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Forever blowing bubbles
Emlyn Breese – CreditToDuBois.com
This is a summary of a longer piece I’ve written over at CreditToDuBois.
Building on commentary in recent weeks, including Jasper’s piece last week, this week I’m going to take on the difficult task of dissecting bubbles.
In the modern game teams generally defend space more than they defend players. Cody and Sean wrote about this back in 2020. In the broadest and simplest terms, a defence will be relatively happy if they can make close options risky, and long options easy to neutralise – the attacking team want to do the opposite.
To maximise their chances, the attacking team needs to pose as many credible threats as possible. Even if you don’t use them on a given play, the more places a team feels like it needs to defend, the weaker its defence will be in any one spot. This is where the idea of the bubble comes in – it represents the area on field you can threaten. Initially you have a small bubble, through aggressive ball movement you can expand your bubble quicker than the defence can redeploy to defend it.
I’m putting forward one (still very much in progress) method of looking at how well teams create credible threat, by looking at where the ball has tended to go.
For this week at least, I’m limiting my scope just to intercept possessions at centre half back, which I’m defining as 40-60 metres from the defensive goal and within the width of the centre square.
Let’s cut straight to the chase and dump a great big chart and then go through some through a few observations. I’ve chosen 6 seconds after the point of intercept as our reference point because that offered one of the better points of differentiation between teams. As you go further forward in time, the majority of all ball ends up in the forward sector (the vast majority of the field is in the forward sector at longer ranges, so this makes sense regardless of game style).
A couple of quick things to consider:
- Wedges are drawn at the 80th percentile of distance from the point of intercept in that sector – that is, for 4 in every 5 intercept chains the ball will be within the drawn areas 6 seconds after the point of intercept. Wedges are shaded darker based on the proportion of chains that are within that sector.
- For every team other than Essendon (and St Kilda very marginally), the front sector is the most used
- For every team other than Essendon, the front sector is the most used for their opponents.
- Carlton and the Giants’ opponents aren’t going forward quickly – 80% of chains in the forward sector have travelled around 12 metres or less – contrast to Essendon, Richmond, and Sydney where that’s around the 50 metre mark.
- St Kilda have one of the most balanced threat profiles, pretty well spread across front, lateral, and right 45s. They are also still in the back sector, but with the distance involved it looks like this is probably more from being behind the mark rather than actively moving the ball backwards.
- Richmond favour long, lateral movement to the right.
There’s a few important provisos here to keep in mind:
- This is very much a work in progress, and it’s something I’ll likely keep iterating on through the season
- The chart presented here doesn’t differentiate between intercept marks and non-marks
- This is primarily about style, not effectiveness. I haven’t represented retention rates at all here.
- We are still early in the season so sample sizes are low – things will be impacted by single game anomalies and which opponents a team has faced.
As always hit me up with any feedback you have. Bluesky is probably the best place to reach me.
Melbourne’s Inefficiency Inside 50 – System, Skill or Bad Luck?
The 2025 version of the Melbourne Football Club is historically inefficient. They have the 5th worst Scores Per Inside 50 Rate of any team since 2012. If you remove the 2020 COVID season, they’re the worst.
You might recall the shot map I released last week, where you could observe an abundance of white space around Melbourne’s hot spot. In reviewing their inside 50 kicks so far this season, you can see it’s not for a lack of trying.
Melbourne ranks:
- 18th in Kicks Inside 50 Retention, and
- 1st for Kicks Inside 50 resulting in a contest/stoppage
- 1st for Offensive 1v1s
So where is it going wrong?
I noticed a pattern in their first-quarter entries vs Essendon. Watch the video below and keep an eye on:
- Which forwards are sliding?
- Which forwards are hitting up at the ball?
Let’s review these entries through a skill vs decision matrix, before overlaying the system component I touched on above.
- Skill: There were a few clear execution issues, but it’s hard to find fault in the long bombs to the hotspot.
- Decision-making: Largely okay.. Maybe a missed opportunity to use Petracca (Langdon – example 8)
- System: Melbourne’s ability to transition was exceptional. But upon entering the 50, every forward wanted to slide. These kicks to moving targets towards goal require elite skill and elite athletic profiles. That’s not Melbourne’s forward line.
This issue highlights the importance of an improved balance in Melbourne’s leading patterns. Forwards who are willing to stretch the ground vertically and horizontally to maximise the space inside 50 and know when to hit up with the intent to get used or to create a vacuum of space. This is fixable. The game against Fremantle this week presents itself as a last chance saloon to salvage their season. Melbourne’s efficiency inside 50 will go a long way in determining the outcome.
What’s going on in the middle at Melbourne?
Jack Turner – the Back Pocket
Last week Cody accurately pointed out that Melbourne’s once lauded defence seems to be hanging on by a thread, even with Petty back there helping out May and McDonald. In that article he mentioned in passing Melbourne’s issues going forward, and this article builds on that, finding the KPIs that make Melbourne tick.
In 2021, when Melbourne won their breakthrough premiership, they were ranked #3 for Clearances, #1 for Contested Possessions, #2 for Inside 50s, #2 for Scores per Inside 50 and #2 for Marks inside 50.
They got it inside 50 more than almost anyone else, and they kept it in there until they scored. Much was talked about their all-star backline, but their attacking power was their secret asset.
Their forwardline was already their weakness on paper, but through great positioning, good field kicking, and a great plan, they managed to spread the load – thanks to 11 players kicking double-digit goals – with medium-tall Bailey Fritsch and breakout small Kysiah Pickett kicking 99 goals between them.
In 2025 – after five games – Melbourne currently sit #17 for Clearances, #12 for Contested Possessions, #15 for Inside 50s, #18 for Scores per Inside 50 and #18 for Marks per Inside 50. Their contested possessions, Inside 50s and Clearances were improved against Essendon on the weekend, but are still a dramatic decrease from their prime.
These five stats, which identify and showcase the synchronisation between midfield and forwardline, are the ones Melbourne have to get right in order to be at their best. Let’s call them Melbourne’s KPIs.
In 2018, when Melbourne surged into September and won their first final in twelve years – making their first preliminary final since their 2000 grand final loss – they were top six in the league for all of these KPIs. In 2021 they were top four in all five KPIs.
Clayton Oliver is doing the lion’s share of clearance work at Melbourne, currently ranked sixth in the league for average clearances, but is the only Demon in the top 50.
With a midfield mix that starts Max Gawn, Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca, Jack Viney and Kysiah Pickett, you have to wonder how they aren’t able to at least extract the ball and get it into the underperforming forwardline (as was the issue in their doomed finals runs of 2023 and 2024).
In 2024, there were serious issues around Melbourne’s midfield that we all recognised and understood, but with the full midfield mix back – and seemingly in full health – many expected 2025 to be a different story.
The loss of Alex Neal-Bullen and Angus Brayshaw can’t be underestimated, but Petracca pushing hard forward to create a target instead of focussing on winning the clearance seems akin an effort to solve world hunger by figuring out the logistics and transport before you figure out where the food is coming from. His frustration was on display for all to see against Geelong, and it was understandable.
Whether the major issue is a poor gameplan, a lack of cohesion from a recently very disgruntled playing group, or the fact that these stars just aren’t the same players they used to be – Max Gawn is 33, Jack Viney is 30, and Petracca almost died last year – remains to be seen, but whatever it is, it needs to be fixed in a hurry or this is going to be a very long season for Melbourne fans.
Scoring: so hot right now
Mateo Szlapek-Sewillo, One Percenters
Inspired by Australian sports trivia doyen Sir Swampthing’s recent tweet pointing out that Gather Round was the highest-scoring weekend of footy since Round 2, 2017, as well as persistent claims by pundits that the game is becoming ever faster and more open, I decided to dig into the numbers and divine some truths: is footy actually becoming higher-scoring? How is the composition of scoring changing? And what conclusions – at least tentative ones – might we draw about the future direction of travel?
Some findings were as expected. Others, meanwhile, cut against the grain of expectation.
The first and most banal conclusion is that, yes, we are in the midst of a clear upward trend in scoring.
The chart below shows how many points sides have scored per game since 2017. Shortened quarters from 2020 are prorated for comparability throughout this piece.
Early in, 2025 is the highest-scoring season since 2017. That’s a reasonable sample size. At the same point last year, scores per game were within a point of the final season average.
Let’s turn our attention to score sources – which holds the first finding I’d describe as mildly counterintuitive. Despite the frequency of claims that ball movement is the crucible of modern footy, chains beginning from stoppage wins have contributed an increasing share of scores in every season since 2021.
Just because an increasing share of scoring is coming from stoppage chains doesn’t mean that ball movement isn’t becoming more important. Getting the ball from the inside of the contest to the outside and then advancing up the field surely counts as “ball movement” just as much as affecting a turnover. That feeds into the next chart – where scoring chains originate.
This may be the first indication of a true shift in how footy is being played.
Ignore centre bounce. It’s a peripheral and, as Cody and Sean flagged in their piece last year, flukey source of scoring.
The steady increase in scores from back-half chains is suggestive of teams placing a greater premium on the offensive (and defensive) value of moving the ball from back to front. It’s just a shame that publicly accessible data for this metric only dates back to 2021, immediately after the peak of Damien Hardwick’s famously forward-half intensive Richmond side.
The evidence for “ball movement” showing up in overall league scoring is somewhat ambivalent. The share of scores generated from turnovers is declining while scores from back-half chains are increasing. Surely, though – surely – the game is becoming more transition-oriented? After all, that’s what every pundit has been saying. Actually… the evidence for that is mixed. The chart below shows the average number of possession chains per side per AFLM game since 2017.
Possession chains count how many times a side begins with the ball. Right now, despite 2025 being the highest-scoring season since 2017, it also features the fewest possession chains per game.
Clearance numbers have remained very steady in the entire observation period. Instead, most of the observed decline in the number of possession chains is driven by declines in the number of intercept possessions per game. Again, a chart – and again, the 2020 caveat.
I interpret this as robust although perhaps slightly counterintuitive evidence for the significance of “ball movement” in today’s game. Possession isn’t just a sword. It’s also a shield. The better you are at keeping the ball, the fewer opportunities the opposition will have to score.
The average number of opportunities a side will have to generate a score is in decline. But the evidence suggests that sides are becoming much more adept at scoring when they win the ball – regardless of how they win it.
2025 marks at least the fifth straight year where the expected value of winning a clearance has increased. The expected value of turnover chains are a similarly strong upward trend. Teams are better at keeping the ball partly because the cost of losing it has probably never been higher.
What about shot type? With thanks and credit to Andrew Whelan, creator and keeper of the extraordinary Wheelo Ratings website who personally supplied me with the shot type data:
Since 2017, set shots vs general play have been very consistent, so it’ll be interesting to see whether the large shift between last season and this season persists.
A related trivia question: one side has clearly scored more of its points from general play shots than set shots to date in 2025 (another is about 50/50). A shout-out in the next edition of the One Percenters newsletter to anyone who correctly guesses the identity of that side.
Assuming these numbers a) are accurate; and b) hold, I think the most salient question to ask is how are teams becoming so much better at generating scores? Here’s where I agree with the common wisdom: players today are more skilled, attacking schemes are more mature, and (this bit is slightly more speculative) the defensive schemes to nullify them perhaps haven’t quite advanced at the same pace.
However – this is where it gets properly impressionistic – I wonder if we’re seeing the evidence of something deeper: a shift in the overarching philosophy of how we view and play the game. The evidence is there in a more qualitative way, if you look.
The best sides are lauded for their aptitude and speed with the ball. Winning “the contest” has never been more weakly correlated with winning actual games. It even feels like the value of defenders is increasingly measured, both in analytical spaces and also the digital pub surrounds of Bigfooty et al, by how much they contribute in possession.
There have been higher-scoring seasons and eras. But I’d argue they were functions of either a tactically immature game (prior to the early 2000s) or super-dominant sides which overwhelmed the competition by stacking tactical and talent advantages (see: Alastair Clarkson’s Hawthorn).
This feels slightly different, almost as though the fruit is both riper and more evenly distributed. In that regard, our current direction of travel reminds me just a little of the attacking revolution that swept through elite club soccer around the end of the 2000s – and hasn’t really abated since. Long may it continue.
Who hasn’t lost a defensive one-on-one contest this year?
One of the more enigmatic statistics Champion Data and the AFL publish is the contested defensive one-on-one, with the catchy acronym of CDOOO. A one-on-one contest is defined like this:
One-On-One Contest: A 50-50 contest that occurs after a kick, and involves only two players – a target player and a defender. Each player must have a reasonable chance to win the ball in order for a one-on-one to be recorded. Winning and losing percentages refer to how often a player wins the ball or concedes a possession to his opponent. A neutral result is recorded when the ball is spoiled or results in a stoppage.
CDOOOs are those that occur in the back half for a given player, and they do have limitations under this definition. Most obviously, weaker team defences can concede more solo contests, which even if won well, may not be what the team wants.
And that requirement for a reasonably even chance in the contest also matters. If you as a defender can’t get into an even-money position and are simply fully beaten, you may not even be tabbed with the contest and loss, but can’t really be said to have done your defensive job.
Regardless, though, they contest stats have become a nice way to try to evaluate the defensive prowess of individuals who are often pretty difficult to measure and track.
A quick look at last year’s leaders shows that it mostly passes the eye test – Harris Andrews and Sam collins facing a lot of these one v one battles with aplomb, losing very few. Less accomplished defenders spreading upwards into higher loss rates, some well organised cover defences like the Swans and Saints facing relatively few isolated 50:50s at all.
It’s a quirky number, though. The requirement for the contest to be approximately 50:50 and isolated keeps the numbers relatively low, which makes assessing things tricky early in the year.
Currently, Darcy Moore has faced the most 1v1 contests this season, 20. Poor Harry Edwards sits second and looks beleaguered, having lost almost half of his contests.
Moore, interestingly, is seeing contests at double the rate per game he faced last year, which suggests his role may be worth watching as part of the Pies’ more winning approach so far this season. Leaving him more exposed may be enabling more aggressive positioning elsewhere, relying on his individual talent to cover some extra risk-taking
And Moore has delivered, with only the lost one contest. When did he lose this? Contested losses are difficult to pin down in the AFL app’s generally well tagged statistics-based highlights, because if a player is beaten, they usually don’t record anything taggable (unless they lose by giving a free kick).
What we can say is Darcy Moore’s only contested one-on-one loss so far this year came against the Bulldogs. I suspect it may have been whichever of the six Sam Darcy contested marks was deemed something approximating a 50:50 contest:
That brings us to the question here. Which players in 2025 are yet to lose a one on once defensive contest and how long can they last?
In 2024, for comparison, the most contests without a loss was 8 by Jarrod Berry. It’s hard to sustain a fully clean sheet.
Here’s everyone who’s seen at least 5 one v one contests without losing one:
| Player | Team | CDOOOs without loss |
| Jacob Weitering | Carlton | 9 |
| Sam De Koning | Geelong | 7 |
| Lachie Jones | Port Adelaide | 6 |
| Jeremy Howe | Collingwood | 6 |
| Max Michalanney | Adelaide | 6 |
| Brady Hough | West Coast | 6 |
| Brodie Grundy | Sydney | 5 |
De Koning and Grundy are playing a different game to everyone else, both being players largely defending their opposite rucks and being notable for beating them on the deck. That may keep them in good stead against the rest of these defenders who could at any point find themselves out of position, pinned to a mismatch or needing to concede a professional free kick.
Who holds out the longest? Which new contenders will emerge? We may check back later in the year.
Kicking with width
Cody Atkinson
The ABC yesterday published an article about handballing – no need to read it…if you insist…but one thing that intrigued was that in recent years the share of handballs to kicks had actually plateaued a little. Not a great deal, but the mountain may have crested a decade or so ago.
That raises the natural question around the other part of the equation – that of the kicking game.
Last year’s Brisbane Lions kicked it more than any other side proportionally. This year it’s another recent premier that is leading the way.
Brisbane’s ability to shift defence by foot has grabbed the attention of opposition teams – as well as some that have begun to ape the trend. For Geelong this kick heavy style is nothing new – it’s how they have been moving the ball over in recent years.
The Suns represent the antithesis of this tactical shift. Their games have fewer kicks than any other teams, and a lower kick to handball ratio to boot. The Suns not only mark the ball less than any other side but they also allow fewer marks than the rest of the competition.
That unspeakable ABC article above included one interesting item at the start – the longest goalscoring handball chain of the year from Port Adelaide. That shouldn’t come as a huge shock – the Power is firmly in the Hardwick school of handball heavy play (despite being strong for marks).
The longest kick chain that has ended in a goal this year? Well, that would be the Dons – another normally kick-resistant side.
*The counter broke near the end. I’m sorry.
Of particular note is the Dons use of width and patience in moving the ball. Even as the commentators egg the Dons via telepathy to use the handball the Dons mostly hold firm. With 13 kicks to just one handball, and a couple of fairly large shifts across the ground, the Dons slide the Hawks around with ease.
Geelong in their longest kick-exclusive scoring chains show a similar steadfastness in their speed, while utilising the whole width of the ground. Shannon Neale’s goal to open the fourth quarter against Melbourne saw the Cats go the full width of the (narrow) Kardinia Park twice.
Making sides defend the full field is critical to finding space and mismatches in the modern game. The handball – and actual footspeed – isn’t the only way to do so.
Are the 2020s becoming the decade of the old bloke?
“Age is just a number” has long been the sentiment generally only offered by the most punishing exercise guy that you still follow because you went to high school together.
But watching Patrick Dangerfield steamroll Adelaide last weekend at an age that would normally have commentators talking about him like an archaeologist would a well-preserved dinosaur fossil made me wonder: is 30 becoming the new 28 in the AFL?
30 has always been perceived as the footy cliff; the Great Dividing Range where a player goes from In Their Prime to Wizened Old Sage (or worse: Over The Hill), but the best players now seem capable of squeezing every last drop of juice out of their bodies – and perhaps more pertinently, minds – to a greater degree than ever before.
Clearly it’s likely to be due to advances in professionalism and conditioning, as well as the players’ own personalities – it’s hard to imagine Scott Pendlebury spending his offseason mainlining Bintang and mushy shakes in South East Asia for example.
Arguably as a big a factor, however, has been a willingness on the part of both player and coaching staff to adapt. Dangerfield is the perfect example: With Tom Hawkins and Gary Rohan both moving on, the Cats needed another presence inside 50 and the decision wouldn’t have been made on a whim.
The Cats would have reasoned that Dangerfield has the explosive speed and power, overhead ability, ruthlessness and contested marking to be a genuinely difficult matchup inside 50, rather than a player who had an attribute mismatch against their direct opponent that characterises most midfielders who push forward to impact the scoreboard.
It’s easy to be cynical about such a switch – moving a great one-on-one player forward of the ball isn’t exactly rocket science – but the fact that Dangerfield started the first game of the season inside 50 rather than at the centre bounce was a flex that both club and player are on board with the ploy.
It’s not just Dangerfield who is redefining himself in the post-30 landscape either – a torn Keidean Coleman ACL last year famously led to Dayne Zorko moving to half back at 35 years old and making the All-Australian team in a flag year.
Other 30+ players have had career seasons and moments in the 2020s – Tom Hawkins was a 4x All-Australian and won a Coleman and a flag after 30, Isaac Smith was a Norm Smith Medallist at 33, Scott Pendlebury calmly orchestrated a Collingwood flag in the fourth quarter of the hottest grand final of recent memory as a 35 year old, and Steele Sidebottom stretched every millimetre of his 32 year old soft tissues to kick the sealer in that same game from platform 1 at Jolimont station.
Incidentally, Pendlebury is now 37 and seems to be cruising towards Boomer Harvey’s all time games record – and who knows how many more games he’d have had to his name if player and coaching staff could have found a middle ground at the end of 2016?
Around the Grounds
Here’s some other good looks from elsewhere this week.
- Here’s Zippy Fish hitting an AFLW practice match goal from well inside the centre square
- Jasper Chellappah has his first AFL draft power rankings for the year over at ESPN, with the draft class taking a very interesting shape
- For a less gamestyle and numbers oriented companion to our looks at The Melbourne Question, Jonathan Horn tries to read the mood and psyche of the team.
- With the current discourse unfolding, it’s worth going back to this 2022 article by ABC showing exactly what Willie Rioli Sr faced at Hawthorn in the VFL,
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