Best inside midfield brigade

for a small to qualify as inside I reckon their CP count has to be within 85% or so of their UP count. let's test this

 

Dangerfield - 146%
Thompson - 89%
Sloane - 90%

Redden - 83%
Rockliff - 77%
Black - 87%

Judd - 90%
Murphy - 94%
McLean - 79%
Carrazzo - 95%

got bored

Swan - 65%
Watson 97%
Stanton 48%
Selwood 105%

So yeah, as we can see ~85%+ = inside , 75-85% = balanced <75%=outside as a general rule.

Let's look at North


North
Swallow - 98%
Ziebell - 120%
Cunnington - 89%
Wells - 56%
Bastinac - 37%
Adams - 68%
Anthony 40%


So really, cases can be made for Swallow/Ziebell/Cunners.

Adams can do a little inside work but rarely. ANthony/Bastinac are outside as a rec park and Wells is pretty fucking outside. Aside from those three there's nothing. Most teams have 2-3 80-85%+ers regularly in the middle and the rest sit between 68-85% with ONE being below, North have virtually half their midfield in probably the bottom 10% of contested possession ratio ranks for mids in the afl.

3 players != team

 

For the record the crows and blues both are well up there if you consider their top 3 midfielders' inside ratios but watch them play and it's obvious they're lacking as you need the 3-4 other midfielders in the rotation to pull weight. At north, they don't. Teams can only afford one, two TOPS of the Anthony/Bastinac mold in a game or else it becomes unbalanced and a liability.

I'm not insulting those players or north either - they've got a lot of afl standard players and a lot of good midfielders.

But north also have decent players in every other area of the park yet wonder why they're distinctly average?

it's because their midfield isn't a cohesive unit, it doesn't gel at all. Swallow's tackling his ass off, Ziebell and Cunnington are both inside with Swallow too - almost too much so and then you've got Anthony/MacMillan/Wells/Bastinac hanging off outside the pack constantly running away from any form of contact with only Adams (who for some reason is forward too much) providing any sort of balance at all. If 75-80% is the midpoint for CP you'd want the majority of your players grouped around it; 'balanced' midfielders as opposed to inside/out purely as the ability to play both roles is integral with the pace of the game - and then you'd, like a bell curve, want less and less players branching out from it (numerically not percentage wise).

I'll qualify though that someone who gets 280 UPs a year and 400 CPs a year is still more valuable as an outsider than a 240/170 though. So if Swallow/Cunners/Ziebell were each racking up 27-30 touches a week it'd be fine and you'd be cruising; Sydney got away with it via pure weight of numbers given Kennedy/O'Keefe/Jack all got so much of the ball despite being heavily inside in ratio their uncontested possession count would still > most outside mids. With north, the Insiders save for swallow don't get enough of the ball to make that viable.

 

Ideally in terms of balance you'd want 1 real insider, 1 real outsider and 3 real balanced players in the midfield.

Sewell - 93%
Mitchell - 80%
Lewis - 71%
Hodge - 68%
Shiels - 58%

Well, what do you know.

 

poorly balanced midfield. 3 insiders then the rest are scared

 

So the higher the %, the more contested possessions to uncontested possessions they have?

 

yep.

I was dismissing them as an indicative stat of a players insideness.

When we're talking about the best midfield of course clearances are fucking important. I just don't think they're inside or outside relevant.

 

I stand corrected then. I reckon it's changed as I emailed CD about it 3-4 years ago.

That said North lie 7th for clearances with 3 teams within 0.5 a game of them anyway. Hardly proves they've got the best inside midfield.

 

Dangerfield's abilities as a contested ball-winner are amazing going on those statistics. Towers above the rest number-wise

 

JPK is at 147% too

 

North

so biased.

In before youngman comes into this thread and makes about 4 no more than 7 word long posts saying how we're all idiots and north are the best and only north fans have any idea about afl but doesn't back it up at all and then lays specific aim at me calling me a moron, nerd and dire cunt without backing it up etc. and i really hope he doesn't see this before posting his vitriol and tripe as it'd be gun