Scoring Anomalies – Round 14

Written by The Salamander on June 28 2019

There’s a lot we don’t know about how the SuperCoach scoring system works (that’s why this column exists!). But there’s also a fair bit we do know. Given this, it seems to me that if we’re going to go around labelling scores ‘anomalous’, then we ought to at least run the numbers first. So, for each of this week’s nominations, that’s what I’m going to do.

As a refresher, here is what we are publicly told about how the scoring formula works, according to the official SuperCoach terms & conditions:

Stat: Awarded/Deducted
Effective kick: 4 Points
Ineffective kick: 0 Points
Clanger kick: -4 Points
Effective Handball: 1.5 Points
Ineffective handball: 0 Points
Handball clanger: -4 Points
Handball receive: 1.5 Point
Hardball get: 4.5 Points
Loose-ball get: 4.5 Points
Goal: 8 Points
Behind: 1 Point
Mark uncontested (maintaining possession): 2 Points
Mark contested (maintaining possession): 6 Points
Mark uncontested (from opposition): 4 Points
Mark contested (from opposition): 8 Points
Tackles: 4 Points
Free kick for: 4 Points
Free kick against: -4 Points
Hitout to Advantage: 5 Points
Gather from Hitout: 2 Points

4.10. Players may also score bonus points for effective disposals, marks and other actions performed in critical parts of the ground, late in matches when the scores are close.

4.11. Some scores involve an element of judgement by Champion Data. No correspondence will be entered into regarding the allocation of scores.

The good news is that nearly all of these stats are now publicly available. We don’t have access to ‘gathers from hitouts’ or ‘handball receives’, but everything else is there in some form or another. There is a publicly available stat called ‘ground-ball gets’ which I assume encompasses both ‘loose-ball gets’ and ‘hardball gets’ (if anybody with inside knowledge knows otherwise, please correct me in the comments!).

Then of course there are other stats, such as clearances, spoils, score involvements, metres gained, and pressure acts that we can be fairly confident are factored into the scoring, but we don’t know exactly what any of them are worth.

I’ll start by sticking to what we do know, and then look at the more speculative stats if there is a substantial gap between a player’s expected and actual scores.

First up, last week, seemingly everybody wanted to know how Shannon Hurn got to 92.

11 effective kicks: 44
6 effective handballs: 9
5 marks: 10
2 intercept marks: 4
1 contested mark: 4
4 ground-ball gets : 18
= 89 points.

Throw in his 2 spoils, 4 score launches, and a clearance, and 92 may actually be a tad low.

Moving on, Dane felt that Jack Macrae’s 148-point game was actually worth at least 175 points.

14 effective kicks: 56
17 effective handballs: 25.5
8 marks: 16
1 intercept marks: 2
2 clangers: -8
13 tackles: 52
10 ground-ball gets : 45
= 189 points, and that’s without factoring in the stats that are probably counted but whose value is unknown. So yes, it looks like Macrae might have been short changed just a little bit.

Personally, I had thought that Dane Rampe’s score of 100, when he didn’t rack up particularly big numbers in any statistical category, looked a bit high, so I decided to take a look:

9 effective kicks: 36
8 effective handballs: 12
4 marks: 8
1 contested mark: 4
2 intercept marks: 4
3 tackles: 12
2 ground-ball gets: 9
3 frees-for: 12
= 97 points.

It turns out that just because a score looks off at face-value doesn’t necessarily mean that it is.

Finally, Jack Gunston scored 80 points on the weekend for the following:

6 effective kicks: 24
2 effective handballs: 3
1 free-for : 4
2 clangers : -8
1 goal: 8
1 behind : 1
2 ground-ball gets : 9
5 marks: 10
1 contested mark: 4
1 tackle: 4
= 59 points.

So that leaves 21 unexplained points. Of the more speculative stats, nothing really jumps out: he had 1 clearance, 5 pressure acts, 6 score involvements (1 score launch, 2 goal assists), and 190 metres gained. Out of those, the score involvements look the most likely, but were they really 21 points worth? Or maybe it was just favourable scaling…

And it’s mysteries like this that are the reason this column exists!



Were there any scores that seemed off to you on the weekend? And what do you think of the new, more scientific methodology? Let us know in the comments below!

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17 thoughts on “Scoring Anomalies – Round 14”

  1. Love it Salamander, hard figures to hang your hat on. Rule 4.11 is the contentious rule, which basically says we’ll score a player any way we want and the rest of you can go forth and multiply !!

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    1. Do you have a source for this? I’d love to factor it in for future editions if it can be confirmed that this is what it’s worth.

      Likewise, if anybody has heard from somebody inside CD what any other unlisted stat is worth (e.g. spoils), then please let me know.

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  2. Great stuff Jack. I guess the other factor to consider is scaling. Because CD only award 3300 points per game, a high possession free flowing game will likely have lower than expected player scores.
    In the Dogs-Pies game mentioned above, nine players had 30+ touches. I’m not sure what the average is for total disposals is in a game, but there were 860 in that one, which on the face of it seems like a high number to me.
    That means that, even though the raw numbers are impressive, everyone gets a smaller slice of the pie, including Macrae (unfortunately!)

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    1. Absolutely. Expect to see scaling start being factored in over the next week or two. 😉

      Speaking of scaling, I’m starting to thing that this is where things like metres gained and score involvements come into it (because they’re definitely correlated with scoring): they’re not part of the base scoring formula, but are weighted favourably by the scaling formula. So, players won’t get points for them directly, but if they gain a lot of territory, or are involved in a lot of scoring chains, then they’ll get better treatment from the scaling than other players.

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  3. Love the new format Sal.
    I think with Gunston the pressure acts may count as 1%ers which you get points for but I don’t know how many.

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    1. Thanks.

      I’m pretty sure there is some overlap between pressure acts and one percenters, but I know that some stats are counted as one but not the other.

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  4. Just out of curiosity does a free kick count for 4 points and then the disposal (kick or handball) add extra points? If so the player is getting points for copping a head high tackle etc which he had nothing to do with. Unless of course he is Joel Selwood.
    Also if a player getting a hardball get , looseball get or gather from a hit out is tackled and there is a ball up does he still get the points for simply getting the ball even though he didn’t dispose of it?

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    1. I believe when you get a free kick you don’t get points (unless it was a hard/loose ball get) but the disposal you have from the FK will be treated as contested.

      Be nice to Joel.

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      1. From my reading of the the formula, you do get an extra 4 points for the free kick.

        I agree that it shouldn’t be worth that, but I think the reason they do it that way is so that the points awarded/deducted for frees for and against will sum to 0, and therefore not take up any of the precious 3300 available points.

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  5. Shortchanged players almsot always have inflated stats the next week. If this logic is true is it worth captaining Macrse hoping for 130+30?

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  6. This subject/post been a bit of a bugbare of mine for a while, BUT this is a really well thought out version, i like it.

    On Macrae, I think he had a few backwards handballs and kicks that didn’t really score much of any thing, & thought accurate most of the time he does chip the ball around a lot.

    Did Gunston have a contested intercept mark at some point? They are gold for SC, I remember Gawn had one then with the possession had an effective long kick that was also a score assist, was late in a close game & i think he went up 32 points.

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  7. Read somewhere that kicks to a unmarked team mate had to travel 40 metres for points to be allocated for that kick.

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