Goaltracker

[Thryleon]

That's a great analysis. IMO it is still very concerning [and scary] that we have made ZERO improvement to our scoring and goal kickers over the past 12 months.

I have banged on about this a bit, but I feel that many are missing the simple fact that we have made no progress in scoring power over the past 2.5 years. We are dead last in points for this year - we are simply never going to win games of football consistently and climb the ladder until we can improve our scoring by around 30% - 40% from where it has been stuck for a very long time.

Like a lot of others I see potential in some of the young players, but history also shows forwards, especially tall forwards, will take 3 years before they make a consistent impact and can kick 40-50+in a season. If we get Kerr and Harry into the team now, we are a still a long way away from having a top 8 scoring capability.

We can improve the defence relatively quickly [and we have with Doc, Marchbank, Plowman and Williamson], and the midfield is where we already have our 4 best players. Of course we need more quality midfield depth, but our forward line today is effectively a rabble still, led by a 27yo who will average 2 goals a game at best. All of the youngsters we have rolled through there so far this year have shown cameo's at best.

I think we need to start playing Kerr and McKay as a priority, and give KJ one last roll of the dice for a few games to see if he can show something. In the off season we need to recruit an established goal kicker and an experienced mid sized midfielder / forward to build our future forward line around - just like how we have built our backline around the experience of Simmo and Rowe [and now ACOS]. Remember our last successful drafting a KPF was Josh Kennedy in 2005!!

If we don't change something significant then we are doomed to keep getting the same scoring results as we have for the last 3.5 years. The idea that it will just 'naturally improve' has clearly been shown for a long time now to be a fallacy.

Rant over.......

We need to be wary of how we view these things.

Statitistically we may score less or even with where we were, but is that consistent across the entire competition??

We may have improved to be where we are now relative to the rest of the competition and likewise their numbers might be different.  We dont know that answer at this stage as its a bit early to do anything but project where we will finish and each season will have its own nuances with some teams blowing out in some circumstances and not others.

What I estimate will be a factor, is that scores for and against on average will be lower in 2017 across the entire competition which means that if we are scoring at a similar rate to last season, then we have improved.


I think any attempt to look at totals ignores what the competition is doing, and any rule changes implemented can sometimes make big differences to teams ability to score such as rotation, sub rule, etc.