Waiting is the hardest part...
Last updated: Mar 27, 2019, 2:21AM | Published: Mar 27, 2019, 1:39AM
The opening round of any season, in any sport, is the strangest of gifts.
It’s not being able to find sleep until 3am, only to wake two hours later with a mixture of exhaustion and excitement. It’s the rush to the Christmas tree (or Festivus pole, for the rest of us) and ripping open of presents.
Yet it’s also discovering that the motorised car you were waiting patiently for, actually requires triple A batteries - not the double A's you'd been hoarding for months - and that you’ll have to play with some of the other toys instead.
There’s a reason Week One in the NFL is often referred to as 'National Jump to Conclusions Week,' and an unquestionable similarity plays out where both the NRL and AFL are concerned. Or really any sport for that matter which promises an explosion of data but is only capable of spitting out a couple of firecrackers.
This weekend’s opening round of the AFL pitted 18 teams on the analytical catwalk.
After six or so months of patiently waiting to devour any and all information, what we are left with is indeed a bunch of juicy, somewhat-useful, somewhat-valuable statistics, but which - from an analytical or gambling perspective - I’d caution against forming any concrete conclusions from.
Much has been made of how low scoring the AFL opening round of matches was, with a variety of stats, graphs and column inches devoted to decipher the cause of the unexpected drop off.
And yes, it’s definitely worth debating the reasons why scoring may have been down in round one, pondering whether the AFL’s demonically referred to 6-6-6, or any of it's other rule modifications, failed to have the desired effect, though I’d appeal to those reaching for the pitchforks - assuming that’s the effect a couple of games of low scores has on you - and wait until we get a little more data rolling in.
At Stats Insider, our modellers certainly weren't caught by surprise where the drop in scores were concerned, correctly forecasting that the first five games of the opening round would indeed fall below the betting line. The analysts here at SIHQ also correctly assessed that the Fremantle-Kangaroos match would go over, a result, of course, greatly assisted by Fremantle’s hefty 141-point deposit.
So that’s six of the nine matches that didn’t catch our models off guard, despite a lot of external noise demonstrating shock and awe.
Don’t get wrong, there’s a plethora of intriguing stats from round one that got my juices flowing.
Heck, I even wrote about some of them here, and although I agree with Tom Petty about waiting and it being rather hard, opening rounds have taught me the power of restraint.
It’s not exciting, it doesn’t really spark controversy and it even has some uncomfortable, puritanical connotations, but I’d prefer to save my overreactions until those triple A batteries arrive and the motorised car is whipping around the lounge room.
Check out our AFL Hub for more comprehensive AFL content, fixtures, predictions and results.
Join in the conversation and tell us how you feel!
Drop a comment at the bottom of the page to participate in discussion with like-minded-sports-and-data-nerds 👇
