It’s hard being just outside a top four team. It’s even harder when the team has a rude run of health, and you’re a utility that cover almost anyone. After playing at least 11 games a year for the past four years, Tom Cutler only managed three this year –
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Hope is conveyed to members of clubs in a number of ways. Sometimes it is a struggling side battling a bit harder against a top four team than they have any right to towards the end of a season. Or maybe it is multiple Rising Star nominations for the club’s
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One of the eternal arguments for footy fans and analysts is that of talent against system. Would Player X at Club Y be as successful at Club Z, or is the style of play at Club Y critical to how good he looks on the field. Does a champion player
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Since arriving at the Saints from the Giants in 2014, Josh Bruce has cemented himself as the primary forward target at the club. With the Saints essentially reworking their best 22 during the trade period, Bruce has opted for a new start at the Bulldogs, who have desired a reliable
Continue reading »Note: This article is part of a series using a valuation method called Player Approximate Value (PAV) to evaluate trades for fairness and balance. Elsewhere, you can read much more about the method and theory behind PAV. You can also read about PAPLEY, the projection method used to derive expected future PAVs, which
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Before we get started, HPN recommends that every reader looks over this piece by Jake Niall from 2018 regarding the AFL’s free agency compensation formula. Given the details present in this piece (and others), HPN has concluded that the AFL formula is more or less copied from the NFL free
Continue reading »With the 2019 AFL season rapidly falling from sight, the attention of the league’s media and fans turns to who will be at each club in 2020 and beyond. The career HPN Trade Calculator has now been updated for 2019 values, so go and have a look! Also, we’ve introduced a
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For every AFL Grand Final, an off-field narrative emerges. The fairytale of the Bulldogs in 2016 still captures hearts and minds as one of the most poignant, but 2019 sees a captivating story at the other end of the scale. One of a big, big sound – and its emergence
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HPN Team Ratings Geelong still sit at the top of the heap according to the HPN Team Ratings, but their spot is about someone necessarily being number 1 due to the way ordinal numbers work rather than representing dominance over the competition. As mentioned in previous weeks, it’s the efficiency
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For this finals series HPN will be running brief final previews using some of the stats we have at hand. This is the first in that series. West Coast v Essendon HPN Team Strengths Team Mid Score Off Score Def Score Avg score Opp Mid Opp Off Opp Def Avg
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