The rise.... and RISE of Marc Pittonet

[DJC]

1. The article you found, is something i posted previously. I literally signed up for a HS subscription to find it.
Despite not being content with this information, i contacted champion data, as mentioned, and they backup up this claim and provided a spreadsheet of YTD ruck contests including the never before seen hitouts sharked information which i posted a summary of.

Its a bit difficult to read through your post and work out what is you, and what is the studies you have listed.

One point i'd like to highlight though is that this study agrees that hitouts to advantage are what counts from a ruck contest and a mere hitout carries no weight whatsoever. This is what started the debate way back when. That is "Hitouts are useless", "Hitouts to advantage are what you need to look at" ......which led to the revelation of how good Pittonet is in that area.

My fascination with this stat is simple.
It is a pure stat that you can use to compare like for like with other ruckmen. Despite Pinot not grasping te concept of %'s, its relatively simple to see the likelyhood of your ruck attending a ruck contest and getting it to a teammate. Each and every contest starts from a 50-50 ball and the result of it is directly related to the ruck. Yes, people can argue the bounce of the ball and the midfielders ability to influence that result. However, in response to that, all i do is compare apples with apples again. Pittonet vs TDK. Same midfields. (despite LP suggesting otherwise, and being disproven with 1 ruck vs 2 ruck stats being consistent)

So, that is the ruck stat summary.
People have taken that and ran with it.....in all different directions and infered i've meant this, or that, or whatever. My message has been clear throughout, even if peoples interpretations of it have not.

Going back to a couple posts in the first page or 2 of this thread i found the first reference to non-hitout related ruckwork.
This was just started to congratulate Pittonet on his ruck craft, which was picked up on after 12 games into his career (7 of them before he even joined us).
Since then, people have accused me of flat out lying, manipulating stats, and every other dirty underhanded trick that could be mentioned. How about we just celebrate a player being elite in his craft?


Since then the debate has gone on to all other areas of a rucks influence around the ground. This i have NEVER suggested Pittonet is elite at and always maintained its an area he needs to improve on.
However, in line with this, i have maintained that the need for 2 ruckmen in the same team is surplus and cited plenty of reasoned logic as to why. This has included numerous comparisons about output of 2nd rucks/backups rucks. Looking through all the data, it reinforces what i was stating all along....

That a backup ruck provides more benefit to the team than having 2 dedicated rucks.

Now that comment continues back to some of what Lods has said and what is written above. There are only so many chances for a ruckman to influence the game in a ruck contest.....why would you need 2 of them? You will have more influence on the game by what a ruck/backup ruck does around the ground.

So with that in mind, we move the debate back to who should be our #1 ruck.

Initially, the data suggests that pittonets dominance in the ruck contest has him as a clear advantage over TDK. TDK's influence around the ground has been much hyped. I've done plenty of analysis on it throughout the journey, but as late as about Round 13 or so this year, TDK offered 1 disposal more on average, with 8-12% (i forget which exactly) more game time on average (Pittonet got injured in Q1 of a game which skews numbers, so TOG needs to be included for accurate data). But TDK offered more marking power.....which worked out (at the time) to a mere 1 extra contested mark every 10 weeks.

Whatever 'reason' people had to try and bring down Pittonet and pump up TDK was largely subjective and not borne out by the stats. People accuse me of being biased to Pitto and against TDK because it doesn't fit their own ideas and opinions.

I'm just showing what the stats say, which is largely opposite to what others have said.

Its funny, when LP first heard the stats or Pittonets ruck work, of course he took a leaf out of Trumps book and basically spouted fake news. Then went on to suggest that.....and i quote....
Well there you have it.

Pity LP had to spoil it by again calling the stats made up.
I happened to explain, painstakingly how they are calculated, and rather than admit he was wrong, apologise, or change his opinion on the matter.....he goes off on a complete other tangent and starts making up other lies after lies to try and disprove it.

So yes, 3 years on we are still having this debate.
....and 3 years on people are still missing the point.

How about we just celebrate Pittonets efforts in the ruck contest and leave it at that. Thats why i started this thread after his 5th ever game in Navy blue, back in July 2020.

The studies I quoted show that hitouts, let alone hitouts to advantage, are an incredibly small part of all of the actions that make up a game of footy.  They have next to no relationship to the outcome of games and are, effectively, a useless statistic as Lods has been saying.

The PhD study recognises that hitouts to advantage are a shared statistic and proposes that rating points go to the midfielder who gathers a hitout and negative points for a ruckman whose hitout is sharked.  While that would reflect the contribution the ruckman and midfielder make, it's still a largely inconsequential rating factor in terms of the results of the game.

A ruckman who dominates the hitouts, be they to advantage or to the opposition, and does nothing else, is a passenger.  I'm not saying that Pitto is a passenger, far from it, but it would be nice if he could provide a genuine marking target for our exit kicks and drift forward every now and again to clunk a mark inside 50.