There will be 198 games of football in the regular season this year, but how many types of match are there?
If we are to believe that American sport holds the torch for the rest of us to follow (for what it’s worth, I don’t believe that) then we are about to enter the age of advanced analytics.
What does that mean you ask? Basically, we are fine tuning and specifying current statistics to gauge a clearer picture of the game. From the numbers we can analyse results or the worth of a player or a team under the microscope.
That’s right, I said a “clearer picture”, one could argue that that’s an oxymoron, but I was never too good with numbers in school. The wife of a friend of mine recently quipped over a cup of tea in the family kitchen “I really like football, it’s good to watch, I just don’t understand why everyone talks about it so much”. Makes you think…
Back to my initial question though, how many types of match are there in the AFL? This is something that the number crunchers have yet to sink their teeth into, as far as I know. We’re already some way down the track with this idea though, it just happened to evolve under our noses without any of us really noticing. A quick name check of a few types of match are:
- Line in the sand game
- Crunch game (virtually the same as line in the sand game)
- 8-point game (you beat a side that sits just above you on the ladder, thus taking their 4 points also)
- Ugly win
- Honourable loss
- Maturity test
- Mini final
- Statement game (same as sand and crunch)
- Belief game (young side and/or new coach enjoy unexpected win, often interstate)
In that light then, what type of match confronts the Western Bulldogs in Western Australia this weekend?
Our season sits precariously at one win from four outings, but the spirit and energy has been played in two halves.
Serious questions were asked after the first two weeks of the year, but the response has been emphatic. With a bit of luck in the dying stages of Saturday night’s heartbreaking loss to the Swans, we could’ve been 2-2 with surging momentum.
One might argue that the weekend’s nail biting loss to the Swans was a classic ‘honourable loss’, but in this new world of advanced analytics, I believe that this week’s road trip to Perth to take on Fremantle will announce a new type of match. A hybrid of sorts. A mutation of the ‘8-point game’.
In years to come, a win this weekend over the Dockers will be recorded as a classic ‘6-point game’.
Go with me on this. Last weekend was indeed an honourable loss, but the honour of that loss is only tangible if you win the next week. How much is that worth? It’s a metaphorical two points. Or *two points for the stats community.
So, if the Bulldogs win this week, they pick up the four points and cash their cheque on the honourable loss as well. Advanced analytics… A place where you can bend numbers to fit your every whim. Statistical psychedelia. Man…
