User:Teratix/Australian rules football analytics
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In sports, analytics is the practice of collecting and using data to gain insights into a player or team's performance. Analysts of Australian rules football, dubbed "the most data-rich sport on Earth" in James Coventry's Footballistics, have gathered simple statistics on the sport since the 1930s. The collection and analysis of this data has become more sophisticated over time, and analytics is now commonly employed by club personnel, media commentators, and fans.
Australian rules football features two teams of 18 players each, who compete for the highest score by kicking an oval ball through their team's goal posts to score points. Players can kick, handball (punch), and run with the ball in order to move it across the oval-shaped field. They can be tackled by their opponents at any time, except when they have marked the ball (caught the untouched ball on the full from a kick), received a free kick from the umpire, or during a stoppage of play.
Analytics is predominately used in the premier Australian Football League (AFL),[lower-alpha 1] which has employed Champion Data as its official statistics provider since 1999. Many AFL clubs employ analysts to seek a competitive edge over their rivals, whether on a consultative, part-time or full-time basis. Recruiters also use analytics when scouting potential draftees in elite junior competitions, such as the AFL Under 18 Championships and the NAB League. Fans can access analytics through sports commentary, media reports, statistics websites and apps, and fantasy football. However, Champion Data's advanced metrics cannot be viewed without paying a large fee, making it impractical for fans outside clubs and media organisations to access them.
Simple statistics – scores, kicks, marks, free kicks and successful passes – were published for certain Victorian Football League matches in newspapers such as The Sporting Globe as early as the 1930s. However, comprehensive, weekly statistics for every player and match would not appear in print until the publication of Harry Beitzel's Footy Week from 1965. New statistics organisations such as Ray Young's APB Sports and Gundars Mantinieks' Prowess Sports were established in the 1980s and began to employ computers, rather than pencil and paper, to assist in recording, storing and transmitting statistics. In 1999 the AFL engaged Champion Data as its official provider of statistics; the company had been founded three years earlier by ex-Carlton player Ted Hopkins.
The publication of Michael Lewis's Moneyball in 2003, examining the successful analytics-based management of a Major League Baseball team, provoked inquiry into whether the approach could be replicated successfully in the AFL. In response to coaches' desires for more sophisticated measures of performance, Champion Data began to provide more complex metrics which incorporated players' position on the ground and the influence of pressure, aided by the increasing use of wearable GPS tracking units to follow players' movements and speeds.