Re: Position vacant: Carlton AFLW Senior Coach
Reply #12 –
Averaging 24 points a match is hardly noteworthy!
The AFL's intervention re changing from a defensive style didn't help either (aimed squarely at us), we had no plan B. (as an aside, I agree 100% with Caro re the timing of the AFLs intervention - amateur hour stuff.)
I'm not sure what the right amount of points per match will be for the AFLW.
Given other sports on much smaller surfaces have statistically significant scoring differentials based on gender I suspect scores significantly lower in the AFLW than AFL will be normal.
I'm not sure it needs to much analysis, it could be simply because the girls take more disposals and time to move the ball the same distance which widens the chance of an error. Subjectively, from basketball to AFL there seems to be sliding scale relative to men, with average reductions in scoring across all womens competitions for each sport, differences that widen as field size increases. If there were more men's netball competitions it would be interesting to see if the pattern holds. For basketball I think it's about 15%, soccer 25% and AFL it looks to be as much as 50%.
I don't know enough about hockey or other field sports that have competitions for both genders to judge, but I suspect competition wide averages will follow the same pattern whether it be lacrosse, water polo, polo, etc., etc..
I do find it can be hard to differentiate though, because often one women's team will be heavily dominant and score far more than the others skewing averages. I'm sure someone expert is statistics would have ways to compensate for this.
So if there is an expectation for AFLW to score like AFL it is misplaced, I'm sure it will get better but the differential will always apply while they play under the generally same rules. So change the rules, don't have then coached to play the male style game, perhaps the AFL and the AFLW coaches need to think a little deeper!