So we had a round of football. 

Sure it was played in empty stadiums and with the spectre of one of humanity’s greatest ever challengers playing out in the background, but football there was and data we have.

Just what the round means in the context of the actual 2020 season remains to be seen, however for now let’s get on with the job of sifting through some of the weekend’s predominant statistical themes.

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HANG ON, SO CLEARANCES MATTER AGAIN?

In winning two of the league’s last three premierships, Richmond employed a rather revolutionary tactic in that they were largely content to not commit too many of their resources to stoppage or congested situations.

While the Tigers haven’t possessed a ruckman of acclaim in recent years capable of dominating in tight spaces, they’ve adapted as a club to use opposition clearances as slingshot for their own attacks, and ultimate territorial dominance. 

However interestingly, and if round one was anything to go by, the Tiger template doesn’t appear to have been embraced enthusiastically. 

At least not yet.

Of the nine games, Richmond were the only team to lose the clearance count yet still prevail, using their trusted formula to beat Carlton for a tenth straight time.

While the Hawks and Lions fought out a clearance draw, the seven other games this weekend were won by the team with the healthier clearance differential. 

Sydney were a very interesting case. The Swans have fallen significantly in recent years, losing their patented intensity at the contest which has coincided with them slipping well out of genuine premiership contention. On Saturday, that trademark ferocity seemed to reappear as they destroyed the Crows in the trenches, winning the clearances by a round-high 21, while they also won the contested possession count by 16. Those numbers would prove critical in what was an ultimately hard-fought, three-point win on the road. 

Collingwood were another team who used their utter domination at the coalface to fuel their annihilation of the Western Bulldogs.

Brodie Grundy’s best of field performance and man-handling of Tim English proved critical as the Pies’ won the clearances by 13 and the contested passion count by 30 in what was a textbook display of intense, structured, committed football. The strategy completely the denied the Dog’s any penetration whatsoever, producing a round-low 22 inside 50 and paltry 34 total points.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EFFICIENCY

Six of the nine games on the weekend were decided by the team who was getting more bang for their buck from a disposal point of view.

While the masters of efficiency, Richmond, generated a round-high scoring shot on every 11.08 of their disposals, the likes of GWS (12.90) and Port Adelaide (13.73) weren’t messing around when they had the ball either, using their no-nonsense approaches, and not brilliantly structured opponents, to get the job done.

The three teams that performed better from the view of turning disposals into scoring shots but still lost were Fremantle, Adelaide and St Kilda.

The Saints constituted the round’s most heartbreaking loss, with their overall lack of cleanliness, and accuracy in front of goal ultimately dooming them. Not only did St Kilda blow a 29-point halftime lead, but their 7.12 was easily the round’s worst return, compounded by a 1.5 second half. While yes, the Saints got their hands on the ball and created plenty of opportunities, their sloppiness really came back to bite them, producing an overall 65.3% disposal efficiency number which was quite easily the round’s worst return. 

Yes, it was just one round, and while we mightn’t get another for quite some time, it was interesting to see which teams were prioritising what over the weekend, while most importantly checking in to see what’s still correlating from a win-loss perspective. 

The AFL will unquestionably lose momentum as the country scales back over the coming weeks and months, but investigating just where the sport has been, and where it’s heading, remain issues we’re very much interested in at Stats Insider and which we’ll continue to enthusiastically examine.

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