Scoring rates: a post-season update

Earlier in the year, I wrote about how the average score per team per match in the AFL was trending downwards this season, and was then sitting at its lowest point since 1968. Over the 198 matches of the home and away season, 4962 goals (at an average of 12.53 per team per match) and 4501 behinds (at an average of 11.37 per team per match) were scored. Teams averaged a score of 86.55 points per match, and 110.24 goals were kicked for every 100 behinds.

The figure of 12.53 goals per team per match is a drop of nearly one whole goal per team per match from last season’s figure of 13.5. The previous lowest since the introduction of twenty-five-minute quarters in 1994 was 13.05 in 1997; the lowest in the post-Colonial era was 13.11 in 2010. In 2000, the figure peaked at 15.18. Prior to the lengthening of quarters, one would have to go back to 1970 to find a lower rate of goals per game (12.38) than this season.

The figure of 11.37 behinds per team per match is also down from last season, when it stood at 11.78. This is also the lowest in the post-1994 era, and the lowest since 1965, when 11.38 behinds were scored per team per match.

The figure of 86.55 points per team per match represents a drop of more than one goal per team per match from 2013, when it was 92.78. The previous lowest post-1994 tally was 90.34 in 1997; the lowest in the post-Colonial era was 90.47 in 2010. The last season in which fewer points were scored per team per match than this one was 1968 (82.08), the last season in which out of bounds on the full resulted in a boundary throw-in; the introduction of free kicks the following season forced teams to centre the ball to avoid being penalised, resulting in a jump in scoring rates of over fifteen points per team per match in 1969.

The fourth statistic, the 110.24 goals per 100 behinds, is the only one mentioned which is not the lowest in the post-1994 AFL; it was only the fourth-lowest, behind 1997 (when it reached 108.5), 1994, and 2007. The rule change made in 2006, which enforced a time limit on set shots, ensures that we will probably never again see the 123.06 goals per 100 behinds figure reached in 2000.

This was a superlative season, the lowest-scoring and fourth most inaccurate of the twenty-five-minute quarter era. Part of this is due to fluctuations in weather conditions, but the downward trend in scoring rates is also due to the way the modern game is played. Teams have mastered the art of defence, applying ferocious pressure when not in possession of the ball. Conceding fewer goals, they need to score fewer goals to win.

Paul Roos and Ross Lyon are the apostles of the new model football, and it arguably reached its apotheosis in the 2013 preliminary final in which Lyon’s Dockers swarmed any Sydney player in possession, and produced a twenty-seven-minute period in which i biancorossi failed to get the ball into their offensive fifty-metre arc. With thirty-six fit bodies huddling around the ball (when they’re not coming on and off the interchange bench), modern football can degenerate into a stop-start series of rolling mauls and ball-ups, but it makes for much more tactically intelligent football than the twenty-five-goals-apiece shoot-outs fondly remembered by nostalgics who preferred the way the game was played ‘back in my day’.

Football is not unique in this regard. Soccer goes through the same cycle, from the catenaccio of Helenio Herrera’s Inter Milan to the totaalvoetbal of Rinus Michels’ Ajax, and from the tiki-taka of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona to the low-possession, reactive style of Inter and Chelsea under José Mourinho. Roos and Lyon are merely the eighteen-man code’s versions of Marcelo Bielsa, whose teams place great emphasis on retrieving the ball high up the pitch when not in possession, and then moving contested ball directly towards the goal. Bielsa has had success with this style in recent seasons at Athletic Bilbao, and is now working his magic at Olympique Marseille. (But the bielsista style affects the two codes differently: it increases scoring rates in soccer while helping to decrease them in football.)

So, congratulations to the league and the clubs for putting on such a great season of football – the best, in my opinion, since the 1990s. All eighteen clubs played to win this year (even Melbourne!) and the fact that three teams tied on points for the minor premiership demonstrates the evenness of the competition.

NRL grand final match review: South Sydney v. Canterbury-Bankstown at Sydney

It has been nineteen years since noted sporting expert Tina Turner proclaimed rugby league ‘simply the best’. South Sydney and Canterbury-Bankstown proved her right in front of the [Insert Sponsor’s Name Here] Stadium’s largest post-Olympic crowd, as they played out a bruising and entertaining encounter, the result of which broke the former’s forty-three year premiership hoodoo.

The signs that the match wouldn’t disappoint were evident from the kick-off, whereupon the head of Canterbury enforcer James Graham collided with that of his compatriot Sam Burgess, doing a number on the tough Yorkshireman’s cheekbone. The Bulldogs were jittery and error-prone in the first few minutes, and when they fumbled a sixth-minute bomb into the waiting hands of Lote Tuqiri, the Souths faithful thought that the wait was finally over, until the video showed that the fumble had been caused by a high shot by a Souths player.

The Rabbitohs only had to wait another fourteen minutes to open the scoring, when a penalty put them downfield and Alex Johnston received a crafty shove-pass on the wing. Adam Reynolds made up for the missed conversion in the twenty-seventh minute: Greg Inglis intercepted and advanced to within forty metres of the Bulldogs’ line, the fourth play-the-ball of the set of six was interfered with, and Reynolds duly followed his coach’s instructions to take the two points.

The remainder of the first half proceeded trylessly but not without incident. Josh Morris almost scored Canterbury’s first try but lost control of the ball, which was then pounced on by quick-thinking Souths defenders. Sporadic outbreaks of argy-bargy occurred, usually involving Morris, and threatened to break out into good old-fashioned fisticuffs on the half-time whistle until cooler heads prevailed.

The second half started much the same way as the first, with Souths pressuring Canterbury into making crucial errors in the vicinity of their goal. They failed to capitalise, and the match took a turn seven minutes into the half when i rossoverdi lost the ball inside their own ten. Tony Williams was the beneficiary of a perfectly-weighted grubber on the last tackle, and Trent Hodkinson’s conversion tied the scores at six points apiece.

The Rabbitohs hit back in the fifty-sixth minute, when George Burgess, back on the field after being cleaned up in the first half, received the ball from dummy-half and waltzed his way around a few Canterbury players before grounding under the posts. Two penalties in successive minutes, one for a shoulder-charge and one for interfering with the play-the-ball, gave Adam Reynolds the chance to put Souths further ahead; he fluffed the first and hit the second, bringing the scores to 14-6.

Souths had the momentum, and it was up to Graham to stop it. The feisty Lancastrian stopped the clock in the sixty-eighth minute with a hip-and-shoulder hard enough to put David Tyrrell on a stretcher, and when normal service resumed, Canterbury looked the more likely side. Twice in two minutes they forced Souths to knock on in-goal, and it was when the Bulldogs’ third consecutive set of six was arrested prematurely that the tide finally turned for Souths.

The avalanche began in the seventy-third minute, when a Canterbury smother gave Souths a second kick on the last tackle; Greg Inglis aimed for the far corner, the ball bounced over the heads of one chaser from each team before Kirisome Auva’a grounded. Five minutes later, Adam Reynolds couldn’t believe his luck when he duelled with Sam Perrett for receipt of a kick and the Bulldogs player ran into the goalpost in a slapstick fashion; by converting both of these, he helped put the Bunnies up 26-6, and we had reached the Gatorade-bucket-over-the-head moment.

The icing on the cake was provided by Inglis in the final minute, when he broke through a tired Canterbury line, went one way and then the other, and scored his team’s fifth try. Sam Burgess was given the honours but failed to convert, but it didn’t matter. For the twenty-first time, South Sydney were premiers.

Although he failed to get on the scoresheet, this was Sam Burgess’ match. The man from Dewsbury had Clive Churchill Medallist written all over him, from his first-up head clash, to the blood evident on his face for most of the match, to the tears of joy he shed at the final whistle. I was going to label him the Joel Selwood of the NRL (one of the highest compliments this Geelong supporter can give a sportsman), but my knowledge of northern English sporting history gave me an even better comparison: Bert Trautmann’s match-winning performance in the 1956 FA Cup final, when Manchester City’s German goalkeeper inspired his team to victory despite breaking his neck making a diving save.

Sam, and Souths, you were simply the best.

South Sydney 30 – Canterbury-Bankstown 6

Tries: Johnston 20’; G. Burgess 56’; Auva’a 73’; Reynolds 78’; Inglis 80’ (S. Syd.); Williams 49’ (C.-B.)

Conversions: Reynolds 3/4; S. Burgess 0/1 (S. Syd.); Hodkinson 1/1 (C.-B.)

Penalties: Reynolds 2/3 (S. Syd)