This Week In Football

Author: Cody Atkinson

  • Round 15, 2025

    Round 15, 2025

    This Week In Football is a collection of some of the best in football currently outside the walls of AFL clubs or broadcasters. Each week a curated grab bag from regular contributors and special guests will provide insight into and beyond the game on subjects of their choosing. For more about our contributors, click here.

    Banner images by Polly Porridge of the True Bloods Podcast. Check out her other design work.

    Before the bounce

    Peter Ryan at The Age has reported this week on a potential revival of State of Origin, but this time in Australian Football form. Yet again the thirst for seeing the best against the best has raised its head.

    Despite the Origin format of interstate football becoming ubiquitous in League over the years, the concept started out in Australian Football originally a few years beforehand.

    Since then Origin has become nearly bigger than the rest of league in this country itself, with its devotion to mates, states and mates going against mates who come from different states.

    There is also no Gus Gould to set the mood in Australian Football.

    ‘The statement she made is in its narrow sense true, but also in a broader sense impossible, it defies history and the future at the same time, it asks us to challenge our own senses of what is expected of us in life, and isn’t that the beating core of football? After the break we return to ORIGIN’

    — Liam Hogan (@liamhogan.id.au) 2025-06-11T06:19:16.459Z

    But AFL administrators have seen the impact of Origin on the slightly differently shaped ball game, and the broadcasters have taken note of the ratings.

    One of the big issues is which states should get a call up for the game. Ryan’s report notes that WA and Victoria have been tabbed for a potential 2026 game, leaving South Australia and a strong Allies side in the cold.

    More important is the timing and potential rewards for playing. Pride only gets you so far in an increasingly professional environment. A preseason game may not drive the level of competition the rugby league origin game drives.

    Whatever the case, we may soon have an even longer men’s AFL season ahead of us.

    This week in football we have:

    The AFL’s Sightseers and Homebodies

    Jack Turner | The Back Pocket | @TheBackPocketAU

    Why has Harvey Thomas maxed out his frequent flyer card in just 32 games?

    Earlier this year, there was a much discussed stat about the fact that GWS youngster Harvey Thomas has played at 13 venues in just 32 games, surpassing Scott Pendlebury’s 11 venues in just his 23rd game. Harvey Thomas is a long way off league record holder David Swallow, who has played at 22 venues in his 245 career games. 

    That’s a record that may be equalled or surpassed by Nick Holman, Jarrod Witts or Touk Miller should the Tasmanian Devils still join the competition in the 2028 AFL season.

    But what is the reason for this? Is it simply Vic bias and the fact Collingwood never travel? Or is there something else at play here? 

    Well, the easiest way to do this is to break down the grounds that Harvey Thomas has played at and why.

    Harvey’s Giants already spread their games across two unique stadia – Manuka Oval in Canberra and Sydney Showground in Olympic Park – while their cross town rivals play at a different ground all together (the SCG). That’s three without leaving the confines of NSW/ACT.

    You can tick off the other major stadiums pretty easily, with the MCG having four major tenants, Docklands having five major tenants, and Adelaide Oval and Perth Stadium having two each. This means every team will play at each of these grounds once a year. Thomas, already a mainstay at the Giants, only missed three games in his debut season. All up, that’s seven grounds without breaking a sweat. Add the Gabba once every year and a half (on average) and that’s eight.

    It is perhaps worth mentioning that Scott Pendlebury too has played at all seven of the grounds listed above in the past two seasons and also at Carrara. Harvey Thomas is yet to play there as the Suns home game against GWS was during Gather Round last year, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

    Now we start to get to the fun part – the ‘bonus’ grounds. Where do we find the four (now five) extra grounds that Harvey Thomas has played at to surpass Scott Pendlebury so fast?

    Well, first up was the aforementioned Gather Round game against Gold Coast. Fair or not, the clashes between smaller clubs are less likely to be played at Adelaide Oval, and the Giants and Suns clashed at Summit Sports Park in Mt Barker last year. This year they faced the Saints at the oddly shaped Norwood Oval.

    Here’s where we get to the sticky part. Some teams – much like GWS – are in the habit of selling home games to regional cities to help generate a little more profit than ticket sales alone can create, but they don’t want to sell their games against Collingwood because they make the big bucks. Why sell a profitable home game when you can sell one that might struggle to break even? 

    Collingwood are the Bulldogs highest pulling home game, while the Giants are their second lowest. This is why Harvey Thomas has now played in Ballarat against the Dogs and at York Park against North Melbourne. 

    The last remaining ground on this list is Kardinia Park in Geelong, where Harvey Thomas has already played twice – for two wins I might add – while Pendlebury has never played there. While many – including myself – think that Collingwood should have to make the trip down the highway at least every second year, (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) there’s a few good reasons why he hasn’t yet. Geelong only play nine or ten home games at Kardinia Park, with the remaining home game/s held at the MCG. The Cats have requested to play the MCG games against large sides – this year Hawthorn, but with Collingwood getting the nod in many years. Collingwood also has a deal for 14 guaranteed MCG games a year expires, it is a no brainer that in seasons where they clash twice, Geelong will continue to host Collingwood at the MCG.

    So is it Victorian bias? Or simply a case of luck? Arguably it’s a bit of both – or neither. Even last year – in a season where they were historically poor – one of the most travelled teams in the country in West Coast only played at eight different stadia, the only difference to Pendles being that they had to play in Geelong.

    The real answer here is that as long as the poorer clubs continue to sell two or three home games a season, the smaller interstate teams and other poorer clubs will continue to play games at more grounds than their opponents.

    Goal kicking isn’t one of the most under-rated stats, but it’s maybe one of the most poorly analysed

    Emlyn Breese / CreditToDuBois.com

    This article makes heavy use of the excellent wheeloratings.com by Andrew Whelan for this piece (and many other pieces). If you’re not familiar you should go have a look, it surfaces a lot of things that will help you understand the game far better than official league stat offerings.

    Goal kicking, eh?

    Last week for the ABC Cody and Sean poured some much needed cold water on the supposed goal-kicking crisis. More articles followed this week and, apart from the aforementioned, surface level would be a generous description of them.

    Goal accuracy = goals / shots. It’s a simple proposition and attractive because of it. However, like many simple explanations it misses more than it hits.

    I’ve instead measured teams goalkicking performance based on three different attributes:

    • Volume – how many shots is a team generating per game
    • Quality – on average, how high quality are those shots (xScore per shot – xScore is a measure of how many points on average you would expect a given shot to result in by comparing it to similar shots taken previously. A set shot from the goal square would have an xScore of almost 6, a shot under physical pressure from the boundary might have an xScore of under 2.)
    • Execution – is a team making the most of those opportunities (total score / total xScore)

    It’s my tentative view that execution is largely chance based rather than a quality of a given team. Over the past 5 seasons the only team to not record seasons both in the negative and positive is Fremantle. Last year Melbourne were above average in executing while this year they’re abysmal. If you’re going to be weak in one thing you want it to be this because it doesn’t represent a structural problem.

    I’ve then grouped teams on overall performance in these categories:

    • Elite – overperforms in at least two of the categories
    • Poor – underperforms in at least two of the categories
    • Strength outlier – A mixed bag, but defined most clearly by a strength
    • Weakness outlier – A mixed bag, but defined most clearly by a weakness
    • Average – Teams who neither overperform or underperform majorly in any given category

    Some interesting things jump out right away.

    Geelong and the Dogs excel on all metrics. If you need another excuse to hop on their premiership chances, this will help you get there.

    By contrast Adelaide’s quality of shots is lagging a bit. Gone are the days of Tom Lynch or Josh Jenkins getting endless passes out the back to an undefended goalsquare. These “cheapies” have been made up for by volume of shots and maximizing the chances they do take.

    Collingwood’s attacking strength has been predominantly the volume of opportunities they create, with fairly average quality and execution.

    Gold Coast and North Melbourne are both generating their shots in really dangerous places. The difference between the finals fancy and the Roos at the bottom of the ladder is North’s lack of supply – which continues to be a critical problem.

    St Kilda and Hawthorn don’t have a real strength or weakness and hit around average on all three measures.

    GWS and Carlton’s execution has been strong through the year, making up significant ground in their attacking space. Fremantle’s quality of shots has covered a similar role for the Dockers.

    Brisbane are creating a lot of shots at a decent quality. But so far this year their execution has let them down. If their execution lifts they could easily click into another gear coming into finals.

    Melbourne are abysmal at executing on their shots, by far the biggest outlier of any metric by any team.

    Sydney’s quality of shots generated is the biggest thing letting them down. This may have to do with the lack of targets they’ve had up forward for much of the year.

    The bottom six has several predictable tales. Essendon are executing well enough on the shots they generate. Execution is Richmond’s strongpoint relatively but still below league average. West Coast is underperforming on all three metrics.

    We can also apply a similar method to looking at the shots a team concedes. For this one I’m not going to use a three-axis chart, as (in my view) a team has little control over the week-to-week accuracy of their opponent. What is replicable for a team’s defence is how many shots it concedes and where it concedes them.

    Collingwood are clearly the best defending team in the league – outperforming in both restricting the quality and volume of their opponents shots. Carlton are the clear next in line.

    Adelaide and Gold Coast are quite similar – doing quite well in restricting the volume, but around average for constraining those shots to low quality ones. GWS and Essendon are the reverse but moreso – elite for restricting their opponents to low quality shots, but they do allow a lot of them.

    The Dogs and Melbourne can restrict the volume of shots to some degree, but the ones they do concede are dangerous.

    Finals chasers Hawthorn, Fremantle and Brisbane are above average on both axes.

    While at the other end of the scale is West Coast. They are the Melbourne of this chart, a clear outlier that stretches the axis.

    Cooling it all down

    Cody Atkinson

    The last two weeks of footy have seen something that’s usually experienced by players and fans amplified to an extreme

    While footy is meant to be a winter game, the combination of a surprisingly cold start to winter and the perplexing scheduling of two night games in the coldest AFL cities in the country have led to a couple of notably low scores. Sometimes the scoreboard lies about the quality of a game, but both last week’s Hawthorn-Adelaide match and round 13’s game between GWS and Port were scrappy affairs.

    Don’t just take my word for it.

    “We haven’t played a lot of night games here and…I’m sure you saw on the bench there was fair bit of steam coming off the heads of the players and things like that.” Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell said after the match in Launceston.

    “So it was obviously colder than we’ve played. So it was a beautiful day absolutely ma magic um day here today but obviously the temperature drops quite steeply with no cloud cover,”

    “It meant that it was going to be slippery and I thought both teams, I thought, handled it really well early…I think it was the conditions that led to the low scoring.”

    “I think both teams – it was slippery you know. It’s dewy obviously – there’s there’s no doubt it

    was a slippery wet game. So that’s a challenge when it comes to finishing your work off.” Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks added.

    Wet weather gets talked about a fair bit, with a return to first principles and 80s style footy often getting sprinkled amongst more established game plans. Focus around the contest and straight line movement comes back into play, and the ground tends to get “skinny” and long.

    We will get to what that looks like later.

    Cold weather footy gets talked about a fair bit less. That makes sense – we see a lot less of truly cold conditions here given the general climates of where the games are played. It can often be hard to work out why there are issues. In Canberra the dewy surface was noticeable in person, but may have not come across on TV.

    “It wasn’t a pretty game of footy but it’s not a “pretty game of footy” weekend.” It was pretty slippery all over the place this weekend.” Port coach Ken Hinkley explained.

    “Of course you have to adjust to what you play (to) what the conditions are so, you know, it’s something we had to do.”

    When watching the game, one particular attribute came through clearly. That is how “skinny” the game was.

    Playing “skinny” is pretty simple – it generally refers to playing on the narrow side of the ground without looking to stretch through the corridor or the fat side by using horizontal handballs or kicks. Generally, skinny games are also accompanied by a “long” set up, with bookends sitting far deeper than normal to attempt to provide some vertical spacing.

    If you are watching in the stands or at home, an easy test is where the widest players are sitting when the ball is near the boundary. If the wing roles are sitting well inside the centrepoint of the ground, chances are that it’s a pretty skinny game.

    This is one example of Port’s set up when exiting 50 when in Canberra.

    Up the ground the Power crammed hard to the boundary. Another example comes at this midfield boundary throw in. Players are heavily concentrated on the ball, and no-one is sitting on the fat side of the ground.

    I asked Ken post-game about this

    “It seemed like you tried to play a pretty skinny game?” 

    “Yeah we did because the conditions made it a bit more challenging…that’s what was happening, I think, in the second quarter. We were throwing the ball around a little bit too much, boys were trying to probably fight through too much contest.” Hinkley explained. 

    For those who love data to back up the eye test, here it is.

    For the rest of the season, Port and GWS are the two sides most likely to use the corridor when transitioning the ball from their defensive third – or behind the back of the centre square. In Canberra, both sides avoiding doing so stringently, with the exception of the unsuccessful foray that Hinkley mentioned in the second quarter.

    The Hawthorn and Adelaide game last week saw both sides try the corridor more often than in Canberra, but there were other hallmarks of a modified style of game. The sides combined for 16 contested knock ons, well above their combined average of 10. There were also 183 intercept possessions – almost 60 more than the league match average of 128. There was also one passage where interchanges were stranded for about 10 minutes, kicking rotations right out, due to the ball being stuck on the “wrong” side of the ground”.

    By now you might have cottoned on that it sounds a bit like wet weather footy. It’s similar, yet different.

    But sometimes conditions are down to how you perceive them. I also asked GWS coach Adam Kingsley about the conditions in Canberra post game and he had a different view from my frozen fingers.

    Conditions play a bit of a factor with the ball movement?

    “Nope, it’s pretty dry out there I reckon. We may have made it look a bit wet at times but for the most part it was pretty good conditions.”

    Completing the Australian Football Hall of Fame

    Sean Lawson

    The Hall of Fame of Australian Football has an oft-discussed Victorian bias, with statistical analysis showing that, from before the national era, lower levels of achievement will lead to likely induction versus South Australian and Western Australian players.

    Initially dominated by Victorian journalists (the-13 person inaugural panel featured only SANFL president Max Basheer and Perth journalist Geoff Christian), the Hall started with 116 of 136 inaugural names having played substantially in Victoria.

    More recent years have seen some attempt to correct the record, with AFL chair Mike Fitzpatrick ordering a review in 2010 that led to a required 25% minimum of selectors living outside Victoria.

    The Hall then started to belatedly recognise early non-Victorian stars like Tom Leahy (notably an even match for Roy Cazaly at interstate carnivals) and in 2018, analysis by Daniel Hoevenaars and James Coventry in Footballistics showed that since the regime change, WAFL and SANFL nominations had kept pace with pre-AFL names from Victoria. 

    There has also been more effort to correct for the relative under-representation of eras before about the 1970s.

    Keen students of Australian geography will be aware that there are in fact more than three states in Australia. All of them have long football histories, and lost in a lot of the older debates about the relative merit of SANFL and WAFL players have been other worthy candidates across the full geographical sweep of Australian football’s century and a half of history.

    So, what of the Hall of Fame representation of the rest of Australia? What recognition has there been so far, and who might we look to for still-unrepresented regions of the footballing nation?

    For those looking for those overlooked Victorians such as Sav Rocca you have found the wrong article.

    Tasmania

    First up is Tasmania, clearly the fourth state among football states. Tasmanian VFL players Darrel Baldock and Peter Hudson were inaugural legends, and Ian Stewart joined them in the following year. Others like Roy Cazaly, Stuart Spencer and Ivor Warne-Smith developed later ties to the Apple Isle. Several players who began their footy journeys down south have been inducted into the Hall, including Terry Cashion, Verdun Howell and Laurie Nash. 

    It wasn’t until almost immediately after Fitzpatrick’s review when Tasmania finally had players inducted who hadn’t played in the VFL. Horrie Gorringe in 2010 and John Leedham this year are the only Tasmanian players inducted solely on the basis of their play in Tasmania. Several players, such as Cashion, almost exclusively plied their trade down south. Of the states outside the big three, Tasmania possibly is the best represented and needs the smallest correction.

    New South Wales

    The New South Wales Australian Football Hall of Fame features 10 legends in its ranks.The majority of these legends had extensive careers in the AFL/VFL or elsewhere, such as Tony Lockett, Paul Kelly and Terry Daniher, but it also features several names from earlier eras.

    Haydn Bunton Sr is notable in this list of NSW Hall of Fame Legends, because to read the national Hall of Fame Legends entry his career simply starts at age 20 already at Fitzroy. This is despite Bunton having been rather famously the subject of an illegal payments scandal to get him there at all. He played several senior seasons at Albury and West Albury (both former incarnations of the current Albury Tigers) from age 15 until age 20, and won the only premierships of his career there.

    The entry of NSW Hall of Fame legend Ralph Robertson in 2024 arguably broke the duck for NSW footy excellence being recognised on its own terms. Robertson did play 14 games for St Kilda in 1899, but his Hall of Fame case was built on the strength of his contributions to footy in Sydney. Robertson played for East Sydney (now merged into the UNSW/Eastern Suburbs Bulldogs) and North Shore, and represented New South Wales on several dozen occasions. Longtime Swans chair Richard Colless, himself a legend in the NSW Hall of Fame for football administration, publicly lobbied for this inclusion for years. 

    Figures such as leading goalkicker Stan Miller (the namesake of their Coleman), administrators Harry Hedger and Jim Phelan (the Best and Fairest in AFL Sydney is the Phelan Medal) and long term player and administrator Jack Dean may hear their names called in future years. 

    There is also a solid case for the induction of Sir Doug Nicholls, who grew up in New South Wales. While his career was only 11 years long he was successful at both VFL and VFA levels, including representing the VFL and VFA sides in representative matches.

    Queensland

    The Queensland Hall of Fame only has two playing legend – Marcus Ashcroft. The premiership Lion already naturally sits in the national Hall for his exploits at AFL level. Many other Queenslanders also sit in the current national Hall of Fame, such as Jason Dunstall, Jason Akermanis and Michael Voss.

    The lone QAFL-specific entry in the Hall of Fame comes, strangely enough, in the form of an umpire. Tom McArthur umpired 502 games from 1959 to 1985.

    Dick Verdon has arguably the strongest case of the Queenlanders to stay up north to make the national Hall in coming years. 

    Northern Territory

    Neither territory yet has a truly standalone entry in the national Hall of Fame, though there are several players with ties which go unmentioned in the AFL website’s honours lists.

    Curiously, Michael Graham’s long career with St Mary’s is listed alongside his Sturt career, but several other inductees like Maurice Rioli and Bill Dempsey do not have their games for St Mary’s and Darwin listed.

    In the NT Hall of Fame, among the inaugural legends are two Indigenous Team of the Century players, Bill Dempsey and David Kantilla. They played for West Perth and South Adelaide respectively. Rather notably though, both spent substantial parts of their careers playing in the NTFL during the southern off-season. That’s something that’s rather unique to footy in the Top End, and would be worthy of note by a truly national Hall of Fame on cultural significance grounds alone.

    There’s also a wide range of other notable NT players that merit consideration alongside Dempsey and Kantilla.

    The ACT

    Finally, let’s talk about the nation’s capital.

    The most famous name in Canberra football is Alex Jesaulenko. Jezza played in Canberra until age 20, winning three senior premierships with Eastlake before making the move to Carlton, something that is (unsurprisingly) omitted from his Hall of Fame record. His story of migration and only taking up the game at age 14 is well known, but also significant is that he did this on the mere fringes of what could be reasonably considered football heartland. Jesalulenko also returned to Canberra to play and coach after his retirement.

    Among several AFL Canberra Hall of Fame legends (and the strange omission of both James Hird and Jesaulenko) are two names I want to highlight as potential national Hall of Fame candidates based on Canberran exploits.

    The first is Kevin “Cowboy” Neale. Neale was part of St Kilda’s only VFL premiership and played 256 games for them. He’s probably not quite in the frame for Hall of Fame honours on his St Kilda career alone, especially with the over representation of players from his era already.

    However, his contributions to football in Canberra after this were also significant. While serving as captain-coach at Ainslie, he led the Tricolours to four flags in five years, kicking about a million goals in the process. 

    He also led Canberra to this most storied of moments:

    Against a VFL team featuring plenty of legitimate VFL talent such as Malcolm Blight, Merv Neagle, Robert Dipierdomenico, Francis Bourke, Michael Turner and Trevor Barker, Neale led a Canberra side also featuring Jesaulenko, to a hard fought win at Manuka Oval in July 1980.

    If there’s one historical moment worth commemorating in a century of Canberra footy, it’s this moment, and captain-coach Neale was its architect.

    The second name is Tony Wynd, who dominated football in the ACT in the 1980s and early 1990s. As a junior he was selected in national All-Australian sides from junior carnivals, he naturally won a stack of Mulrooney Medals in the ACTAFL and just generally seems to have been about the most dominant player on record in the league among those who never played VFL or similar football.

    What else is notable, though, is that he was also playing to a level that got him selected to represent Australia in a tour of Ireland in 1987, though he subsequently broke his leg and missed out on the tour. As the AFL Canberra entry for his Legend status notes:

    Injury prevented Tony from playing in the All-Australian Representative team which toured Ireland and the United States in 1987. His selection was widely recognised as he was one of very few players from outside the major Australian football league teams to ever be named in an All-Australian team.

    Could Wynd have played successfully in a more credentialled competition in another state? Who knows? He appears never to have considered it. Wynd had a career in the ACT outside of football, working for ASADA’s predecessor, the ASDA and can be found in publications of the era promoting the anti-doping message.

    This highlights a significant problem with trying to assess things like the Hall of Fame in an era before professionalisation and mass media. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the level of pay across senior football competitions would not have made chancing the move interstate a financially appealing prospect for someone already holding a well-paying job such as one in the public service. Indeed, the average AFL salary didn’t pass the average full-time male salary for workers in general until around 1991.

    Wynd, then, represents something of the end of the unknowable hinterland of football talent – players plying their trade well outside the big leagues before professional money and recruiting made talent identification and recruitment all but inevitable. There are probably dozens of  former players out there like him from the pre-modern eras of football, who dazzled onlookers in their own leagues, but played out careers well beyond the spotlights in Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide.

    AROUND THE GROUNDS

  • Round 14 2025

    Round 14 2025

    This Week In Football is a collection of some of the best in football currently outside the walls of AFL clubs or broadcasters. Each week a curated grab bag from regular contributors and special guests will provide insight into and beyond the game on subjects of their choosing. For more about our contributors, click here.

    Banner images by Polly Porridge of the True Bloods Podcast. Check out her other design work.

    Before the Bounce

    Winter is here. The goals aren’t.

    Last week saw eight games of footy and approximately eight goals across an entire round.

    As winter falls on the football fields the goals tend to dry up, but not normally to this extent. No team scored more than 81 points in a game, a (non-COVID) record since decimal currency (probably).

    But overall, the footy was…enjoyable? We had four games decided by less than two goals, and all bar one by four goals or less.

    Already it is looking more like an anomaly rather than a long term trend, but it still warrants a little more attention than normal in coming weeks.

    This week in football we have:

    Are the finalists set?

    TWIF survey

    According to the writers of This Week In Football (and Ricky Mangidis of the Shinboner and Len Phillips of the internet) it might not be far away.

    Six teams were locked into the top eight the mid-year survey. Eleven teams were nominated across the 13 voters, with eight teams clearly ahead of three sides garnering some interest.

    This aligns with how the computer models complied by Max Barry’s Squiggle see the season playing out from here. There seems to be a gap opening up between Fremantle in eighth and GWS in a projected ninth.

    Some voters saw this uniformity as “pretty boring” but sometimes the boring option is the right one. But there’s still a fair amount of footy to play out.

    Interesting, no voter nominated Sydney to make the finals despite their recent history of making late charges towards finals.

    Contributors were also asked about the SPOONRACE, and it was even more straightforward, with twelve votes for West Coast and one for Richmond.

    Clang a gong, we are on

    Emlyn Breese / CreditToDuBois.com

    Last week over on CreditToDuBois I wrote about the three-year clangiversary of Hawthorn setting the record for most clangers in a match.

    I wanted to provide a bit of a broader overview of the clanger. We have data on clangers going back to 1998. Ted Hopkins, who co-founded Champion Data, is the one who popularised what has since become an integral part of the footy lexicon.

    I’d wager however that many of us (and even many broadcasters and journalists) don’t have more than a general sense of what a clanger is, so let’s bring out the virtual whiteboard.

    Now, how many clangers happen per game?

    If you look at just the numbers you’ll see a massive uptick in clangers since 1998. I don’t have a definitive answer on this, but I strongly suspect this is partly due to improvements in data capture and categorisation. Some of those actions above weren’t collected in the early days of Champion Data.

    We can see that since 1998 the average clangers per game has tripled. If we move to the second slide we can see that free kicks have stayed relatively stable, while other sources of clangers have grown significantly.

    From 2021 onwards we can see that the majority of clangers are disposals gone awry.

    We know what a clanger is, and we know how often they occur, but we haven’t addressed the key question – do they matter?

    Let’s look at the profiles of winning teams from 1998 onwards: 

    We find that over the last 5 years, a lower clanger rate (clangers / disposals) is a meaningfully better win predictor than a positive disposal differential.

    Having a lot of clangers doesn’t necessarily mean you’re performing poorly – some of the best players in the league frequently top the count. What matters is why you’re getting them – is it because you’re getting a lot of the ball, or is it because you’re being far less efficient with it than your opponent.

    Before we get to our top (bottom?) list, let’s take a quick look at the clanger profiles of each team.

    And finally, here’s the 20 worst clanger counts, clanger differentials, and clanger rate differentials

    Surprises all around

    TWIF survey

    The league may have separated into groups at the top and the bottom, but that doesn’t neccessarily mean it is who we thought it would have been at the start of the year.

    This Week In Football contributors were asked which teams had surprised them the most this year, and which had disappointed.

    Reflecting the evenness of the league and of pre-season expectations, a wide variety of teams were nominated.

    The most surprising side according to the voters has been the top 4 aspirant Suns, with the rise of the Crows and re-rise of Collingwood also causing some surprise.

    Reflecting that “surprising” doesn’t just mean unexpectedly rising up the ladder, Richmond also got a couple of nods.

    “Richmond are way ahead of where I thought they’d be. In hindsight, you can probably point to them still having a useful experienced defensive core as a starting point, but 3 wins is probably 2 more than what I’d have thought their best case scenario would be to this point.”

    The voter who chose the Dogs provided a solid explanation for the surprise:

    “I thought they were going to find their depth wanting and battle to perform with a coach who was distracted by his contract issues and an interpersonal style that isn’t necessarily for everyone.”

    A much stronger consensus emerged on the question of who has disappointed observers.

    One voter provided a clear description of the disappointment.

    “For knowing exactly what their flaws were but doubling down on largely the same ball movement patterns of the last few years.”

    Roughly half went for the Blues, who after widespread expectations of taking a theoretically strong list to the next level, are floundering on the very limits of finals possibilities.

    North Melbourne managed to disappoint a couple of respondents even against their own low expectations, while other likely September spectators like Sydney and Port Adelaide also got nods.

    One can only assume Collingwood being disappointing was a nomination by someone hoping to see them fail.

    How is footy going, and what we’d change about it

    TWIF survey

    Turn on the radio and the panel shows and some weeks you’d be convinced FOOTBALL IS IN TROUBLE.

    Well, maybe its time to shoot the messenger instead.

    This Week In Football contributors were asked about the state of the game in the survey, in an open ended format. Despite the lack of direction, 12 of the 13 respondents either directly or indirectly mentioning that the game is in a good state or as good as it has been.

    The thirteenth didn’t criticise the quality of the modern game, but said that the game wasn’t good enough to sustain the ever extending season.

    The good current balance between attack and defence was raised by several writers, with one saying:

    “There’s reasonable balance in attack and defence, the best players are shining through, and a nice amount of tactical and strategic variation.”

    Another added:

    “(The game is) in a decent sweet spot balancing ball use and contest work. The best teams can do both, and those who can only do one or the other get punished fairly regularly.”

    A clear focus of some was on the off-field side of the game.

    “The on-field product’s as good as it’s ever been but the off-field media slop is at a tipping point of sheer dogshit.”

    There’s also a common concern amongst footy media, fanatics and insiders that the amount of footy might be hitting saturation levels.

    There’s just way too much of it. Both from a media sense -which is pretty obvious and something you can block out – but even then 207 games is too many. Nine games a week is too many. It’s only one extra round but I reckon Gather Round has been a tipping point where the season becomes too long and games don’t matter as much as they should.

    Umpiring, rule interpretation and the MRO also came under the hammer.

    There are clearly some serious issues that need working out with the approach to MRO and umpiring consistency and interpretation though.

    So if the game is in a generally good state, albeit with some concerns, what would our contributors fix?

    Responses to this question were more specific to changes. A number of contributors suggested that the recent rule changes were a positive thing when talking about the state of the game, but others criticised their application.

    There was some questioning of the equalisation off field as well, with Hawthorn on someone’s chopping block.

    There was also a continued focus on needing to improve the understanding and decision making around tackling and prior opportunity.

    Who kicks it out on the full?

    Lincoln Tracy | @lincolntracy

    This is an excerpt of a longer piece I’ve written over on my blog, so please check out that version if you’re interested in this topic.

    The out of bounds on the full rule was first introduced in 1969, where – as the name implies – a free kick is paid against any player who kicks the ball out of bounds on the full. Since then, football games at every level are met by groans from supporters when a player concedes this type of free kick, whether it be from a rushed kick out of the back line that just carries over the boundary on the wing, or a crucial shot at goal that gets absolutely sprayed off the boot.

    But which player and team kicks it out on the full the most? And which games have seen the most balls end up in the crowd, instead of their intended location?

    In the 328 AFL games that have been played since the start of the 2024 season, there have been 1903 free kicks for out on the full against 541 players. There have been 133 players with a single kick out on the full, 157 players who have kicked it out on the full at least five times, 15 players who have kicked it out on the full at least 10 times, and one player who has kicked it out on the full 15 or more times.

    That one player? Shai Bolton.

    I was surprised to see a number of these names on the list. Bolton and Izak Rankine were a little unexpected, given they aren’t always high-possession players (although the number of kicks a player has does impact the proportion of kicks that can go out on the full). Max Holmes has been touted as the best draft pick of the 2020s to date, while Hugh McCluggage and Jordan Dawson are arguably having career-best seasons.

    Based on the list above, you can begin to understand why the Brisbane Lions, Geelong, and Adelaide find themselves at the pointy end of the table in terms of having the most out on the full kicks. And despite Carlton’s trouble moving the ball in 2025, they don’t seem to have as much of an issue kicking the ball out on the full (got to celebrate the small victories, right?).

    Since the start of 2024 the most out on the full kicks by an individual player during a match is three, which has been done 10 times – most recently by Brisbane’s Zac Bailey against Adelaide last weekend (including two in the final quarter when the game was on the line). Other players to have three out on the fulls in a single game include Oskar Baker (Round 5, 2024), Brody Mihocek (R7 2024), Nathan Broad (R19 2024), and Jack Gunston (R6 2025).  

    I hope that, at the very least, this post makes for some interesting discussion with your footy-loving mates.

    Which players are overrated and underrated?

    TWIF survey

    Naturally, asking a bunch of footy analysts to indulge in some hot takery about players being overrated elicited a fair amount of caution. Most didn’t like the question at all, but a few of the braver souls took some shots.

    It’s probably worth recalling, too, the parable of Tyrese Halliburton, who was rather cruelly voted “most overrated” by his own NBA peers in April. He is now leading his Pacers into an NBA Finals lead against the Thunder, and is just two wins away from a ring (and a Finals MVP).

    The only player to be mentioned twice for either question was Ben King, noted for perhaps being a little one-dimensional.

    Several contributors identified midfielders who tend to catch the public eye. Nick Daicos, Jason Horne-Francis, Zak Butters, Sam Walsh and Patrick Cripps were all identified by someone as being perhaps a little too well-regarded.

    That multiple members of two spluttering midfields were mentioned is perhaps not a coincidence.

    Horne-Francis was mentioned for his defensive game and for his role causing Port to struggle to fit and balance their midfielders. Cripps was highlighted simply as very good at things that aren’t that valuable at present.

    Someone also didn’t appreciate the hype around Archie Perkins.

    In terms of underrated players, a lot of people simply mentioned someone from their own team, which means naming them probably identifies the respondent.

    Among non-homer answers were many midfielders in a neat balance against the focus on them in the overrated question. Among these underrated midfielders were the likes of Ed Richards, Noah Anderson, Tom Atkins, Ollie Dempsey and Josh Dunkley. Dunkley was rather poetically/hungrily described as doing “all the mise en place so the chefs can cook”.

    Defenders in the underrated mix were Connor Idun (balancing the focus in the AA team on Lachie Ash) and Ryan Lester.

    Which player would you want at your club?

    TWIF Survey

    It’s a juicy question. Out of anyone available in the league, which player would be the best fit at your club.

    We didn’t ask whether it was just for a year, or forever.

    That reflected the split in votes received for different players.

    Some of our voters probably recognise that the most valuable recruits are young players of proven value.

    Such players can provide potentially a decade of very good service to a club, helping move the dial on a sustained push to success.

    However, it turns out that what many of our seasoned and sober analysts actually want to experience is the short term joy of just seeing the best player in the league run around in your own colours.

    Nearly a third of all respondents want the 30 year old Marcus Bontempelli at their club over anyone else.

    Several contributors went for younger stars like Pickett and Daicos while some sought to fill specific needs like big forwards or inside midfielders, but really, it was all about the Bonk here.

    XScore Pissers

    Joe Cordy

    My favourite kind of game to watch is an xScore Pisser.

    They’re an opportunity to revel in the chaos of the sport, and the fact that a significant on-paper advantage is never truly safe from it just not being your day. 

    For those who are unaware, expected score (AKA xScore) is a measurement of goalkicking accuracy. Every shot in a game is compared to a sample of similar shots based on location and situation to get an xScore value based on the average amount of points it scores.

    For example, a shot that results in a goal 50% of the time, a behind 40% of the time, and a miss in the remaining 10% will have a value of (50% of 6) + (40% of 1) + (10% of 0) = 3 + 0.4 = 3.4 points. The total xScore for a match is the sum of every shot’s xScore value. 

    If you’ve ever felt a team was either squandering or capitalising on their chances more than usual, xScore is the measurement that’d back you up. 

    Since 2021 the current crop of amateur analysts have been able to record xScores for each match, and there have been two obvious takeaways:

    • Over the course of a whole season, almost every team will end up within +/- 3 points of their xScore per game. The few exceptions are teams who funnel a disproportionate share of their shots through a small number of exceptionally good or bad players.
    • Despite everybody regressing to the mean eventually, it has more variance week to week than virtually any other statistic. 

    The latter point is where chaos gets introduced, and you find your xScore pissers. 

    The xScore pisser isn’t a uniform type of game – rather there are several types of pisser to soothe the soul.

    Double Swing

    The classic of the genre is the double swing. When one team kicks well above their expected total, in perfect juxtaposition to their opponents wastefulness in front of goal.

    You can typically find a low-scale example of one of these every other weekend or so, such as Round 12’s perfect mirror match of Walyalup vs Gold Coast where the visitors triumphed 9.10.64 – 11.9.75 from xScores of 75.5 and 64.9 respectively.

    The really special games are rarer though. To see a proper swing not just between two teams, but two specific players both taking the lion’s share of their team’s looks at goal. 

    In Round 21 2021, in one of the few games able to be played in Melbourne that season, the top of the ladder – premiership favourite – Bulldogs took on 10th place finals hopefuls Essendon.

    The game, for the most part, played out how you’d expect: Bulldogs comfortably won KPIs like Inside 50s (60-39), contested possessions (127-108) and shots at goal (33-23), for an xScore finish of 114.6 – 76.5. This margin would see a team win the match 98.6% of the time according to Wheelo Rating’s model.

    The beauty and tragedy of football though is sometimes despite having the clear talent advantage across the field, you can find yourself relying on one tall idiot to put the points on the board.

    Both teams went in with one such idiot, with Josh Bruce and Peter Wright at the spear tip of either team’s attack. Josh Bruce, for his part, played a reasonable game: scoring 3.2.20 from 7 shots, and taking 7 marks (3 contested). Unfortunately for him and his team, his counterpart at the other end was performing alchemy. 

    Peter Wright turned the same number of marks, one more shot, and less favourable positioning into 7.0.42, his best goal tally to date. 

    Despite their domination of almost every other phase of play, the Dogs went down 12.12.84 to 15.7.97 for a 51-point swing from the expected margin. On their own Bruce and Wright combined for 27 of these. 

    None of that helped the Bombers a few weeks later trying to end their finals drought against the same opposition, where they finished 27 points below their xScore, with Peter Wright not registering a shot on goal.

    But a pisser is a pisser, and it made for one great night of chaos.

    Taking Your Chances

    The more common example is when one team, for one reason or another, simply cannot hit the final target. They can restrict their opponent’s chances, they can generate their own, but they can’t execute the only skill that determines the result.

    There’s one club that is consistently on the wrong end of these results, and one club that is almost as consistently the beneficiary. 

    Coming in to Round 16 2023 the Giants’ season was just barely hanging on to the hope of finals, sitting at 6-8 in 14th place. They had put together a bit of form winning 3 of their last 4, with the solitary loss being a single goal margin to Richmond.

    The Demons had been going strong across the season, but were coming off a 15-point loss to Geelong where they kicked 8.15.63 from an xScore of 75.2. 

    If they’d managed to just be not great in front of goals again they would likely have won reasonably comfortably, happy to simply secure four points. Instead they put on an all-time great display of not taking your chances. 

    Despite falling just 3 points short of their expected total from the week before, and holding their opponents to 7.5.47 from an expected 44.1, Melbourne put up 5.15.45 to lose by two points. The worst offenders were Pickett, Petracca, Viney and Sparrow who generated a scoreboard impact of 1.9.15 from an expected 38. 

    Nobody has benefited more from opposition inaccuracy since 2021 than the Giants, but this was their masterpiece.

    Deadeye Dicks

    The last and possibly most aggravating variation on the xScore Pisser for the losing team is when despite creating opportunities, and even making the most of them, your opponents completely forget how to miss for just one game. 

    There are a couple recent examples of this: Hawthorn finishing two goals above their xScore total of 83.1 against the Suns in Darwin, while also restricting their quality and quantity of opportunities to 70.6, but still going down to 104-96 being one. 

    The highlight of this subgenre that’s stuck in my mind since I watched it unfold however was the 2022 Anzac Day clash. 

    Despite coming into their marquee fixture with a 1-4 record against a more talented opposition, Essendon had virtually everything they could hope for to go their way. They won the arm wrestles of territory, possession, shots on goal, and even found an unlikely goal source in Alec Waterman putting up 4.1 for the day. 

    Despite a pretty meagre xScore total of 66.1, they managed to exceed it by 15.9 points for a respectable 12.10.82 final score. The only Essendon could’ve lost is exactly the way they did: with almost every opposition player making the most of their one opportunity, and a couple of centrepieces with golden boots.

    Collingwood finished on a total of 15.3.93, outperforming expectations by over six goals. They found eight individual goal-scorers on the day, the two obvious standouts being Jack Ginnivan and Brody Mihocek arguably playing the best games of their Collingwood career, as they combined for nine goals from ten shots. 

    The first entry in Macrae’s long history of being on the right side of fine margins, and in my opinion, still the funniest.

    Around the Grounds