So there has been a bit of chat in here about demographics, location and geography. Good stuff! People are thinking about the real issues rather than the more typical “club must be run by muppets” “no-one wants to play for your club” “club has poor culture” “club should pay players” palaver than usually gets trotted out.
Anyway, I’m a spatial analyst during the week and washed up footballer on the weekends, so the combination of these two means these thought processes kind of tickle my fancy.
I went through the following very quick analysis, hoping to see if there was a pattern or evidence in what everyone was thinking.
Roughly, I did this:
1. Mapped all the club locations – thanks to the SAAFL Google maps website for the coordinates. Also included nearby SFL clubs
2. Download age profiles for SA1’s (the polygon boundaries) from the ABS.
3. Add up “Football aged men” for each SA1. I did 17 to 40 males.
4. According to the ABS the participation rate for these ages for football averages to 5%, so I took 5% of all of those people and considered them the “player pool” for that SA1
5. This was too simplistic. What if you had quite good numbers for your local area but were surrounded by clubs who sapped them all?
6. Created a “100 player” catchment area for each club. So, how big is the circle until that club has 100 players available within it
7. Then took an average for the areas included in the clubs catchments and reduced those players by that amount. So the more clubs within that area that have a catchment the lower the numbers will be.
8. Mapped the result, which in my opinion, could be considered a map of indicative static player pools.
One flaw is that it treats all clubs as the same. So if North Pines are next to Salisbury West, they both have a catchment need of 100. I could have added up the real numbers here but, meh, don’t think it would have made a massive difference overall. I also removed Adelaide Uni completely as they are unique.
There are several pockets of “gold” for footballers in metropolitan Adelaide, the North East Road section – which I think is consumed by Tea Tree Gully, Modbury and Golden Grove. The Paralowie pocket, which is consumed by the 3 Salisburys. And curiously, the inner west. Richmond, Netley, Mile End, Thebarton – maybe the SAAFL are hoarding a player pool and awaiting the right time to unleash a super team or something. It could also be that there are just no clubs located in that area but they travel to Plympton, Flinders Park and Woodville.
Anyway, check em out:
1. Club Locations
http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/ac142/mellingham/1-locations_zpsc766a84c.png
2. Total Footballing Aged Men (darker = more)
http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/ac142/mellingham/2-FootballersTotal_zpsc7e273c1.png
3. Club Catchment – capture 100 players
http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/ac142/mellingham/3-ClubCatchment_zps12168a61.png
4. Final Result (red or pink means the areas player pool has been exhausted and are in the negative, in the blue means positive)
http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/ac142/mellingham/4-Result_zpsba45fddf.png