Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2014 11:17 am
At the risk of inadvertently starting an intelligent discussion about who will kick Collingwood's goals, I am going to respond by quoting myself from May of 2013:John Wren wrote:just did some quick research, of pendles, swans, sidey and beams only beams has a goal kcking average above one per game. this surprised me. further to this, fyfe, selwood and co av. approx one goal per a game.John Wren wrote:av. of a bit over one goal a game. would we even notice?
I mention this because I still think it's of critical importance to the team's improvement - I accept, of course, that to some extent good goal-kicking results are a consequence of good team play but I think it's very important to have a few players that the opposition has to watch closely around goals.Pies4shaw wrote:In 2008, Malcolm Blight described Collingwood (immediately before a 100 point demolition of the Wiggles) as having the best four small forwards in the Game (then Didak, Davis, Medhurst and Thomas). That day, the 4 kicked 14 of 27 Collingwood goals.
In more recent times, I have been wondering what happened to the big spread of goalkickers Collingwood usually had in 2010 and 2011.
Going back over some stats, I noticed the following:
1. In the first 8 rounds of 2010, between one-half and two-thirds of the goals in each game came from players who have left or have been largely unavailable in 2012 or 2013 (Medhurst, Lockyer, Fraser Davis, Didak, O'Bree etc).
2. Looking at the 2010 finals (by which time, Medders, Tarks, Fraser and OB were not in the team), in the 3 wins (ie, ignoring the draw, when Collingwood only managed 9 goals), about a third of the goals in each game were contributed by players who have left or have been largely unavailable in 2013.
3. Looking at the 2011 finals, the position was that at least half of all Collingwood's finals goals came from such players (Krak was the biggest of those contributors, of course).
4. Looking at the side which took the park against Freo last week, only 2 players (Cloke, average a whisker under 1.7) and the Krak (Collingwood average of about 1.5) kick more than 1 goal per game. Lynch has a good career average but hasn't yet delivered anything like it at Collingwood.
5. None of the new small forwards in last week's match (Kennedy, Mooney, Dwyer, Elliott) has a goal per game average significantly over three-quarters of a goal per game.
6. By contrast, the Hawthorn team which flogged us earlier this year had Franklin (3.24 average), Breust (1.96), Roughead (1.85) and Gunston (1.69 - but even better at Hawthorn) with goal averages as good as or better than our best on the park last week. There are then other players (Hale, Hawthorn average of 1) and Rioli (1.33) and Smith (0.95) who do, roughly speaking, a goal per game or better.
Of course, such comparisons are of limited utility - one might, for example, point out that Hawthorn has a higher-scoring style of game (although that may also be a chicken and egg question). But, they do, perhaps, offer at least a part of the explanation for why Collingwood has found it very difficult to kick a winning score against the best opposition this year. If Hawthorn has its best 7 goal-kickers from round 2 on the park, it can reasonably expect 12 goals from them on average each game before worrying about what the other 15 players can contribute. By contrast, if Collingwood puts its best 7 goal-kickers from the Freo game on the park, it can expect about 6 or 7 goals from them.
Food for thought.
By way of update to my point 5, above, Elliott went at about 2 goals per game in 2014 (33 from 17 matches), as did Cloke (39 from 20), Beams went at his career average of a bit over 1 per game (23 from 19), Broomy kicked 9 from 8 and White kicked 20 from 18. Apart from Gault, who only made a cameo appearance, no-one on the list went at a goal a game or better in 2014. Reid probably would have (he kicked 25 from 22 games in 2013 but, of course, didn't play forward the whole time) but we really need to develop some forwards who hit the scoreboard (metaphorically speaking - we have a few too many who can hit it actually when they're supposed to be shooting for goal) more consistently.
