UPDATE: Close Games in VFL/AFL History: Do Successful Teams Win Them?
/Back in November of 2015, I wrote this piece on the topic of close games in response to the claims being made then about the ability of good teams to win close games.
Read MoreClose Games in VFL/AFL History: Do Successful Teams Win Them?
/Recently, we've looked at the history of margins, of blowouts, mismatches and upsets, and the history of conversion rates. Today we'll be looking at the history of close games, which I'll define as games that are decided by a goal or less.
Read MoreScoring Shot Conversion in the VFL/AFL - Quantifying Team, Venue and Era Effects
/In the previous blog we reviewed the Conversion Rate history of the VFL/AFL competition looking, in turn, at how it has varied across eras for different venues and for different teams. That blog provides some useful context for this one and you might find it helpful to review it before proceeding.
Read MoreScoring Shot Conversion History in the VFL/AFL (1897-2015)
/The off-season always seems a good time for adopting a more sweeping historical perspective in the analyses here on MatterOfStats. Today we're going to be reviewing Scoring Shot Conversion rates across the 119 seasons of the VFL/AFL from both a venue and a team perspective.
Read MoreCompetitiveness in the VFL/AFL (1897-2015)
/It's been a while since we've reviewed the history of game margins and, in today's blog, we'll consider that history from a number of perspectives.
Read MoreWinning and Losing Streaks and Their Effects on Team Scoring
/The idea for this blog came in an e-mail from long-time Friend of MoS, Michael, who wondered if the absence of lengthy winning streaks by teams like Hawthorn in 2015 reflected some feature of the game of Australian Rules or of the AFL competition that rendered such streaks self-limiting in length.
Read MoreOn the Relative Importance of Offensive and Defensive Ability in VFL/AFL History
/In the previous post here I introduced MoSSBODS 2.0, a Team Rating System design to provide separate Offensive and Defensive Ratings for teams in the VFL/AFL. Today I want to explore the relationship between teams' Ratings and their on-field success.
Read MoreGrand Final Leads - How Much Is Enough?
/Quick question: what proportion of teams that have led at the end of the 1st Quarter of a Grand Final have gone on to take the Flag? Supplementary question: how big does the Quarter-time lead need to be before the probability reaches 90%?
Read MoreTeam-by-Team and Venue-by-Venue Conversion Rate History
/Today's post continues the recent theme of entries here in the Statistical Analysis part of the site, taking yet another look at Scoring Shot Conversion rates but this time on a team-by-team and venue-by-venue basis.
Read MoreConversion Rates in Finals versus Home-and-Away Games
/Subsequent to the previous post, which looked broadly at the differences in aggregate scoring metrics for Home-and-Away games compared to Finals from the same era, Friend of MoS, Liam, made a great suggestion for a follow up analysis.
Read MoreWhat's Different About Finals?
/Finals, by their nature, tend to pit more-evenly matched teams against one another, on average, than do games from the home-and-away season. It seems reasonable, therefore, to hypothesise that margins will tend to be smaller in Finals than in the home-and-away season, but what other changes in scoring behaviour might we expect to see?
Read MoreWinning Scores and Underdogs' Chances
/Recently, I noted, somewhat in passing in this piece on close game and blowouts, the decline in overall team scoring, a topic that's receiving not a little attention within the football community at the moment, fuelled partly by some recent low-scoring games, in particular the Dees v Lions encounter.
Read MoreBest and Worst AFL Teams 2005 - 2015: A MoSSBOD Perspective
/In the last blog on this part of the site I introduced the MoSSBOD Team Rating System, the defining characteristics of which were that it Rated teams based on Scoring Shot Production and Concession and that it provided both a Defensive and an Offensive Rating for all teams.
Today I want to explore the history of those Ratings across the last decade to see what MoSSBOD has to say about the strongest and weakest Offensive and Defensive teams across that period.
Read MoreKicking Accuracy : Teams, Rounds and Correlations
/Accurate kicking, obviously, contributes to a team's success. But, just how much does it contribute, what are some of the sources of its variability, and just how predictable is it?
Read MoreHow Often Does The Best Team Win The Flag?
/Finals series are a significant part of Australian sporting life. No professional team sport I know determines its ultimate victor - as does, say the English Premier League - on the basis of a first-past-the-post system. There's no doubt that a series of Finals adds interest, excitement and theatre (and revenue) to a season, but, in the case of VFL/AFL at least, how often does it result in the best team being awarded the Flag?
Read MoreFuzzy Clustering of VFL/AFL Grand Final Scores
/Much has already been written about the lamentable and historic-for-all-the-wrong-reasons 2014 Grand Final, which got me to wondering about exactly how atypical it was. Have there been similar Grand Finals and, if so, when?
Read MoreGrand Final History 1898-2013 : Winning Team Scoring Patterns
/Only three teams in VFL/AFL history have trailed by more than three goals at Quarter Time in the Grand Final and gone on to win. The most recent was Sydney in 2012 who trailled the Hawks by 19 at the first break before rallying in the second term to kick 6.0 to 0.1, eventually going on to win by 10 points, and before that Essendon who in 1984 trailed the Hawks by 21 points at Quarter Time - and still trailed them by 23 points at Three Quarter Time - before recording a 24 point victory on the strength of a 9.6 to 2.1 points avalanche in the final term.
Read MoreThe Quality of the 2014 Finalists
/Based on end of home-and-away season MARS Ratings, as a group the 2014 Finalists are slightly inferior to their 2013 counterparts (though, oddly enough, the opposite would have been true had the Dons not been relegated to 9th).
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