In addition to our preview with James Coventry for ABC Grandstand today, we thought we’d add a couple of GIFs and charts that didn’t make the cut for the piece, but were too good to leave out altogether. Plus, our (PERT and James’s) predictions of what will happen on the day. Think of this as the extended cut of the ABC piece. the DVD commentary (this line will age badly).
But read the ABC piece first. We promise that it is good.
You done? OK, let’s go.
Brodie Grundy is a machine
Imagine a ruck who can do this:
and this:
but also can gather the ball on the ground like this:
and even gather the ball on the hop and spin AND dispose like this:
How do you stop that effectively? West Coast effectively shut down Max Gawn last week, and did pretty well at restricting Grundy in the QF – despite the clips above. The challenge, as the West Coast ruck cohort indicated through the week, is to come up with a game play to restrict Grundy’s impact around the ground, rather than in the air. If they can limit the All Australian ruck’s delivery to and involvement in their prolific midfield, it will be a massive upper hand.
More McGovern
We know the ABC piece linked had a lot of Jeremy McGovern, but here’s a couple of more gems.
That second GIF features an attempt to get McGovern out of the contest, which… didn’t work. If he is fit, his smarts and size make will be hard to stop. Collingwood will hope to get the ball to deck, or for Cox to have another big day even with greater respect and attention coming his way. Collingwood will likely take a draw with McGovern – especially if it is wet.
Taylor Adams even gets a run here
We focus on the frontline mids, Treloar, Pendlebury, Sidebottom in the media space often. But the real class in the Collingwood midfield is how deep they go, and how much they can damage with the ball.
Adams has been particularly damaging against West Coast in the two games so far this year – gathering a lot of score involvements and clearances in the two matchups so far. The midfield will matter more than anything else for Collingwood, so guys like Adams will have to stand up.
Who gets the ball where
Mapping out the locations of disposals by each member of the team gives us a pretty good look at which players play traditional roles, and what sort of a structure teams run with.
West Coast players disposal locations
West Coast have a pretty defined front six (plus the two rotating rucks), and seven players who play mostly back of centre. Then they show a fairly homogeneous positional role spread among their midfielders.
Their six forwards and two ruckmen are the only players in the grand final team who get the majority of their touches in the forward half of the ground. while the midfield group (Yeo, Masten, Sheed, Redden, Shuey, Hutchings) have a balanced spread with only Masten showing any marked extra tendency to push back deep. The rest of the group look extremely similar in this view.
We can also see how much the rest of this group has simply taken Gaff’s absence in its stride, by collectively filling the same spots as him.
Duggan and Jetta are the defenders moving furthest from goal and Jetta’s predominance of half back touches (49% in the defensive half but outside defensive 50) is particularly notable. He’s fully become a line-breaking and precision-distributing halfback and has had just 3 disposals inside 50 this year.
Collingwood players disposal locations
For Collingwood up forward we can see the more even load across the seven forward rotating players (Stephenson, Mihocek, De Goey, Hoskin-Elliot, Cox, Thomas, Varcoe) who all get plenty of ball outside 50 as well. Grundy gets a lesser share of his possessions in forward 50 than Lycett and Vardy, but that’s mostly because he gets more disposals in total.
Mayne is notable as a very strongly “between the arcs” player, nominally a defender but seldom seen in defensive 50 and occasionally roaming forward. Instead he’s a “link man” who uses his decent size to thrive in 1 v 1 matchups in space, and his foot skills to distribute the ball. He’s almost what we once called a tall winger.
Compared to the Eagles there’s more diversity in the disposal spreads of the Pies mids. Phillips and Aish look a bit more defensive (both are running more as support defenders a fair whack of the time at present) while Treloar and Sier have been the most offensively positioned.
The chart also shows a fairly defined “3 and 3” defensive six for Collingwood, as it has settled after the flux of their injury-hit regular season. Goldsack and Howe stay the deepest, along with the often free-floating Langdon. Greenwood, Crisp and Maynard play higher and do more rebounding. They have support from Mayne, Aish and Phillips as mentioned above.
Prediction
Usually what we have done in the past is to look at the team strengths and predict how the game goes. This year, we also asked our Footballistics and ABC collaborator James Coventry of his view of the upcoming game. As a boundary rider for the ABC, he gets to see how the teams operate up close, and gets a different view from most.
HPN:
Our predictive model PERT sees West Coast with moderate advantages up forward and down back, but Collingwood dominating the battle on the centre, therefore getting the ball up forward more. PERT predicts an advantage to the Pies of about 10 inside 50s, which is worth between two or three goals worth at face value.
This means that for West Coast to keep up (if the disparity comes true), the Eagles will have to score at a rate of 1.94 points per inside 50. As the ABC piece indicates, the Eagles have scored at a rate of 1.96 points per inside 50 with both Kennedy and Darling playing – so it is possible.
The other avenue for a Eagles victory is to break closer to even in the inside 50 battle – which they were able to do in their previous two encounters this year. In round 17, they were able to win the inside 50 count, and in the Qualifying Final it was a tie.
With all this being said, PERT sees the result as Collingwood by 16. Or, with a 68% chance of victory. But, given all the reasons above, the humans behind PERT are less confident than this.
“I see them as super evenly matched, so figure Collingwood’s Home Ground Advantage might be the difference. Or maybe I’ve just been talking about HGA so much this week that I’ve convinced myself it will!”
Pies by two goals.