Another year and another review filled with stats, records, some words around the edges and no added artificial colours or flavours. This year we get to focus on the Wuhan winner of the Covid Cup in the pandemic premiership year of 2020...our favourite nutsy lot from the west, the Nuytsland Vikings. Enjoy.
The premiers This year’s winner has been in the top 3 scoring teams for the past 5 years. Groote comes close to this by being a top 5 scoring team since FU inception. But we ain’t talking about Cudas today, we talking bout Vikings. When looking at total points scored since the 2016 season, the Vikings have been ranked 3, 1, 3, 2, 3 and only first reached the grand final in the past 2 seasons. You’d think a team that strong would have a better record than 5 wins from 9 finals. But then again, Selwood, Hawkins and co reached 4 prelim finals in 7 years before they won one to get to the big dance. As a famous executive vice president once said “…my job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is f*****g luck”. One premiership in that time frame feels like an underachievement for such a consistently strong team. At least all the very astute trading and drafting that @bryzza has done has finally delivered a basket of goodies and a premiership cup to the trophy cabinet this year. Let’s take a closer look at the team… After finishing runner up last year, the Vikings were poised to have another solid run at the premiership. Mitchell was going to come back, English was being talked about as a break out candidate and so was Petracca. That 12th placed ranking in the interchange column was surely going to be better. But then leading in to the 2020 season, Roberton had question marks hovering over him and Newman was likely to see a drop in scoring output with the return of Docherty. So, not surprisingly, in came Hibberd in the offseason in one trade to bolster the defensive troops. Out went McLean in another trade who would’ve improved the forward line from 4th but then again, with talk of Petracca doing better, the impact of him being traded out was probably not going to be big. For a team that finished runner up, it wasn’t unexpected to see just a couple of trades made and not much more. How lucky that second trade was for the team. It looked like McLean’s average might return to the 85+ range this year but instead it dropped a bit further from 70 to 68. That performance would’ve given him a starting spot at F4 in the below team, but only just. For not much loss, the Vikings secured themselves a future potential star of the defensive line. Best 15 (as at end of season) D: Rampe (91.64, 21st), Williams (84.24, 39th), Hibberd (70.36, 89th), Taylor (67.0, 107th) EMG: Duman (66.00, 112th) Sum of defender averages: 313.23, 78.31 per player M: Mitchell (113.53, 10th), M Crouch (110.69, 13th), Viney (99.56, 41st), Shuey (94.67, 54th) EMG: Ross but he’s on the interchange. Otherwise Powell (66.80, 140th) Sum of midfielder averages: 418.45, 104.61 per player R: Grundy (120.65, 2nd) EMG: English but he’s on the interchange. No other ruck eligible players F: Petracca (117.53, 1st), Heeney (94.0, 10th), Greene (83.46, 27th), Tucker (64.75, 101st) EMG: Finlayson (64.53, 102nd) Sum of forward averages: 359.74, 89.94 per player I: English (102.59), Ross (77.79) EMG: Powell (66.80) Sum of interchange averages: 180.37, 90.19 per player Sum of all averages: 1392.44, 92.83 per player Nuytsland scored an average of 1263 points per game and dropped just 3 games for the year (losses are the orange bars below). The bye rounds in 10, 11, 14, 15 and 16 were weathered quite well. In one bye round (round 16) the team managed to better their average score for the year and scores in the other bye rounds were within about 100 points of the team’s average…except for round 15 when the team had just 11 players on the ground and copped a 7 from Weideman. Luckily for them, their opponents (King Island) had just 10 players available so a loss was unlikely over that week. Grey line is the season average score and yellow is 3 game rolling average score. The strong scores from the get go meant that the Vikings were never lower than 3rd placed over the entire year. Although they posted wins in the first 5 rounds, the Vikings went from 1st, to 2nd, to 3rd, back to 2nd and back to 1st, which is a nice little pattern. From there, they “slipped” to 2nd after their loss in round 6 and remained there for the remainder of the year. As we saw last year, 5 of the last 6 premiers were a top 5 scoring team but had below average defensive lines, the best being a defensive line ranking of 12. If I had to guess what the rankings were in 2014, Ararat probably had one of the top defensive line ups that year but all I got is the total points. Nuytsland just continued this trend for premiership teams with the worst defensive line in the competition…just 2 defenders in the top 50 averaging defenders. But this was more than offset by the best forward line with 3 forward in the top 30 (Tucker seems to stick out like a sore thumb here with his sub 70 average) and the best interchange line. What this shows is it doesn’t matter too much where your points come from, but you better have enough to make you a top 5 team if you want to with the FU cup.
The season We continued seeing 3 teams swap places between the top 8 and bottom 10. In came Groote, Serengeti and Pakenham in 2020 and out went Banchang, Southern Cross and, very surprisingly, Gisborne. It’s the first time we’ve ever seen the premier miss the 8 the following year. Serengeti came close in 2018 but they managed to secure 8th spot with an extra win up their sleave over 9th placed Pearcedale. In a challenging year, we saw an average drop of 45 points scored by each team every week. 10 teams in our league did better than average, 4 even managed to see an increase in their average weekly score. Not surprisingly, these 3 teams (Serengeti, Pakenham and Groote) were those that were the new inclusions into the top 8. At the other end of the scale, Blanchetown claimed a 2nd wooden spoon but it was Gisborne that saw the biggest drop in their average weekly score. So where did things go right and wrong for the teams in the FU? Serengeti’s improvement was driven by better performers in the defence, midfield and interchange (or depth). Pakenham has seen a big turnaround in fortunes after finishes in the bottom 6 over the past few years with a big improvement in their defence. Groote’s forward and depth were better. Gisborne suffered a huge drop in their forward line and depth. Blanchetown’s defence went backwards. Quote: “Excluding our first year in 2014, over the 4 years from 2015 to 2018, half of the premiership teams were in the top 8 the previous year and the other 2 (Groote in 2015 and Serengeti in 2017) won it after missing finals the previous year. Gisborne in 2019 continues the trend of a team outside of the top 8 winning the big one in an odd numbered year. That of course means that since we have an even numbered year next year, one of the teams currently in the top 8 will win it in 2020.” Somehow this pattern held up this year and last year’s runner up remained in the top 8 to win the thing. So I guess that means since 2021 is an odd year, we’ll see a team that finished outside of the top 8 take out the top honours. Gazing into the magic 8 ball, let’s ask it to give us the name of 3 teams who’ll move into the top 8. While we’re at it, I’ll ask it for the Powerball numbers for the next $100m+ draw. “It is decidedly so”. Yeah thanks magic 8 ball, that’s a really helpful answer. With a condensed finals series and a year full of challenges, the 2020 grand final was the lowest scoring we’ve seen with a combined total score of 2,403. There’s not much more to say about the finals but because a top 8 finish meant you weren’t a finalist, this was the first year Ararat wasn’t involved in the FU finals series.
The league League scores were the lowest ever in 2020, dropping to a median score of 1179 compared to 1201 last year. We also saw a much larger range of scores, from a low of 482 to a high of 1639. When looking at score distributions by team in ladder order, it’s not surprising to see that the Vikings scores were amongst the best in the league where half of their scores ranged from 1215 to 1345. It looks like Serengeti left their run a little late, their range of scores seem to be the best in 2020. Cow Bay were pretty lucky to finish 8th, and the range of scores Gisborne and Blanchetown had showed how they fell away later in the season. The difficulty of this year is reflected in the next two tables. Groote’s effort of scoring 21,812 points in the H&A season is 15th best ever and falls 201 points short of their best effort from 2015. The bye rounds gave us more opportunity to post shit scores. Thanks to Gill, 5 teams posted scores that made it into the worst 15 total points scored across a season. 4 of those teams (Blanchetown, Christmas Island, Eden and Pearcedale) recorded their worst ever seasons and Gisborne weren’t far off (73 points).
Club Records To give Gill even more credit, 12 teams posted their lowest score in a round ever and 13 teams recorded their lowest match aggregate ever. Thanks Gill. But to find the positive, 4 teams posted their highest round score – Banchang, Cow Bay, Groote and Staghorn. Groote recorded their longest winning streak (10 wins) which came to an end in the GF, King Island recorded their biggest win ever (also a league record) and Banchang recorded their longest winning and losing streak this year. Longest current streaks are Nuytsland (7 wins) and Gisborne (9 losses). Let’s take a look at total points rankings over the 7 years we’ve been in existence. The 2 asterisks in 2014 are for the Goondi and Manangatang teams we had back in our first year and they’ve been lined up with their current equivalents Hughenden and Nuyts respectively. Groote has an impressive record with the best average ranking over those 7 seasons, Cow Bay has the worst. With 5 years being bottom 3, mistakes at the draft and trade table, things finally started to turn last year. With a mish mash drafting strategy during our first draft that chopped and changed, I saw I needed a better list so started going down the rebuild path straight away. With a love of drafting over trading, it’s clear the path I chose wouldn’t be easy and you can see it just takes some time. For those other teams looking to rebuild, just do your best, do everything you can and don’t you worry what their bitter hearts are gonna say. If you take out 2014 from Nuytslands’ average, it improves to 4.67, 3rd best behind Ararat and Groote which is still an impressive result. I’m sure after their recent victory they feel like they’re floating around in ecstasy and aren’t too fussed. Pakenham looks to have got knocked down but got back up again and Coolgardie seems to be stuck in the middle with Hughenden.
League Records We saw the biggest score in a round ever this year with Groote’s mammoth 1,639 point effort in round 12. Two rounds later they pulled out a score of 1,493 against Serengeti, the 17th best of all time. 14 new entries made it into the worst 30 scores in our league’s history. I suppose most of these should have an asterisk next to them due to the impact of the bye rounds. Serengeti managed to be part of 2 rounds where total points scored were in the top 10 of all time. The curse of corona also meant that the worst 30 scores of all time have a heavy representation from 2020. King Island obtained the mantle of having the biggest winning margin in a round, 769 points, which again was bye affected. Groote’s 10 game winning streak was the 2nd best ever. Korumburra and Serengeti both recorded streaks of 8 wins and Nuytsland has a current 7 game winning streak. Blanchetown’s 13 game losing streak was the 4 worst ever, with Gisborne’s current 9 game losing streak sitting in equal 16th longest.
Club H2H records And to finish off, club head to head records for the H&A season, finals and overall.
Wow fresh..........you f*cken amaze me.........I've just come in from dinner and a few whiskeys to see these posts. Obviously I haven't read them all, that will be done tomorrow but just from a quick glance, once again, you f*cken amaze me..... Well done and I doff my hat to you, and now head outside once more to toast your good self , with a single malt Glenlivet..... Cheers
Thank you sir. I'll have to reciprocate the toast tonight with some Glenfiddich that's open in the cabinet and needs some attention
Blown away by your analysis, time and effort to post......an asset o this league I cant even find the time to write a seasons that was post
Awesome write up, I too started reading with a beer in hand and had to wait until now (Mon morning) to finish it off. Wowee, the Bunyips have sucked for the last 3 years, we are coming though... slowly but surely!