Colouring the AFL Season
Round 18 of the 2016 Australian Rules Football Season was completed on Sunday.
Each season I am interested in mapping each team’s progress compared to their finishing position in the previous year’s regular season.
I use four colours to monitor a teams progress in relation to current/previous relationships.
A good year for teams would see their colour code being green and gold. A less successful year would be coloured blue and red.
This is my colour scheme up to the end of Round 18 in the 2016 season.
Changing Fortunes
My genome of a season makes it possible to reflect on the impact of the bye week on each team’s performance.
Each year my interest in AFL performance is focussed by two questions:
- Is there an observable change in a team’s performance between seasons?
- Does the bye week lift the team to enhanced performance?
Round 18 Ladder has this profile in relation to 2015.
Both questions give me an opportunity to think about how coaching and support services might be impacting on performance.
Impact of the Bye Week
In the 2016 season, six of the teams have played five games after their bye week, six have played four games and six have played three games.
Overall my picture of post-bye week momentum looks like this:
I have the following profiles for teams in terms of their games since their bye week:
Five Weeks
Four Weeks
Three Weeks
The thicker lines in this chart reflect similarities in Geelong’s and GWS’s post bye performance and those of North Melbourne and Brisbane.
The Art of Performance
I have a passionate interest in the science, art and magic of coaching.
Without being involved in the daily training environment, the analysis of secondary data gives me the opportunity to think about how these environments deliver performance trajectories of varying kinds.
In the case of the by week, it would be interesting to learn about the conversations that might be going on at: St Kilda and Carlton; West Coast and Essendon; Hawthorn and Fremantle.
From afar, the art of visualisation performance trajectories makes it possible to contemplate short, medium and long term progress for each of the eighteen teams.
