How the Cats are making Champion Data change the way they analyse the game

Geelong is forcing Champion Data to change the way they analyse the game.

According to Champion Data’s Daniel Hoyne, Chris Scott has so many ‘magnet players’ at his disposal that the Cats are altering how players and their primary positions are seen.

The AFL’s leading organisation for statistics has introduced a new rating system, 100X, and it is largely due to the litter of Cats who have the ability to play well in various positions.

Read Hoyne’s explanation below:

“There’s been many instances over our 25 years where we've had to sort of change and adapt to what certain teams are doing and where the game's going and how it's heading and how we actually analyse performance and how we analyse the game,” he said on SEN’s Sportsday.

“I just want to just put Geelong on the agenda in terms of how we've had adapt on the run in terms of changing the way that we position players and how we analyse player performance.

“Forever and a day we've had to associate a player with a primary position and we've had to benchmark them against that primary position. So that primary position being purely, ‘where do you play your most minutes on the ground?’

“Previously under that system, we would have benchmarked, say, for instance, Nick Daicos, who's a general defender. He plays 51 per cent of his game time as a general defender and we're benchmarking him against Adam Saad who plays 100 per cent of his game time as a general defender.

“I’m sitting there going, this isn’t the right way to do it.

“The Geelong example, they have been the hardest team for us for the last 5-7 years to actually categorise their players into a primary position.

“You think of the pinup example being Mark Blicavs who has created headaches for us for 10 years.

“So that's why we've now introduced our new rating system, the 100X rating system, which abolishes this and we can absolutely assess everything in totality.

“We're not benchmarking absolute primary positions against primary position. We're benchmarking your overall performance to be able to come up with this rating system, otherwise we're going to get left behind.

“We're not judging players that play with Geelong or that Nick Daicos example correctly.

“You have a look at this team at the moment and so far this year, we're six games in, they have eight players that I would call ‘magnet players’ that just get moved all over the ground and make it impossible to give them a primary position.

“We don't have to worry about that anymore.

“You look at what Tom Atkins has done over the last three weeks, he's now playing as a half-back flanker. He was their grunt, inside, premiership midfielder, tackle machine. It was probably him and Patrick Dangerfield last year as their midfielders, they’ve now moved him to a half-back flank.

“You look at Mitch Duncan. He plays across a half-back flank but in their two wet games against Hawthorn and Brisbane, he plays as a half-forward flanker to get that real elite ball use.

“Mark O’Connor has played wing-back all year. On the weekend he had 100 per cent midfield time against Lachie Neale. Jack Bowes plays as a midfielder for his three games this year, against Brisbane in the wet Tom Stewart goes down, ‘I’m going to play you across half-back for the last 50-60 minutes of the game.

“He has the best game of his career.

“You look at Mark Blicavs and what he's done this season, in the back-end of 2022 and for 2023 he was mainly that ruck, centre bounce midfielder. He's now playing close to half of his game time on the wing.

“It’s totally different what they're doing and what he's able to do with these magnets, which makes him so hard to actually coach against.

“I just want to just give it credit because from a team perspective, we've had to adjust for the best part of 25 years.

“But now from an individual sense, they're the cornerstone as to why we've had to change on the run to be able to adjust with how we rate and benchmark players.”

Listen to Full On Footy with Hoyne on SEN's Sportsday below: