I’m excited about the article you’re currently reading in part because I get to advertise a couple new developments in footy statistics.
First is The Arc AFL’s complete AFL history. Using ELO (which admittedly isn’t my favourite way to determine winners and losers, but it serves its purpose well here) you can easily determine the winning percentage for each game in AFL/VFL history.
Second is the newly coded 1990 and 1999 grand finals. These games are on YouTube in full and appear to be presented in real time, meaning the scoring progression can be coded based on the time of the game. I went back and coded the scoring progression and sent it into AFL Tables. Unfortunately, I don’t know how many games this can be done with based on the coverage that’s currently available, though it looks like St Kilda’s win back in the 1960’s may have full television coverage. The most important thing when looking for games to code has been unedited, continuous coverage – for instance, I have the 1989 grand final mostly coded, but the game in the third quarter jumps ahead about five minutes. I also have the 1975 grand final on DVD and I’m not sure the full game is on there, but I’ll have to look – that would be a good one to add to the collection.
The other advantage of looking at historical footage – advanced AFL stats only go back a few years. There’s a very good chance the finals could be coded to add in statistics such as marks inside 50 just by watching the television coverage (I’m particularly interested in how many Gary Ablett had in 1989.) It’s potentially a bit optimistic, but I think it’s definitely worth exploring.
I have it on very good terms the AFL has a lot of archival footage, so even though most of the grand finals currently on Youtube have either been edited or miss some of the coverage, I’m hoping the league will be interested in a project to try to retroactively code as many grand finals as possible. At the very least, the league would benefit from giving broadcasters a more comprehensive statistical package to discuss on game day.
While neither the 1990 nor the 1999 grand finals were particularly interesting to the neutral, I’ve attached the leverage and winning percentages below. These required both the Arc’s winning percentages and the newly coded game to produce. Hopefully there will be more of these in the future (imagine the commentary at the 2020 grand final: “of course, Ben Brown’s 8 inside 50s so far pale in comparison to Gary Ablett Sr. in 1989…”) Enjoy if you like!
