The GH Fans' Choice - Overall best player since 2004

bonehead · Post by **bonehead** » September 14, 2016, 5:22 pm

reptar wrote:
bonehead wrote:Conscious bias against Purtell
I don't think we voted for slowest player.

Clearly ed has doctored the records

edwahu · Post by **edwahu** » September 14, 2016, 5:29 pm

reptar wrote:
bonehead wrote:Conscious bias against Purtell
I don't think we voted for slowest player.

The great man managed a stellar 8 points in 64 games @ 0.13 points a game. 6 of those were scored in three games in a row mid 2007. No idea what happened those three weeks but it must have been a magical period.

Generally though the GH is prejudice against Wingers. You can see when you look at the percentage of total votes based on position (I just assigned the most common position the player played).

Front Row 23%
Fullback 16%
Centre 14%
Five-Eighth 12%
Second Row 12%
Lock 11%
Hooker 5%
Wing 5%
Halfback 4%

I you take into account there are two wingers they are barely registering four or five points each year.

bonehead · Post by **bonehead** » September 14, 2016, 5:37 pm

Surely he polled points in this game!

-TW- · Post by **-TW-** » September 14, 2016, 5:46 pm

I remember that, it **** down and we were awful

bonehead · Post by **bonehead** » September 14, 2016, 5:52 pm

-TW- wrote:I remember that, it **** down and we were awful

I was there sitting with ge and raidersfam, purts came to the fence and shook our hands

-TW- · Post by **-TW-** » September 14, 2016, 6:01 pm

Ge sits in the rain?!?!?!

bonehead · Post by **bonehead** » September 14, 2016, 6:29 pm

-TW- wrote:Ge sits in the rain?!?!?!

No, we were under cover - fake mo's and all

edwahu · Post by **edwahu** » September 7, 2018, 11:50 am

I thought as it's 15 years of the POTY now is a good time to update this thread. I know it's debatable as to how valuable this is as a measure of performance but I think it is pretty good at identifying our better players in that period and there isn't any other subjective measure of performance available with this much history.

I'll split this up over a few posts to look at it from different angles and post when I have time (recruitment type, origin, position). With Rugbyleagueproject and Wikipedia there is a lot more data available now. Also I can provide some shiny charts this time.

The Basic Numbers (there are a few inconsistencies due to voting rule changes and some missing finals):

371 games played
6307 individual performances voted on
139 players have played since 2004
2217 points have been handed out in voting

Top 20 All Time Player of the Year Votes

So the big change this year is Papalii is now the highest total vote getter and first to crack 100. The other big movers are Hodgo, Rapana and Jack.

Rank Player Total Points

1 Josh Papalii 100.5
2 Jarrod Croker 96
3 Shaun Fensom 93
4 Terry Campese 80
5 Josh Dugan 78
6 Jack Wighton 75
7 Alan Tongue 73
8 David Shillington 71
9 Josh Hodgson* 69
10 Tom Learoyd-Lahrs 62
11 Jordan Rapana 61
12 Clinton Schifcofske 52
13 Paul Vaughan 49
14 Todd Carney 45
15 Trevor Thurling 45
16 Blake Ferguson 43
17 Josh McCrone 43
18 Dane Tilse 35
19 Nick Cotric 34
20 Joey Leilua 34

Here are the top 10 splits by wins/losses, opposition finish that season, number of games with points and vote types.

This general rule here is halves score big in wins, forwards score big in losses. Campo is still the biggest vote getter in wins and Croker gets less "least bad" points than I expected.

Not much to gather from this one except I just realised it's actually a top 13 for some reason, and Hodgo and Jack win a lot of MOM relative to the other players.

Shillo come out of this one looking the best and Hodgo as well, but if you look in the detail it's actually Campo who scores big in the wins. He has something like double the votes in wins against top 4 than anyone else. Dugan and Fensom scored most of their votes against top 4/8 in losses.

Post by **greeneyed** » September 7, 2018, 12:05 pm

Amazing work there!

Post by **-GD-** » September 7, 2018, 1:20 pm

Fascinating stuff there with those stats, thanks for that Ed.

edwahu · Post by **edwahu** » September 7, 2018, 1:56 pm

Thanks.

Here is one quick one that I thought was interesting, which is the Distribution of points. It's not quite the 80/20 rule but you can see that your best few players really do contribute the most to your performance.

Basically 7 players have earned almost a third of the votes, and 28 have earned 70% of the votes. Half of the players who have played only scored 4% of the total votes. I am not sure if this is a good or bad thing, you would need to have a benchmark against more succesful teams to know.

gangrenous · Post by **gangrenous** » September 7, 2018, 6:24 pm

Nice stuff edwahu! Thoroughly enjoyed!

edwahu · Post by **edwahu** » September 10, 2018, 11:09 am

I thought this one may interest some since recruitment is such a big discussion point. This is the number of players, games and votes contributed based on how the player was recruited.

You can see that we really have relied heavily on juniors, even more than I expected. They have contributed more value in terms of points than signed first graders, although this is reversed under Stuart. Also backing our own juniors has produced more than signing them from other teams Under 20s/Flegg.

Also in terms of "Moneyball" recruits from outside of first grade, looking at other leagues and Super League is more productive for us than second grade NRL players.

LP Raider · Post by **LP Raider** » September 10, 2018, 2:21 pm

Looks like someone has had some graph training at work.

Great stuff.

edwahu · Post by **edwahu** » September 10, 2018, 4:14 pm

LP Raider wrote: ↑September 10, 2018, 2:21 pm Looks like someone has had some graph training at work.

Great stuff.

Gotta give credit to Google Docs for that, you just press a button these days.

FuiFui BradBrad · Post by **FuiFui BradBrad** » September 10, 2018, 6:44 pm

Finite · Post by **Finite** » September 10, 2018, 8:36 pm

Just a post to say thanks for the work put into this Ed. Very interesting and I think the POTY numbers are pretty accurate too.

edwahu · Post by **edwahu** » September 11, 2018, 11:42 am

No worries. I've got a couple more left, so will keep going if it's of interest for people. I don't think there is much surprising but most of them confirm what you would expect, such as todays:

Player Origin

Pretty much lines up with recruitment, Country and ACT players are our best return, Sydney and Kiwi players are not so good in terms of performance.

Post by **greeneyed** » September 11, 2018, 12:14 pm

I think this has been great, thank you!

Northern Raider · Post by **Northern Raider** » September 11, 2018, 2:31 pm

edwahu wrote:I thought this one may interest some since recruitment is such a big discussion point. This is the number of players, games and votes contributed based on how the player was recruited.

You can see that we really have relied heavily on juniors, even more than I expected. They have contributed more value in terms of points than signed first graders, although this is reversed under Stuart. Also backing our own juniors has produced more than signing them from other teams Under 20s/Flegg.

Also in terms of "Moneyball" recruits from outside of first grade, looking at other leagues and Super League is more productive for us than second grade NRL players.

No great shock this one. When you look at our top 20 all time point list, the top 7 all came through the junior ranks. Shillo at no8 is the first import.

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edwahu · Post by **edwahu** » September 11, 2018, 3:19 pm

Yeah, the only interesting thing is how much it's changed under Stuart v Furner. It's gone from 60% juniors under Furner to 25% under Stuart. I guess that reflects the change in priorities after Milford left, with Stuart shifting junior spots to Superleague (good result) and second grade NRL players (with poor results).

It's a shame we have had mediocre results under every coach, so it's hard to say which strategy is the best for us.

Sid · Post by **Sid** » September 11, 2018, 4:53 pm

I guess the role of the guys bought up from 2nd grade are depth off the bench forwards to plug a hole
(Clay Priest mainly with 31 games)

so those sorts of guys aren't going to collect too many points

edwahu · Post by **edwahu** » September 11, 2018, 5:19 pm

I think the argument would be that giving a spot to junior or looking at non NRL affiliated players gives a better return considering the costs will be about the same. The hit rate for the non NRL contracted Players that have dropped off the radar like Rapana/Baptiste/Priest even back to Phil Graham is very good vs NRL contracted reserve graders, although it's improved with players like Havilli. Much harder to spot I'd think though.

papabear · Post by **papabear** » September 12, 2018, 1:08 pm

points per game would be interesting.

Shaun Fensom was the most over rated player in thegh history and I think all the stats up there show it.

In general, think voters give way to much on minutes played and total stats then they do in respect of the quality of the work.

This is changing a bit with players like cotric who may not get the best stats in the world goes about his business with real quality.

I also think hodgson and havili tend to be more effective when they are not playing 80, but probably score less when this happens for some reason.

edwahu · Post by **edwahu** » September 12, 2018, 1:45 pm

Here is the points per game (20+ game players)

Player PPG
1 Josh Dugan 1.11
2 Josh Hodgson 0.83
3 Clinton Schifcofske 0.78
4 Jason Smith 0.74
5 Nick Cotric 0.72
6 Blake Ferguson 0.72
7 Jordan Rapana 0.67
8 Shaun Fensom 0.67
9 Todd Carney 0.63
10 Michael Dobson 0.60
11 Anthony Milford 0.60
12 Josh Papalii 0.59
13 Paul Vaughan 0.58
14 Terry Campese 0.58
15 Jack Wighton 0.57
16 Tom Learoyd-Lahrs 0.57
17 David Shillington 0.54
18 Alan Tongue 0.50
19 Ian Hindmarsh 0.46
20 Jason Croker 0.46

I take your point on the way points are give, but I think it's a little bit inevitable with a long suffering fan base and a lot of losses. There are some awful periods where fans didn't have a lot of option but to give points based on workload. Fensom has the record for consecutive votes with 8 games but 7 of those were losses.

I think one good measure is the averages across multiple seasons, which gives a better indication of consistency. Swap in Campese for Fergo and I think it covers our top players from the era.

edwahu · Post by **edwahu** » September 13, 2018, 11:31 am

Here is the last post for this year. It's based on the positions but unlike previous years this time it's where the players actually played in those games.

I guess the interesting thing is that our five eighths seem to do much better than our halfbacks. The halfback list is very ugly.

Post by **greeneyed** » September 13, 2018, 12:07 pm

These are great edwahu, thanks!

Seiffert82 · Post by **Seiffert82** » September 15, 2018, 6:27 pm

There's some really interesting information out of that edwahu.

Halfback has definitely been a problem for us over the years. That stands out like the proverbials. As does dummy half - until Hodgo's arrival.

Also, despite the negative rhetoric that surrounds him, our current first choice fullback clearly goes OK when he's switched on.

Seiffert82 · Post by **Seiffert82** » September 15, 2018, 6:29 pm

It's also beyond me how anyone can use those stats to be negative about Shaun Fensom's contribution to this club. Dead set.

edwahu · Post by **edwahu** » September 15, 2018, 7:20 pm

Seiffert82 wrote: ↑September 15, 2018, 6:29 pm It's also beyond me how anyone can use those stats to be negative about Shaun Fensom's contribution to this club. Dead set.

Yeah, while it's true he got most of his points in losses that really only started to dominate in 2013. You can see him contributing to a lot of wins including against top sides up until then.

With Wighton, I guess that's highlights the limitation of the voting as a measure. It only highlights a positive contribution. One thing that's clear is up until this year he would score most of his votes at either end of the season, this year he was consistently every 2 or 3 rounds.

-PJ- · Post by **-PJ-** » September 15, 2018, 8:02 pm

I love what Shaun Fensom did in our jersey.

During some lean years seeing his name on the team sheet every week was a blessing...

Love ya Fenno..

reptar · Post by **reptar** » September 15, 2018, 8:44 pm

-PJ- wrote:I love what Shaun Fensom did in our jersey.

During some lean years seeing his name on the team sheet every week was a blessing...

Love ya Fenno..

Where's Nickman to give Fenno a big sloppy one?

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Post by **-GD-** » September 15, 2018, 8:47 pm

Seiffert82 wrote:It's also beyond me how anyone can use those stats to be negative about Shaun Fensom's contribution to this club. Dead set.

Agreed. Love Fenno and everything he did for the club

gangrenous · Post by **gangrenous** » September 15, 2018, 9:15 pm

Never got the Fenno love myself. Can appreciate he always put in and was a good clubman. Just didn’t excite me.

Seiffert82 · Post by **Seiffert82** » September 17, 2018, 5:59 pm

edwahu wrote: ↑September 15, 2018, 7:20 pm
Seiffert82 wrote: ↑September 15, 2018, 6:29 pm It's also beyond me how anyone can use those stats to be negative about Shaun Fensom's contribution to this club. Dead set.
Yeah, while it's true he got most of his points in losses that really only started to dominate in 2013. You can see him contributing to a lot of wins including against top sides up until then.

With Wighton, I guess that's highlights the limitation of the voting as a measure. It only highlights a positive contribution. One thing that's clear is up until this year he would score most of his votes at either end of the season, this year he was consistently every 2 or 3 rounds.

Yeah, I thought this year has been by far his best consistency wise. It's a real shame he screwed the pooch before the season even started. The guy needs to sort himself out.