The 10 main Key Competitive Criteria that we measure are as follows.

1/. Disposals/goal

2/.  Effective Possessions

3/. Inside 50′s

4/. 1 %’s

5/. Contested Possessions

6/. Clearances

7/. Contested Marks

8/. Score

9/. Effective Tackles

10/. Conversion Rates inside 50.

Because these are the main 10 measures we feel are an important measure of a team’s effectiveness and competitiveness, we decided to measure them in preference to other stat’s that are measured each week by the various statisticians that measure AFL Footy.

Not only do we measure a team’s actual KCC for, but we also measure each teams KCC against them as well.  The beauty of the Reality Ladder is that it takes into account all the games played througout the year, so that a game that was played in Round 2 will have an effect on the Reality Score in Round 15.    Every game played will have an effect on every other game throughout the season.

We have promised in the past to provide the reality scores in each game from now on, so please read below for those results.

Here is the updated Reality Ladder for Round 7.

Even with a huge thumping win over Carlton in Round 7, Collingwood is still languishing in 7th spot.  This seems to fly in the face of their position on the real AFL ladder, however this is exactly what the Reality Ladder is designed to show.

Collingwood’s contested possessions and clearances are not as high as you would expect due to the game plan they have implemented.  Perhaps the stats should start tabulating the actual clearances from packs, instead of just from stoppages.  Collingwood are fantastic in the clinches in getting the ball out of a pack and handballing or knocking the ball forward to one of the outriders, then moving it quickly to another of the receivers out wider or runners from the back.    The Caringbush’s scores in the KCC’s are not as high as you expect for a team that has won its last few games very easily, and who have a fantastic percentage.

In the past versions of the Reality Ladder, we had used each teams percentage IN the calculations and have decided that doing so gives a false impression of the Reality Score, and basically mirrors the AFL Ladder so we have kept them out from now on.

Round 7 will be up very shortly.

Other significant changes were that Freo and Sydney swapped spots, and Carlton was overtaken by St. Kilda, even though the Saints lost badly. Again, it shows that all games played during the round and in the year to that point in time are relevant to the RL, not just the actual scores of each game.

We will start to show each teams weekly scores in the KCC’s as of next week to lend even more legitimacy to the RL.

Feel free to comment and add your opinion to the best tool online that actually measures just how well your team is really travelling.

We have had hundreds of emails over the past 3 years wondering where the Reality Ladder was, and whether it would be coming back again.  The absence has been due to finding the best organisation available to make the relevant changes that we found to be important so that the Reality Ladder would be meaningful and relevant.

We contacted Ken McIntyre who was responsible for bringing us the ‘Final 5, Final 6 and two Final 8 finals systems.  Unfortunately it seems that Ken was not available for the pittance we were able to afford.

We contacted Duckworth and Lewis who formed the system of identifying how many runs a cricket team would need in a rain-affected 50/50 match, but their submission was completely out of this world, and even in our 1-1 meeting to explain their system to us, both Duckworth and Lewis were left dazed and confused over their own explanations.   Back to the drawing board.

During my Explosive Travels 2 years ago, we even contracted some aboriginal elders at Ayers Rock who brought with them some cave paintings and an abacus made of ochre rocks.    Whilst they came close to giving us what we wanted.

In a recent act of desperation, we have contracted the brainstrust behind the Supercoach 3300 rule and have come up with a new Reality Ladder that shows us exactly what we want you to know.

The question we often used to get was what does the Reality Ladder measure?

It is a measure of competitiveness, efficiency, effectiveness, prowess and score.  The Key Competitive Criteria we measure are the effectiveness of possession and tackling, the contested ability of possessions and marking, the 1%’s, the number of clearances, inside 50′s, the goal kicking efficiency and the number of disposals per goal.

These KCC have been chosen to calculate your teams effectiveness and efficiency with the ball, their contested abilities and competitiveness and their ability to beat their opponent in a one-one situation.

We have already presented the basics of the first three rounds but had to wait until we had the final submissions of the algebraic formula from the 3300 club before we could bring you more and now that we finally have that, we are pleased to present to you the new and improved Reality Ladder.

Here is the RL for Round 4.

You will see some of the anomalies that has Carlton up in 3rd spot and Collingwood down in 9th. This can only be explained by the fact that Carlton has played reasonably ‘poor’ sides so far and has scored a lot more in the KCC’s than Collingwood has, given that Collingwood has yet to play those weaker sides.  As the season progresses, the scores for each side should ‘even themselves out’

The ‘points for’ column shows a raw number which is a ratio of your clubs raw ability in the KCC’s against their direct opponents they have played to that point in time.  The ‘points against’ column therefore is a ratio of the data that their opponents have scored against them to that point in time.

The Reality Score itself is a calculation of how your team would have performed against the other clubs in the competition to that point in time, given all the other results that have occured.  Every game will therefore have an effect on every other game throughout the season.

You will also notice that doing a basic division of the Points For agains the Points against does not give you the total Reality Score.  This is because, in order to account for the other games played to that point in time, another calculation has to occur.  This is our trademarked ‘x calculation’ which for legal reasons we are unable to divulge.

At the instruction of Francios Lavoisier at the International Bureau of Weights and Measurements (he is the great-great grandson of the father of the metric system) we decided against including each teams % as a calculable entity on the RL because, as Francios stated, it makes the RL look pretty much like the AFL Ladder, so what would be the point?  Thank you Francios

Your opinion and comments are welcome.

]]> http://www.footytalk.com.au/reality-ladder-round-4-2010.html/feed 0 http://www.footytalk.com.au/reality-ladder-round-1-2010.html http://www.footytalk.com.au/reality-ladder-round-1-2010.html#comments Fri, 23 Apr 2010 07:46:46 +0000 Explosion http://footytalk.com.au/?p=6444 It has been a long time since we last saw the Reality Ladder however it has always been in the background as an interesting statistical look at the game within the game and just where your team really should be in relation to all the other teams in the comp.

Those of you who have been with us since 2005 will remember the Reality Ladder from its inception however a number of improvements and alterations have been made to reflect the competitive nature of the game.

We have tried to devise a system that measures skill efficiency, scoring effectiveness, as well as the contested nature of the game.

As our previous Reality Ladder indicated, due to the biased fixture, and the inefficiencies of some clubs in the key competitive units, the AFL Ladder does not give a true indication of how good or bad your team actually is.

We believe the Reality Ladder indicates just how good your team actually is when all other games are taken into account, and where they actually belong on the ladder.

Over the coming weeks, we will present our methodologies in more depth and explain exactly what we do measure as our KPI’s when calculating the Reality Ladder but for now, here are the first 3 rounds.

The Round 4 ladder shows a bit more information and will be expanded upon in the near future.

ROUND 1 REALITY LADDER

ROUND 2 REALITY LADDER

ROUND 3 REALITY LADDER

So,  I hear you ask, what do  the numbers mean.   We will upload the Round 4 Ladder and give a deeper explanation in the near future, but for now, you can see that Fremantle and to a lesser extent Carlton are performing better than their places on the real AFL Ladder would dictate, and Geelong and Collingwood are performing worse.

This may be due to the fact that at the beginning of the year, Carlton especially has played ‘weaker’ opponents and as a result, their KPI’s in the key contested criteria are higher.  As a few more rounds are played and the calculations designed to incorporate ALL the previous matches come into play, we would expect these anomalies to even out to a certain extent.