AFL

How much will Nic Nat’s absence hurt the Eagles?

This year, West Coast are dominating the league in average hit outs per game. The Eagles have managed to rack up 52.8 hit outs each game in 2016, compared to a league average of 40. Melbourne are the league’s second-placed team for hit outs, thanks to the amply-bearded Max Gawn, but even they lag behind the Eagles by nearly 6 hit outs per game. West Coast’s ruck dominance will almost definitely wane a little over the next couple of months, as Nic Naitanui spends 6-8 weeks on the sidelines recovering from Achilles surgery. But how much can we expect the Eagles’ performance to slide? This is a difficult question to answer, as quantifying the contribution of any one player to a team’s performance is messy and inexact. But we can try to get a feel for how the Eagles might perform without Nic Nat by comparing the team’s performance in games with and without him over the past few years. When we

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The Eagles’ worst quarters of all time

The Eagles didn’t manage to record a score in their final quarter against Adelaide in Round 12, notching up their first scoreless quarter at home in the club’s history. The Crows scored 41 points in the final term, so the score differential for the Eagles was -41. That doesn’t manage to crack the top 20 worst ever quarters for the Eagles, measured by score differential. Measured by score differential, the fourth quarter against the Crows was only the Eagles’ 37th worst quarter ever. There, Eagles fans, that’s not so bad! Although it was the eighth worst final quarter in the club’s history, but we won’t mention that.

Goals are good and cool

The Arc has a firm pro-goals policy, so we were happy to see that average scores seemed to be up a little in the early rounds of the season. The increase seems to have endured – at the seven round mark, scores are notably higher than they were last year. It looks like the rule changes – reduced interchange cap, tighter deliberate out of bounds interpretation – are working.  The league has also tried to reduce stoppages, and it’s succeeding there as well.  Footy this year is more attractive, more open, with more scoring and less congestion. There has never been a more exciting time to be a footy fan.  

Buddy good

Buddy Franklin has kicked an average of four goals per game so far this year. If he keeps that up he’ll almost definitely win the Coleman, but he’ll need to pick up the pace just slightly if he wants to be the first player to crack 100. Buddy is outscoring about half the AFL-era Coleman medalists at this point of the season. Tom Lynch is right up there with him – the Coleman race is far from done.