Hi Everybody!
When someone over or under performs for a while, be it one week or one season, they are likely to go back to their normal performance. If a player scores a 170 his first match of the season, that is useful information. It means we now know he can score a 170. What it does not mean is that he will average 170 for the season. His current season average is 170, but we know he won’t average that for the season, no matter who he is.
But, say someone scores 125. If it is The Bont, it might be a bit below average, and saying he will score 125 for the season is not at all silly, because he has done that before recently and often. If it is Jack Macrae, it is hard to think he is going to average that, although since he has before, it has not been for years, so while not likely it isn’t totally mad. If Finlay Macrae scores 125, it’s clearly mad to think it will be his season average.
So, don’t overreact to one week of scoring. It is data, but not conclusive data, and needs to be taken in context. Same with really low score. A 40 from The Bont is probably his season low, while a 40 from Finlay Macrae means it is a day ending in “Y”.
So, a full season of scores, that must be reliable, right? Well…..not always. Player can get lucky for a season. One or two really big games can push an average up, and a few really bad games, perhaps injury affected, can skew an average down. Sometimes a guy just has great form all year, he gets a good role, the other players on the team click with him in the role and he puts up the best score in his line for the season.
One school of thought is that he is therefore now a proven top scorer and so is safe to pick because he will do at least close to as well this year as well. Another way to look at it is he got lucky, and put up a spike season. Which is right? It depends.
I’m gonna beat a dead Sun and talk about Sam Flanders. Amazing 119 average in 2024, but just a 73 average in 2025. He had a great role and the team fit around him, and the stars aligned. But there was nothing, to me at least, that said he really was that good a player. Butters, Neale, Sheezel, and Nick Diacos all scored right around 119, but watching them all play, I thought back to a song from Sesame Street:
“One of these things is not like the others
One of these things doesn’t belong
Can you tell which thing is not like the other
By the time we finish our song?”
Let’s see; Butters, Neale, Flanders, Sheezel, and Nick Diacos….
They all play footy, both Butters and Flanders are cartoons, so it isn’t that…Oh! Yeah, Flanders is not the same caliber of player as the rest. They all looked like stars when they played while Flanders looked like a guy racking up supercoach points.
Ok, Jake Lloyd also spent a while looking like a guy racking up Supercoach points but he had only one season over a 112 average.
What happened to the guys who looked like Top Guns? Butters and Naicos kept it up, while Neal and Sheezle dropped off by 13 and 11. Not good to score below what they were priced to score, but still darn good averages. Flanders dropped off by 45. Now that’s a lot more of a drop off that I would have predicted but unlike the others, who looked likely to and did score in the same vicinity, Sam just never showed that level of play. He was a Supercoach gun not a footy gun.
Before moving on, Flanders last season felt like a bit of everything going wrong at once, and I suspect his average was extra low compared to what we can expect, and thus he is in a whole lotta teams right now, and should be. This is NOT a Flanders is bad post, he is clearly not bad at all, and seems darn good. He just way overperformed in 2024. I don’t expect him to be The Bont this season but if he is in the top eight mids I won’t be shocked. Fortunately he doesn’t have to be in the top eight to be worth selecting.
So, the point is that all the players at and around the top of their lines need to be thought about carefully. Can they back it up? Have they before? How old are they? Any team changes? New Coach? Anyone who did it last year could do it again, but could and will are far from the same.
Thanks for reading!