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 MoreRecently, 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 MoreIn 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 MoreThe 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 MoreIt'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 MoreThe 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 MoreIn 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 MoreToday'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 MoreSubsequent 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 MoreFinals, 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 MoreThere's been a lot of discussion about the unusual situation of Fremantle, which finds itself Minor Premiers but only on the third line of the Flag wagering markets.
Read MoreOn Twitter today someone made the observation that teams' accuracy or conversion rate differentials seemed to have been strongly correlated with their final ladder position.
Read MoreRecently, 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 MoreIn 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 MoreThis 2015 season, seven rounds in, has felt like one where leads of any size have been less comfortable.
Read MoreIf the Dogs make this year's Grand Final they'll also make history as the lowest MARS Rated team after 5 rounds to do so in the modern era.
Read MoreAccurate 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 MoreFans the world over, the literature shows, like a little uncertainty in their sports. AFL fans are no different, as I recounted in a 2012 blog entitled Do Fans Really Want Close Games? in which I described regressions showing that crowds were larger at games where the level of expected surprisal or 'entropy' was higher.
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