Best News of the Day Member of the Refugee Olympic Athletes team Yusra Mardini won her first race at the Rio Olympics in a heat of the 100m Butterfly. She is a literal hero. She saved multiple human lives, and you should see this video. She is our favourite athlete
Continue reading »HPN #Rio2016 – Day 1 Preview
The wait is over and the Olympics are officially underway! A surprisingly good opening ceremony is firmly in the rear-view mirror, with the first day of finals upon us. So HPN thought that we’d have a look at the respective finals, anything to watch out for. Highlight of the day
Continue reading »HPN Rio 2016: The Alternative #Olympics Opening Ceremony
Let’s face it: the Opening Ceremony is a bit naff. Listening to local commentators misrepresent the cultural heritage of the host country sounds good on paper, but gets tiresome after half an hour, let alone four. And the endless parade of nations competing for the right to have the ugliest
Continue reading »Round 20 – the “survival function” of AFL draftees, and Port’s makeshift ruck
Today we’re going show a simple “survival function” analysis, inspired by a query from Soccermetrics on Twitter who ran a similar analysis of MLS draft pick career tenures. Survival analysis shows us longevity or survival rate for players, and should prove a useful addition to other work we’ve done around draft
Continue reading »HPN Rio 2016 – Katie Ledecky and other Olympics “unbeatables” – who are the most unbackable favourites?
Following on from yesterday’s discussion of Olympic “unbeatables”, here we will take another angle on Olympic favouritism by looking at the shortest price favourites at Rio. Some events just won’t be competitive. In the table below, we have listed every event Sportsbet has a market for where the favourite is
Continue reading »HPN Rio 2016: Will the unbeatables be beaten?
HPN will be sporadically covering the upcoming Rio Olympics from the comfort of our loungerooms. If you’re here for the AFL, please feel free to ignore. For most casual sport fans, fame often equates with ability, and the inevitability of any result. Usain Bolt is probably the most common answer
Continue reading »HPN’s Round 19 AFL ratings
As we move within a month of wrapping up the Home and Away season, the HPN ratings continue to shuffle around slightly. Six teams make moves this week, all up one or down place. At the top end of the ladder, GWS sneak above Adelaide into third, with very little
Continue reading »Round 19 – which state is the most productive “footy factory”?
This week we thought we’d take a look at where AFL players are from. The chart below is a pretty good illustration of the most fertile state breeding grounds. We’ve also included Ireland: From here we can see that Victoria contributes the most AFL players relative to its population while
Continue reading »Round 18 ratings – Hawthorn march onward
Hawthorn, who started the season slugglishly and who we’ve mostly rated adrift from or within the top pack but not above it, have pushed up another spot in our rankings this week thanks to their demolition of Richmond. Notably, they’ve pushed their defence rating (efficiency of opponent inside-50s) above the
Continue reading »Round 18 – It turns out the Lions really do have 99 Problems
Jackson wrote in the Guardian today that Brisbane have 99 problems but Tom Rockliff ain’t one and by our count it doesn’t look like that headline is particularly hyperbolic. We’ve gone through and attempted to enumerate what might constitute the Lions’ 99 problems: Defenders nearly all children A new draftee is
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