Was impressed with "Gus" what do others think?

[Djevv]

Would a team be more effective with 1 average ruckman on the ground and 1 even more average ruckman on the bench, or would they be better off with 1 average ruckman who has elite endurance in the ruck and 1 extra good quality midfielder on the bench (such as another Matt White) to sacrifice a couple of hitouts (due to fatigue at the end of quarters) for the 15 possessions the extra midfielder would get?

With all the rule changes a team could benefit from revolutionising the ruck position.

Thinking a bit about the stats and what they might mean, you have two big guys trying to out tap one another. This along with mids competing to shark the tap generates a really ramdom environment - hence the low correlation. However, some of the best in the business still manage 25% of their taps to advantage according to this article. So in order to keep this tap advantage under control teams are forced to match your big guy with ours in order to, if nothing else, negate this advantage. The ruckman you use doesn't have to be elite to spoil the other teams ruckman, just big, strong, athletic and tall enough to be able to hold his own in the contest. If you don't do this, and play a mid instead, you are conceeding a huge advantage, namely uncontested taps which are more likely to go to advantage AND clearances generated by the big guy with no one as big as he on the other side.

This is why AFL clubs spend so much on the big useless looking doofusses called 'tap' ruckmen. BTW they only look like doofusses because the are out on the field competing against the elite, they are probably very athletic for guys their size.

 

[Col.E.Kurtz]

You have a whole season's worth of statistical data summarised in the team averages used. Thats a lot of relevant data. There was no discernable correlation (well very weak anyway) between teams that won in the ruck and teams that won clearances.

A hit-out to advantage is where a ruckman wins the tap and then the ball is cleared by the ruckman's team as I understand it. This would be a better measure of the effectiveness of individual Ruckmen IMO, but tells you little of how much ruckwork influences the overall game. I don't have access to these stats.

This morning I decided to check out differential Hitout average rather than simple averages and found a 4% correlation, and very similar from Hitouts to first possessions. The best correlation was first possessions to clearances at 77%. 4% is starting to become a little significant, and remember that it is only one small part of the game.

The problem is though if you are doing regression analysis with the summarised data is that it can hide of lot of the devil in the detail. 16 summarised observations is not the game as having the data from all 176 individual games. I’m not saying your result is incorrect, but I’d be reluctant to draw a definitive conclusion from it.

The ruckman you use doesn't have to be elite to spoil the other teams ruckman, just big, strong, athletic and tall enough to be able to hold his own in the contest. If you don't do this, and play a mid instead, you are conceeding a huge advantage, namely uncontested taps which are more likely to go to advantage AND clearances generated by the big guy with no one as big as he on the other side.

This is why AFL clubs spend so much on the big useless looking doofusses called 'tap' ruckmen. BTW they only look like doofusses because the are out on the field competing against the elite, they are probably very athletic for guys their size.

I would agree with all of this though, although I don’t think we have the data to prove it statistically I know when I play there is a big difference between just winning a tapout against a competitive ruckman and having such an advantage over you opponent that you can concentrate on pinpointing your tap