SA Footy

Earlier this season, some Glenelg supporters felt that our young ruckman, Lachlan Button has been hard done by, by not receiving a nomination in the Star Search award (see viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8707) (Note that I wasn't one of them )
Yesterday, with Cranston injured early, Lachie got a good chance to push for selection as he spent most of the game on the ball. According to our stats, he had 10 kicks, 4 marks, 7 handballs and 21 hitouts.
So I was disappointed to find a completely different story when I read his stats in the Sunday Mail, which any regular readers of this forum would know produce notoriously inaccurate player stats.

They had 3 kicks, 5 marks, 6 handballs and 8 hitouts.

So when I watched the replay of the game this afternoon, I recorded Button's stats again, and got exactly the same as we recorded yesterday. So how can the paper stats miss 7 of his kicks, and get his other stats wrong too It is really embarrassing that these stats continue to get published and are recorded as the official version of what happened, when they are often such a long way from the truth.

So I really hope that whoever judges the Star Search award reads this and doesn't take any notice of the biased newspaper statistics, otherwise they will think that Button had only 9 possessions, instead of the 17 which he did get.

End of rant.

Well that should be pointed out to the 'Tiser and perhaps encourage them to use the team's official version?

Poor form from the papers. where do they get their figures?, meanwhile Lachie should get the nod this week.

BPBRB wrote:Well that should be pointed out to the 'Tiser and perhaps encourage them to use the team's official version?

This issue has been raised previously, but for some reason they prefer to pay monkeys to record fictional stats, rather than accept accurate stats from the clubs for free.

Not only did they miss seven kicks and one handball, but they've given him an extra mark, meaning they've attributed him with a mark/disposal that should have been awarded to another player.

I didn't get the paper today Ecky but were their team totals pretty accurate with yours?

The WAFL employ prowess to record stats on all their league, reserves and colts games, who do brilliant jobs. I've done a few WAFL games off ABC2 this year and when compared to the WAFL's official statistics, they're very close. But when comparing my SANFL numbers to The Advertiser, there's something not right.

Below is a summary of how our overall stats compare

GFC: Stats taken by the Glenelg Football Club
Sco: Stats Scott took from the TV coverage
ABC: Stats taken by Chris Kendall for the ABC TV
Adv: Stats taken by the newspaper people at the ground

Code: Select all

GFC Sco ABC Adv
205 202 203 180 Glenelg Kicks
170 171 167 169 South Kicks
148 141 131 137 Glenelg Handballs
143 125 137 132 South Handballs
 96  96  96 101 Glenelg Marks
 87  87  87  87 South Marks - Hooray, we all agree!

The biggest discrepancy is on the handballs, and whether little ones in pack situations count or not. But the newspaper missing at least 22 of Glenelg's kicks is a worry.

Another obvious mistake by the newspaper guys was that Hateley is given zero kicks, when he quite clearly had a kick in the final quarter.

maybe every ones favourite journo jesper took the stats.....

as much as he cant write maybe he cant count

Ecky wrote:Below is a summary of how our overall stats compare

GFC: Stats taken by the Glenelg Football Club
Sco: Stats Scott took from the TV coverage
ABC: Stats taken by Chris Kendall for the ABC TV
Adv: Stats taken by the newspaper people at the ground

Code: Select all

GFC Sco ABC Adv
205 202 203 180 Glenelg Kicks
170 171 167 169 South Kicks
148 141 131 137 Glenelg Handballs
143 146 137 132 South Handballs
 96  96  96 101 Glenelg Marks
 87  87  87  87 South Marks - Hooray, we all agree!

The biggest discrepancy is on the handballs, and whether little ones in pack situations count or not. But the newspaper missing at least 22 of Glenelg's kicks is a worry.

Another obvious mistake by the newspaper guys was that Hateley is given zero kicks, when he quite clearly had a kick in the final quarter.

Amazing the advertiser has managed to give Glenelg five extra marks. Usually that's one stat that you'd expect everyone to be accurate with.

I guess it's pretty obvious that I stinged my own team about 10 or 15 handballs. South must have gone handball crazy on the couple of occasions ABC showed a replay while the game was in progress.

Having a look at the best players and Advertiser Stats from the other games, Evan Hurse from Sturt seems to have a better chance of getting the nomination this week - named in the best players and "allegedly" having 27 possessions. I am presuming he is eligible.

But I had better not make this post, as it means that we won't be able to have a whinge if Button misses out!

dinglinga wrote:maybe every ones favourite journo jesper took the stats.....

as much as he cant write maybe he cant count

Ya beat me to it

scott wrote:I guess it's pretty obvious that I stinged my own team about 10 or 15 handballs. South must have gone handball crazy on the couple of occasions ABC showed a replay while the game was in progress.

Sorry for going off topic again, but god I'm an idiot.

I actually have south down for 146 handpasses, just to clarify things. I wrote 171 kicks, 125 handballs for 317 disposals in yesterday's stats thread. The 125 figure was actually their effective handballs tally.

[quote="scott
I guess it's pretty obvious that I stinged my own team about 10 or 15 handballs. South must have gone handball crazy on the couple of occasions ABC showed a replay while the game was in progress.[/quote]

Amazing that you get it so accurate to be honest, with all that ABC "Swoosh" stuff going on...

One reason why the Sunday Mail doesn't use the clubs stats is that each team has different interpretation on what a stat is. For example at Central the stat keepers were on the advised by Alistar Clarkson to only count tackles which brought the player to ground and blew either a ball up or holding the ball.

On the other hand Peter Jonas use to advise them to count nearly everytime they held an opposition player. Other instances of debate and interpretation are hit-outs.

Over the years of knowing a few stats people at Centrals they have had many different interps on such things as soccer kicks and handballs in packs which get knocked down.

I think if we used all the clubs official stats it would be way more accuarate but unfortunatly some teams would be racking up to 70 tackles a game while other teams would only be laying 15. They definetly would be biased by each clubs perception.

That's true, WHUFC, but I see this as an ideal time to get all the SANFL clubs into line with the definitions that the AFL (and I believe the WAFL) uses for their stats, which are clearly defined by Champion Data. I don't believe that any AFL coaches have a problem with these definitions, so the SANFL coaches shouldn't either. (These are the guidelines we use at Glenelg, and Mickan is happy for us to do it this way).

The problem is that you get some people at clubs who have been calling the stats a certain way for 50 years, so they become reluctant to change, even if it is for the best of everyone. I never said it would be easy to get all parties to agree to the one system, but I think it is worth putting the effort in to achieve this, when we are consistently dished up garbage by the Advertiser.

Totally agree, Ecky this would be a great time to uniform all team statistics.

I used to keep all CDFC player stats in a database based on the Sunday mail and Advertiser for 5 or so years but could'nt keep the heart in doing it when a player would have 3 kicks 3 hanballs and kicked 4 goals for the game. I felt like it was pointless and a waste of time. I would go back to doing that though if there was even stats throughout all clubs

whufc, that terrible stuff-up you mention just happened on one occasion and the statisticial still is red-faced about it!
The reason The Advertiser takes the stats from the organisation it does rather than from the clubs is that it has found that the club stats are less accurate. They hold a belief that people within clubs tend to overstate the stats of their favourite players and understate stats of others.
Before Ecky gets mad at that comment, I must explain that that comment came from The Advertiser, not directly from me!
My own thought is that the clubs probably do a more accurate job as they have more stats people to do the job and, in many cases, those people are also vastly experienced and also less likely to get players of their club confused with one another.
Cheers!

Oops, statisticial should read statistician. Red-faced here! *grins*

I should add that I do hope that Lachie wins the Rising Star. I taught him at Sacred Heart and he is a great young man!

bulldogproud wrote:The reason The Advertiser takes the stats from the organisation it does rather than from the clubs is that it has found that the club stats are less accurate. They hold a belief that people within clubs tend to overstate the stats of their favourite players and understate stats of others.
Before Ecky gets mad at that comment, I must explain that that comment came from The Advertiser, not directly from me!

Don't worry, I'm not mad.

I realise too that this may be (or has been) an issue at some clubs. I rarely have seen the stats other clubs produce, so I don't really know how accurate they are. It is mainly just anecdotal evidence I have heard that they are generally pretty good.

[qu[b][/b]ote="Ecky"]

bulldogproud wrote:The reason The Advertiser takes the stats from the organisation it does rather than from the clubs is that it has found that the club stats are less accurate. They hold a belief that people within clubs tend to overstate the stats of their favourite players and understate stats of others.
Before Ecky gets mad at that comment, I must explain that that comment came from The Advertiser, not directly from me!

Don't worry, I'm not mad.

I realise too that this may be (or has been) an issue at some clubs. I rarely have seen the stats other clubs produce, so I don't really know how accurate they are. It is mainly just anecdotal evidence I have heard that they are generally pretty good.[/quote]

Gee, and I thought that it was a prerequisite for us stats people to be mad (insane). *grins*