Who’s not on the money (kicks)?

The competition for the AFL’s worst in this key area is much closer than the competition for the best.

IMAGE: Sydney Swans

In last week’s post I took a look at players who excelled in making the “money kick” – kicks that travelled inside 50 and were subsequently marked by a teammate. This week I’m flipping things on its head and looking at the opposite – kicks inside 50 that were marked by a member of the opposition. These kicks are all turnovers, but in the spirit of needing to give things a catchy name (like Michael Whiting did with “money kicks” in the article that started this line of thought), they will be referred to as “butcher kicks” for the remainder of this post.

Let’s start by looking at the players with the highest proportion of “butcher kicks” from their inside 50s. Like last week, I’ve limited this to players with at least 30 kicks inside 50. Sydney’s Matt Roberts tops the list here, with 28.1% of his kicks inside 50 marked by a player from the opposite team. Darcy Wilson (St Kilda) and Colby McKercher (North Melbourne) round out the podium.

I’ve also included the kick retention rating data (developed by Liam Crowhurst, referring to how often a player’s kicks are retained by a teammate compared to expectation) as an additional check to see whether there is a similar trend for kicks inside 50 and all kicks that a player makes. I’d say the numbers stack up, at least on the eye test (I feel that Rioli’s higher rating can be explained by all of the good ball use he has coming out of defensive 50).

One of the surprising things about this table (to me, at least) was that there is only one Carlton player in the top 10: Blake Acres. There has been a lot of talk among media and fans this year about how the Blues have struggled to effectively move the ball inside 50 and score, so I was expecting there to be multiple Carlton players at the pointy end of the list.

Looking at some of the other Blues with at least 30 kicks inside 50 reveals more of the names I thought would be higher up on the list, such as Adam Cerra and Oliver Hollands. But these numbers suggest Carlton’s issues moving the ball inside 50 are more to do with kicking to contests where the ball is spoiled rather than marked – or the kick misses the contest completely – more than giving it straight to the opposition.

Next, we can look at each club’s leading “butcher kicker”. I’ll admit that I don’t get to watch every game each weekend, but there are some names I look at and think, “yeah, that makes sense” (Brisbane’s Dayne Zorko) and others that I wouldn’t have necessarily expected (Geelong’s Oliver Dempsey, Gold Coast’s Daniel Rioli, and Port Adelaide’s Miles Bergman).

Seeing Sam Durham sit alongside Jye Caldwell for Essendon also was a little unexpected, although that may be recency bias after reading Callum Twomey’s glowing assessment of him despite the Bombers’ losing to the Gold Coast on the weekend.

“Champion Data makes clear Durham's emergence among the best. He is rated the 27th best player in the AFL in the 100x rankings, while Essendon wins the centre clearances 41 per cent of the time when he is in there, which is a better rate than its other players used more often at centre bounces,” wrote Twomey.

“He is averaging career highs for AFL Player Ratings, disposals, contested possessions, groundball gets, clearances, score assists and score involvements. Champion's numbers also show that of the top 50 players for contested possessions this year, Durham is equal third for the best disposal efficiency at 75 per cent (behind only Andrew Brayshaw at 77 per cent, George Hewett at 76 per cent and equal with Will Ashcroft).”

And before the Collingwood fans reach for their pitchforks and torches about Nick Daicos appearing on this list, I feel it is important to provide slightly more context here. The younger son of the Macedonian Marvel has nearly twice as many kicks inside 50 as other Magpies this season – the next highest after Daicos is the veteran Steele Sidebottom (48).

More opportunities to make a mistake will inevitably lead to more mistakes being made, and only one in five kicks inside 50 ending up in the arms of the opposition is still a reasonably good outcome. It’s also worth noting that Patrick Lipinski, the “money kick” leader has had just two of his 41 kicks inside 50 marked by someone not wearing a black and white jumper, which shows a good level of consistency with what previous pieces have shown.

The “butcher kicks” are, on average, longer than “money kicks” (43.4m versus 36.3m), so it makes sense that a greater number of players have an average “butcher kick” length north of 40m (compared to the average “money kick” among the top 10 players from last week, which was between 32m and 40m for most players). To me this makes sense, as I feel that I can remember more instances of teams bombing the ball long inside 50, only to up with an opposition player, compared to shorter kicks that are intercepted.

As I suspected last week, a higher proportion of “butcher kicks” are contested compared to “money kicks” (21.5% versus 16.6%). But the majority of “butcher kicks” still involve uncontested marks (78.5% of kicks across the top 10 “butcher kickers” to this point in the season). Last week I felt that “butcher kicks” would be predominantly contested marks, as a result of the intercept mark occurring among a pack of players. But the data suggests this is not the case. Perhaps this has something to do with what Champion Data defines as an uncontested mark? Or maybe there are more kicks sent forward in hope than I expected?

What do you think explains this trend? Let me know in the comments.