Marking Out
This post originally appeared on This Week In Football.
Just a snapshot from me this week, but one I intend to build on as the season goes.
Reading through James’ analysis of Melbourne’s forward entries last week put F50 marking opportunities even more front of mind for me than it has been for the last few years.
To paraphrase Scott Steiner (and more recently his nephew Bronn Breaker), they say all marks are created equal, but you look at Melbourne, and you look at Gold Coast, and you can see that statement is not true.
A noticeable element of Melbourne’s forward line for a long time has been when they do generate marks inside 50, it often seems to be from lateral leads deep into the pockets generating low quality shots.
A quick look at WheeloRatings.com seems to back this casual observation up – they have been bottom 2 for the average xScore from set shots every year back to 2021.
To enable some quick analysis we’re going to define a “hot zone” – within 40m of goal and at no greater than a 30 degree angle from either goal post. Any time you draw a line it will cause some arbitrary inclusions and exclusions, but to me this seems like a pretty solid feel of what a really high quality opportunity looks like.
I’ll also break down the marks in those zones into three categories – Contested, Marks On Lead, and Uncontested.
Here’s how teams in 2025 are performing generating marks in the zone.
Unsurprisingly, Melbourne are dead last for marks in the most valuable area, and with a particularly bad return from contested marks. This is despite them generating the most offensive 1 on 1 contests in the league (16.3 per match, Carlton being the next on 13.2) and tracking at just below league average win rate for those contests.
It’s also worth looking at how teams are conceding marks in the zone.
West Coast and Melbourne being bottom 4 on both tables really illustrates some of the problems they’re having. West Coast are off the charts on conceding high value uncontested marks, which probably speaks to the kind of entries their midfielders and forwards are allowing opponents to set up through lack of pressure. I was somewhat surprised to see North with a relatively modest return here – not good by any stretch, but not catastrophic.
To finish up we’ll combine the two tables for a net differential which again shows Melbourne and West Coast as two laggards. The numbers don’t lie, and so far they’ve spelt disaster for both teams.
