicking style that needs attention)

S Tuck 46%!!!!! ( I've been a fan of Shane but if he keeps up an efficiency rate like this well it doens't bode well)

D Polo 73% (Dean did well yesterday but I noticed that one so many occasions his handballs were to teammates under pressure. He doesn't give off the right option)

C Howat 71% (again Cam has good left and right foot skills so I am surprised)

R Tambling 50% ( I've often thought Tamblings kicking was ordinary. It's ok when kicking long or for goal but yet another with an ordinary kicking style where he draws the ball upwards when kicking and this makes it hard to pinpoint the shorter type kicks)

Bottom line is we can't afford 11 players who cant efficiently dispose of the ball more than 3 times out of 4. Of the other games this weekend only Collingwood had more players with a sub 75% rate the other teams had around 6 or 7.

Round 3 "butchers of the ball" are:

Brett Deledio 63% (say it aint so Brett!)
A Krak 71% ( Kraks 2nd entry in as many weeks)
C Newman (65%)
S Tuck 52% ( well it's an improvement on last weeks 46%! Also credited with 5 clangers)
C Howat 63% ( am concerned with Cam, last years I thought he look ok but watching him this year he looks slow and as highlighted here for the 2nd week his disposal isnt so good )
L McGuane 71% ( another nomination 2 weeks running)
A Pattison 40% ( another nomination 2 weeks running. Patto had 5 disposals and was credited with 6 clangers! Work that one out)

So that means 5 players have cracked a mention 2 weeks running (Krak, Tuck, Howat, McGuane and Patto). Obviously they werent solely responsible for the loss (shocking turnovers by Johnson and Tiv come to mind) but Tuck, Howat and Patto will be looking over their shoulders this week. Again I aknowledge this is 1 stat and may not tell the true tale but it is an indicator in a field (poor disposal) where we are known as one of the worst in the league

 

[tigertim]

Round 5 butchers of the ball:
C Newman 71%
A Raines 72%
L McGuane (again!) 67%
B Deledio (again) 53%!!!
S Tuck (again & again & again!) 56%
K Johnson 69%
D Gaspar 71%

plus a new addition: clangers:
Bowden 6
McGuane 4
Tivendale 5
Foley 6
Richo 6
Tuck 4
Gaspar 4.

I know most aren't interested in these stats but when you look at them each week you start so see the same names re-appearing:
McGuane, Tuck, Deledio, Newman. I'm not saying they are the reason we lose but I like to know who continually keeps giving the ball to the oppostion.

 

[hellenictiger]

Its not so much their disposal but the pressure they are put under when recieving an "effective" handball from a team mate.

We are talking about AFL footballers, they all know how to kick, although because of our younger list, the decisions on the field arent great and therefore we see many players being put under the pump and turning the ball over.

Most the time the players that turn it over are the players that run on to recieve, like Newman, Deledio and Raines.

 

[fudge]

I don't reckon much attention should be paid the the disposal efficiency as it fails to take into account the context in which the disposal happened. A more relevant stat should be unforced errors, simply because it more accurately shows who has poor disposal skills.

If a team plays kick to kick, like we did against Adelaide last year, efficiency goes up, but will you win games. I'd rather a Deledio goes for the quick long kick, creating something rather than a slow sequence of short kicks giving time for the opposition to flood their defense.

 

[Disco08]

Agreed fudge. If you were to go off those stats you'd assume Deledio was one of the worst kicks going around which is obviously a long way from the truth.

 

[Spirit of Jack]

Agree with both of you (discofudge). Efficiency of kicking is a crock in the current uncontested tempo style of footy. Unforced errors is a far better stat....however this is already covered with 'clangers'.

I'm not convinced its a perfect measure either...case in point I recall Gas coughing the ball up about 10 times in the round one Carlton game under moderate pressure and he ended up with very few 'clangers'. His disposal was nothing short of Auskick standard but the stats did not reflect that.

The stats need more work!

 

[frickenel]

This stat is a 'guide only'!

The best way to get a feel is to be at the games and watch for yourself. I had a good donnybrook with one poster on this site who keeps regurgitating stats with now idea on how to interpret them.

A few posters have already made good comment on why you have to be careful when looknig at this stat ie inside midfielders, players who go the safe chip option which in reality makes the job twice as hard for the perosn they've just kicked too as short crap kicks allow the opposition to flood back.

Another problem is when someone is coming off half back, looks up and nobody has presented for them. Therefore they are forced to kick wide for the line or to a contested situation, or they hold on to the ball waiting for someone to come past from behind a or present upfield. Either way, the kicker is under tacklnig pressure the longer they have to wait for an option.

All said tho, we do have some serious issues with disposal and decision making. I wish we'd play more on instinct. Sometimes i think we double guess too much, instead of "just doing it"!

 

[fudge]

The stats need more work!

Hehe, that's funny as it's me that writes the code that generates the report. However, I have zero input as to what goes into the report and given the wealth of knowledge of the PRE regulars, I reckon we could come up with a more useful set of numbers ;D

 

[lamb22]

Need to be careful with the clangers stat as it includes frees against. A lot of the conventional wisdom on RFC's clanger rates actually punishes us twice for being crucified by the umps.

The Age had an interestingh stat called turnovers which in yesterday's game showed West Coast having only two less than Richmond 71 -69 from memory. Dont know how they calculate it though. Another interesting stat was clearance efficiency - In this one we were about 44% to Coasters 70 something. I dont know how they work this out either but IMO opinion this is RFC's greatest weakness in that other sides appear to have clearance strategies which result in dangerous entries into 50 or shots on goal whereas our clearances are pedestrian often up and unders or kicks wide to contests.

In this reagad Tuck and Johnson get outgunned by almost every other sides primary mids. If our clearances were more effective we would score more - create more scoreboard pressure and see more opposition turnovers - with confidence skills improve and I think you would see a quick turnaround in the efficiency figures overall. We do need to change some personnel though.

Inside 50s yesterday were 66 West Coast 46 Richmond - again highlighting claerance efficiency and also the umpiring dispartity which I estimated conservatively was worth a dozen inside 50s swing.

With those figures I think we should have a greater regard for our defenders who were under constant pressure and for our forwards who were fairly efficient in manufacturing scoring opportunities.

The problem is mids mids mids and the real bullet TW needs to bite is relegating Tuck and Johnson to more peripheral roles and getting more skill, nouse and system on the ball.