Quantium stat analysis: Rd 3, true player ownership data

Analysing the top 100,000 AFL Supercoach teams after Round 2

G’day AFL Supercoaches.

Let’s get the apology out of the way. I’m a huge Supercoach fan – but I’m an NRL guy I like the Swans and I was there for Buddy’s 1000^th last week – I don’t actually play AFL Supercoach!

Before you stop reading though, I’m still hopeful that I can add some value here.

As a long term NRL supercoach fanatic, a few years back I got really frustrated with the ownership stats available for each player. 

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The Supercoach website publishes the ownership of each player – but as I looked through the leading teams, the stats just didn’t make sense to me. I’d read all this discussion about PODs and strategy based on those figures but they just didn’t look right. 

I’m fortunate enough to run a data analytics business so I decided to put a few skills to work to calculate the actual ownership of each player. NRL Supercoaches seem to find the data useful, so I’ve decided to put them together for AFL too. 

So sure – I couldn’t pick Jack Steele or Andrew Brayshaw out in a police line up…but I can tell you that the ownerships stats on the Supercoach website today for both of them are misleading.

The tables below set out the proportion of teams in the top 500, top 1,000, top 5,000, top 10,000, top 20,000, top 50,000 and top 100,000 that own each player by position.   

As an example, let’s look at the ownership of Dustin Martin and Touk Miller at the end of Round 2. According to the AFL Supercoach website, Dusty was owned by 27% of all teams and Miller was owned by 25% of teams. When we cut the ownership by ranking, the stats look dramatically different.

Now we see for example, that 51% of the top 10,000 teams own Miller and 10% of the top 10,000 own Dusty. 

A word of caution though…naturally the ownership stats after round 2 are going to be strongly correlated with performance through the first two rounds. 

As an example, it’s probably not surprising that the leading teams so far are more likely to own Lachie Neale or Andrew Brayshaw. Nor should it be a surprise that the leading teams are more likely to own Brodie Grundy at Ruck over Max Gawn. 

That doesn’t mean it’s time to hit the trade button in panic. Over time though, the data should start giving you a true feel for how your team compares to those above and below you and what you might do as a result. 

It might also save you from some painful conversations with friends around potential PODs that simply aren’t PODs at all!

Let’s get into the data by position. For this week, each of the tables are ordered by ownership level according to the AFL website at the conclusion of week 2.  Note that I won’t know what trades teams made until after the next round is complete.

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DEF

A few players jump out immediately at DEF.  George Hewett, Jayden Short and Jack Bowey are all strongly skewed towards the leading teams whilst the likes of Tom Stewart, Lachie Whitfield and Joshua Gibcus have underperformed.

Aaron Hall is a popular trade in target and at the conclusion of round 2 was owned by 9% of the top 1,000 teams, and 4% of the top 100,000.

MID

Midfield sees some even more pronounced differences in ownership by ranking.

Andrew Brayshaw is owned by 26% of the top 500 teams, 11% of the top 10,000 and 7% of the top 100,000…versus 6% overall according to the Supercoach website. As a non-AFL fan, I’m surprised he is only the tenth most popular trade in target.

Christian Petracca, Josh Kelly and Lachie Neale and Touk Miller are also skewed towards the top teams.

At the other end, Jack Steele is owned by 39% of the top 100,000 but only 7% of the top 500.  The good news of course, is that we are only two weeks in…so if you still believe in Jack, then that means he’s actually a POD against the top teams so could give you a great opportunity to make ground on them.

Other players heavily skewed away from the leading teams include Dustin Martin, Clayton Oliver, Jade Gresham, Josh Sinn, Tim Taranto and Tom Mitchell.

RUC

I can see one of the big debates in AFL Supercoach this week is what to do with Max Gawn.

If it helps, whilst he started the week owned by 53% of teams overall (which I can see is now down to 43%), he is half as likely to be owned by the top ranked teams than those around 100,000^th.  But we are only two weeks in…so once again, that could be an opportunity to catch the leaders if you think he can return to form.

The leading teams are more skewed towards Jarrod Witts and Tim English – which I guess makes sense given they are the third and fourth highest scoring RUCs so far and are cheaper than many other options. 

Perhaps the more surprising stat (given his performance through the first two rounds) is that the leading teams are no more skewed towards Luke Jackson than any other teams – in fact they are actually less likely to own him. I do see that he is the most traded in RUC this week so far though.

FWD

Without repeating players we’ve already talked about, Isaac Heeney, Tristan Xerri and Zak Butters each stand out as being more owned by the leading teams so far. 

As an example, according to the Supercoach site, Tristan Xerri is owned by 17% of teams – yet we can see that 23% of the top 100,000 teams, 41% of the top 10,000 and 49% of the top 500 teams own him. 

Cam Rayner, Mitch McGovern and Adam Treloar are all less owned by the leading teams.

Round 2 Captaincy Choices

Unfortunately, the most misleading stats of all on the Supercoach website are the captaincy stats.  The captaincy percentages are about as reliable as a Nigerian bank transfer email.  Seriously – trust them at your peril. 

The table below sets out what percentage of teams in the top 100, top 500, top 1,000 etc captained each player last week.

The standout stat is the huge number of teams who looped their vice-captain last week.  As an example, a whopping 58 of the top 100 teams utilised the VC loop.  Of those 58, 30 looped Jack Macrae, 16 looped Lachie Neale and 12 looped Patrick Cripps.

So amongst the top 100, the actual captaincy rates were Neale (45%), Macrae (34%), Cripps (12%), Brayshaw (4%), Miller (3%), Petracca (2%), Oliver (1%) and Butters (1%).

For what it’s worth, this is very different to NRL Supercoach.  In NRL, looping carries a big risk of copping a poor AE score so it is not used anything like this.

Good luck to everyone in Round 3.