Uncharted Territory – Round 10

To start us off, Zach wanted to know if Heeney’s scoring was reliant on goals. He asked it in the Polling Station thread, but it sounded like an ideal question for me to answer here. To do this, I’ve broken down his good games and bad games this year to see where the difference comes from.

The scoring pattern you’re looking at above is definitely that of someone playing forward. There seem to be two ways he’s scoring here: direct scoreboard impact (goals, goal assists, etc.), as well as getting up the ground, marking the ball, and then moving it on. That’s pretty typical for a forward. So, is Heeney relying on goals to score? Somewhat, but not totally. But he is playing as a forward, so you can expect him to keep on scoring like one.

Moving on, I mentioned last week that I was looking at doing a few strength-of-schedule charts for some cheaper ruckmen. Initially, I was going to do this based on their likely direct opponent’s hitout-win-percentage, but that can be a little misleading, as some teams play multiple rucks. The Swans, for example, are using Tom Hickey in most of their ruck contests, but they also use Callum Sinclair – who wins a much higher percentage of hitouts than Hickey – in a good number, too. So, I’m using team hitout ratios instead. It may not be perfect, but, judging from the chart below, it should come pretty close to telling us what we want to know:

I was initially worried that the Bombers’ number would be artificially low after they’d gone a few weeks without a ruckman, but it doesn’t seem to be too far off how they’re likely to perform in ruck contests with Andrew Philips and/or Sam Draper (set to return in a few weeks) in there.

First up, Reilly O’Brien ($464,200):

Ouch. Definitely don’t get R.O.B. in over the next few weeks! His draw opens up after that, but Round 22 isn’t an ideal time for him to be playing Gawn.

Meanwhile, Sean Darcy’s ($522,800) draw doesn’t look too bad, but Round 15 looks really ugly: