Percentage - Outdated and Wrong?

[Wedgie]

With the way North are going most games now, ie kicking 20+ goals but also having the opposition kick plenty of goals I've been thinking that should we perhaps adopt the Rugby League and soccer ways of rating teams when on equal points, ie merely on points difference instead of %.
The current percentage forumula actually rewards teams for being defensive.
ie a team that kicks 5 goals to win a game by 6 points will be higher placed than a team that kicks 20 goals but wins the game by 3 goals using the current % forumula.
Surely we should be looking at rewarding higher scoring teams to try and get more people through the gate as opposed to penalising them?

[spell_check]

I think the only way to help out in the points/percentage case is the bonus points a la cricket. But of course that won't be exactly fair to some teams who play in the wet more often. With the points difference you suggest, the losing team will still try and be defensive because they wouldn't want their difference to go down too much.

[eaglehaslanded]

I actually like your idea wedgie with the points difference scenario, The sooner we adopt this concept the better. It will reward the attacking sides and find out the defensive sides, just ideal. Although we are talking about the SANFL who are known for their procrastination, This is hardly going to change overnight. Nice idea though.

[noone]

that brings its own set of problems, as mentioned above mostly the weather. Best example is sides that play most of their games at docklands will have big advantage as they rarely do. While not as big difference, south would generally have the worst of the conditions in the sanfl. mind you with south never even being in contention for the finals i guess it dosn't matter for them anyway.

Another issue is ground size, teams that play on smaller home grounds will have higher scores than teams that play on large grounds.

[Wedgie]

Some of you miss the point, yes, things like weather, oval size, conditions, all would impact on a points difference scenario.
BUT this is irrelevent as it currenly impacts on the current % system anyway.
ie if it rains you're advantaged by the system ath the moment as its less likely you're going to have a heap of goals scored against you.
Its only a matter of moving the favouring of defensive minded sides to offensive minded sides or in the case of all sides being equal shifting the current bias on low scoring conditions to high scoring conditions. Its that simple.
So no, it doesn't bring any problems, all it does is change things around from favouring defensive minded sides to offensive minded sides over a period of time.

And lets face it, as many people that bet on High/Low in the AFL it never goes according to plan that the highest score will be at the Telstra Dome and the lower score will be at a big outdoors oval, its an absolute myth (which North showed to a degree last night in slippery conditions under lights on a big oval).

I could never see it happening as it would be far too radical for the SANFL and they'd have to run it by the AFL in triplicate before they'd even consider it, just an interesting topic of discussion. I heard some more stories on Friday night when in the members from different sources about where the SANFL's current priorities lay and it sickened me to say the least.

[high flying flag]

I heard some more stories on Friday night when in the members from different sources about where the SANFL's current priorities lay and it sickened me to say the least.

C'mon Wedgie, spill the beans!

[Wedgie]

C'mon Wedgie, spill the beans!

lol, I definately can't go into details but just further confirmed what a lot of us allegedly thought about a sporting organisation already, that they're more interested in the AFL than their own competition particularly in regard to one of the head honchos.

[purch]

More information Wedgie?

Don't tease. You had your fun last night.

[Ecky]

I find this a very interesting discussion point - thanks for bringing it up, Wedgie.

There was also an interesting discussion on this last year on footysa.com, where Fatalberton proposed a system where bonus points were given to teams who scored over 100 points. Spell_Check, do you have the link for this thread?

I'm not convinced your proposal though, Wedgie, you are looking at the system from the point of view of a top team. Under the system it encourages top teams to play attacking football, but low teams to play defensive football, to minimize the damage to their "points difference". So overall these two opposing forces would probably negate each other, resulting in very little difference to the overall level of play.

Anyway, there would be VERY VERY few scenarios when this system would change the ladder positions of teams at the end of the minor round (this is the only time when ladder position matters!). So it really would not impact much at all...

The current percentage formula actually rewards teams for being defensive.

Technically this is not quite correct. It generally rewards teams who WIN and are defensive. If you lose a game, your percentage is generally better off if the game is high-scoring. Note that I say generally here - there are actually more subtleties which I don't have time to go into now...

[Wedgie]

Agree with what you say Ecky and thanks for clarifying one of my points, you're spot on.
Good points.
I just think one of the reasons RL and Soccer go for a points difference is because they'd much rather see a 5-3 scoreline for soccer or a 34-28 scoreline for rugby league than more defensive orientated results that would get better percentage such as in these 2 cases 2-1 and 10-6.

[Ecky]

Yeah, I'm not saying though that there isn't a better system than the current percentage system used - just because it has been used for the last 100 years or so, doesn't mean it is the best.

The League should be looking at ways of encouraging attacking, high scoring games, so if a good system (such as the use of bonus points maybe?) was considered and thought through properly, then it may well have a positive impact on the competition.

[spell_check]

Here's that link Ecky: http://www.footysa.com/forums.php?op=view&num=32&fid=3256

[cd]

Interesting topic Wedgie.

As SANFL % is what you score out of the total game it does reward great forward play and also great defence as it is the gap or difference that is important. Weather, ground conditions, night games etc. do impact but gives an indication of how well overall you've performed.

Game 1 hard slog in the wet
team A 60 points team B 40 points - % for A 60 out of 100 = 60% for team B is 40%

Game 2 fine day 10 goal win
team A 130 points team C 70 points - % for A is 130 out of 200 = 65% for C is 35%

Game 3 fine day tight all day free flowing
team A 101 team D 99 - % for A is 101 out of 200 = 50.5% for D is 49.5%

Over these 3 games team A forwards have been on top - defence has held strong in game 1 and 3 and was rebounding strongly in game 2.

team A has kicked a total of 291 but the defence has only allowed 209 to be kicked against them.

Thus i assume Wedgie would give team A +82 rather than an overall % of 58.2%
Dont think it would alter placings on table at end of year but due to bye would not give as accurate picture as % does during year

Ladder after round 3
1 Magpies 199 128 4 60.86 points difference +71
2 Glenelg 352 233 4 60.17 +119
3 North 263 223 4 54.12 +40
4 Norwood 325 297 4 52.25 +28
5 South 262 224 2 53.91 +38

6 Eagles 271 326 2 45.39 - 55
7 Central 230 313 2 42.36 -83
8 Sturt 161 236 0 40.55 -75
9 West 154 237 0 39.39 -83

Bays and Magpies would swap all others stay same as premiership points used first to determine spot on ladder.

Interesting Wedgie - as the points difference is also effected by the number of games played at the time whereas you can compare %.

Col D

sorry not flash with formatting re table

[Wedgie]

Excellent analysis and you've thrown me completely off my original idea as the Bays would have been top after Rd3!

[cd]

Wedgie - the query I think is regarding the bye as by the end of round 3 Bays played 3 games Port 2 thus the points difference not really comparing apples with apples but you can see % wise they are both performing at round 60%

But by the end of the year I reckon would be the same and may in fact be easier to understand and work out?

Worth a discussion.

[Magpiespower]

What happened to all the 'traditionalists?'

[Adelaide Hawk]

Silly idea. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

[Wedgie]

Silly idea. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

So we should only looking at changing anything in the SANFL if it breaks?
I woud have thought the SANFL should be continuously looking at ideas to increase crowds, coverage and improve the product as a whole?

[Mr66]

About five years ago,I was asked by a workmate to explain the % system used by the
AFL & SANFL. After a Julius Sumner-Miller type lecture, I wondered why somebody didn't
understand a system which had been in place for 70-odd something years.
I think the general football hasn't a clue about % and the only people who know and care about it
are diehard and intelligent fans like ourselves who use forums like this.
I agree with AdelaideHawk, if it ain't broke....

[Mr66]

....AND ANOTHER THING!!!
If two teams have the same points difference, then what is the next tie-breaker?
Anyone who follows american sport(especially the NFL) knows that these comps
have anywhere between 3 and a dozen tie-breaking procedures.
If anyone has the patience to go over every VFL/AFL,SANFL and WAFL ladder
since % was first used (early to mid 20s) you will find that there will be not one
instance of any two or more teams having the same %.