WXV Rule Discussion 2022

[GoLions]

Alright, let's do this one more time.

Tagging

A simple implementation for now - I see great potential here - but baby steps.

In the efforts of increasing a coaches influence on games, I propose this:
- You can nominate ONE tagger per game
- The TAGGER sacrifices his game (-50%) to limit the score of the TAGGEE (-30% or the taggee is capped at 100 points maximum, whichever results in a lower score)
- The TAGGER must be in a corresponding position:
       - DEF can only tag FWD
       - FWD can only tag DEF
       - MID can only tag MID
       - RUC can only tag RUC
       - A player from the bench conforms to the above rules based on their inherit position
- If the TAGGER or TAGGEE is subbed out, or doesn't play, the tag is void
- A tag does not effect captain bonuses, or other score modifiers

For example...

Rio de Janeiro plays Berlin. Berlin only has one good player - Max Gawn. And... he plays Hawthorn, a team he normally dominates.

Rio's R1 is Tom De Koning - season average 75.

Rio opts to use TDK to TAG Max Gawn, who they expect to score say 130.

If players score to expectation... TDK goes from 75 down to 38 points (losing 37), whilst Gawn goes from 130 down to 91 (loss of 39 points).

Or maybe Gawn goes ballistic and scores 180? But wait - he's tagged - and score a max of 100 (-80 points).

But the stock example is pretty even isn't it? What's the point you may ask?

Well really, it's to get us used to the concept of being able to influence the opposition scores, as that is ultimately what I want this comp to get to. Points-boosting flood/attacks, more elaborate tags, mid-game moves... but we're not ready for that yet. We are however ready for this; a simple, easy to understand implementation which I think will add intrigue to games.

Proposal for the tag again, but with the following modifications:
- As a trial for next year, the tag will be restricted to mids tagging mids (including any mid eligible player named as a utility)
- You can only tag up to 5 times over the course of the home and away season
- You cannot tag in finals

I think it should be - a team can only have tag used against it 5 times rather than a team can tag 5 times. Prevents 17 teams tagging Tuok.

Yeah I was trying to think of a rule for that...perhaps you can only tag a team in your 'tier' of 6?

[PowerBug]

If we go back to Purps vision, which is what we want to align our changes down, we do want to introduce this, but in a way that gets people used to the concept, more than anything that is necessarily going to have a huge impact in its first season. We tune and tweak at the end of 2023 again once it's been run and tested in practice.

So if we ease this is with either a maximum tags applied by a team or max tags applied against a team that would be reasonable. I think in practicality we won't see anyone get targeted 17 times, especially now that we are looking to limit it to mid/mid only. It would require a poor scoring mid to be used as the tagger, which isn't as common as the dud forward or dud defender. So I would say it's fine to introduce it as maximum 5 tags applied by a team.

Edit: also remove that 100 point cap, I know it's been mentioned by Purps in discord that we won't include it but given it's still in the post I thought I'd mention it.

[RaisyDaisy]

Now that we can trade future 1st round picks, I would like to put a vote to the following

A) Keep as is (Can trade your future 1st, but cannot do so in consecutive years)
B) No limitations (Can trade your future 1st every year)

Option B is essentially "no caveats" and I know there are several coaches who in hindsight would have voted for this instead of with caveats, and now that trading Future 1st's is part of the game, technically I can put this up for a vote now ;)

[PowerBug]

Tagging - Analysis

Introduction
The discord is popping off way too much with a lot of straw clutching theories, analogies, and "what if" scenario. So i thought it would be good to look in the other direction and see what we can decipher from the season that has just passed.

Firstly, the admin wants to go down this direction. This is the reason why reasons were asked for voting against it, and why there will likely be a second vote on it this year, as those who are big on this rule being introduced (e.g. myself), focus on finding a happy medium which the majority will accept. There is also an expectation to increase the impact in future years as we aren't ready to jump straight in yet (as has been shown by the amount of vocal opposition to certain areas). This means the initial proposal and implementation will not be as dramatic as we would like, but it will allow us to see this rule in action before making modifications to it in the future.

What I have decided to look in to is how good/bad each teams worst midfielder is. I've looked at each matchup across the 2022 H&A season and recorded the score. This will allow us to theorize less when it comes to what is too strong, too weak, who is way too advantaged and who isn't.

Assumptions

• We will only be considering mid to mid tagging
• When people name their teams they do so in rough preference order (E.g. A mid only U1 is 'worse' than the M4)
• Teams will always want to name their strongest 15. There is no benefit to deliberately picking a crap player just to tag
• Where DPP players are deliberately used as utilities (E.g. Mitch Duncan, Adam Treloar), they are ignored for the purpose
• Where the worst named midfielder is a DNP for WXV's purposes, the field for that team/round is left blank
• Year to year the ability of SC midfielders as a whole is roughly the same

Results

The average score of the worst named midfielder for each club, alongside their finishing position for 2022 (P.S. Sorry Dillos)


The number of sub 70, sub 60 and sub 50 scores for each team


Scores required to breakeven on the tag

Discussion
One thing to me automatically stands out. Those are some high averages across the board. Given the proposal is a 50% reduction to the tagger, the league average of 76 would imply that the taggee scores 126 just to break even. There does appear to be some correlation between being higher on the ladder and having a higher average, this may be expected, however it is not a given. Tokyo and Cape Town not naming any weak mids, whlist a team like Pacific had a 5 game stretch where their worst mid averaged 54.4, a perfect time to tag. Also surprising that whilst Buenos Aires had a high average overall, they had 4 sub 50 scores which would prove to be very beneficial if they apply a tag in those games.

The lowest score amongst these worst mids was a 2 by Greg Clark for Dublin, a game where he got subbed on in the AFL but Dublin had no mid emergencies to take his place in WXV. The highest score was an Angus Brayshaw 176 in Round 3, before kb realised that he was going to be a gun all season, an unlikely tagger anyway. There is also a clear trend that the season average dropped as the season went on, a sign of both us as coaches being more aware of who our best and worst players are, and also injuries seeing us have to name worse players.

I don't have numbers on how high top midfielders score, but my guess is that every team has someone who is capable of hitting that 105 mark on any given week (Not necessarily the same player each week because matchups). So if we use the sub 60 tagger scores, there's no team who would definitely find a benefit from using this more than half the season.

Proposal
Given the above, given the randomness involved with scoring (which no one seems to want to talk about, everyone seems so definite on how things play out each week), I think the best method to introducing this system, is to allow each team 5 opportunities a season to tag an opposition midfielder of their choice. This will give everyone ample ability to see the rule in action in a way which is definitely not too strong, but if used correctly will give a benefit to teams. Then in 12 months it can be reviewed (Like we did with resting upping it from 10% to 20%) to see if it needs to have increased power or exposure.

I'm interested to hear what else people take out of the above tables as well :)

[Purple 77]

Sensational PB, I'm inclined to put that one forward.



Any further rule suggestions must be submitted by Friday 5pm AEST

[Purple 77]

Rules currently in the next vote:
- Ruck OOP to be 25% penalty if using tall player
- Being above min cap after the PSD draft not before the Nat.
- Tag Lite
- Trading future firsts

[PowerBug]

My Ruck suggestion is again one which has been brought up before (3 years ago), which I think is worthy of another mention.

We've seen rucks become less important over the course of the last 3 years, teams often running guys like Dunkley, SPP and Cripps in the ruck. So I vote that in conjunction with Flood/Attack, we add "Small", so teams can go without a ruckman and instead name a 3rd Utility. It would just form part of the current usage of 5 times per year in the H&A season, a limit barely any teams use up anyway.

Reasons to vote....
For:
- Gives ruck relief when you get cucked in a given round.
- Isn't something which changes trade value of rucks as they are still necessary in finals.
- Is somewhat realistic with teams opting to run the extra mid/runner at the expense of a ruck and they don't get penalised for it in the right circumstances, whereas doing it every week would eventually cause issues.
- Matches the relief provided for Fwds and Defs with the existing rule.
- Provides an option which is probably the most tactical of the three, there's some dodgy rucks going around but your 15th best non-ruck might be worth rolling with even when stocked with rucks.
- Our F/A limits don't get used up by a lot of teams (Need Purps to provide data on this one that's just my guess), this provides an alterative for teams to use it up.

Against:
- Doesn't change the trade value of rucks. Some people are of the opinion ruck value needs to be dropped
- You want Flood/Attack scrapped and this just adds to the 'free pass' for poor squad depth (It just got voted to stay in for another year though)
- You believe being ruckless is always worthy of a penalty due to the importance of rucks in the AFL
- Being able to name a "7th mid" (4 + 3 util) is too over powered, even if it's only 5 times a season and not in finals.

[PowerBug]

So there's thoughts that this is too overpowered as a tactical option. As usual I figured well let's look in to 2022 and see what we can take from this

Assumptions

• The highest named preference emergency subs on for the "forced" R1 selection
• If said emergency has already subbed on, the next named emergency is chosen
• If a team named more than 1 ruck or if not naming their R1 wouldn't result in them using this tactic, there is a blank space
• If the first preference emergency was a named ruckman, there is a blank space

Results


The numbers behind this:

• There were 27 times OOP was forced, all of these result in a positive gain
• 201 opportunities where a club "could have" chosen to employ this tactic. This is just every time a team only named one ruck where the 16th player was also not a ruck

There is obviously some use to the OOP usage of this. If you wish to vote against this proposal due to it's OOP usage, that is a perfectly reasonable stance to have


The numbers where this could have been employed tactically


Discussion
Lets look at this more in depth

• 201 opportunities for tactical usage, 49 where there's a net positive result. ~25%
• 27 times where there's a >20 point gain. 13.5%
• 5 times where there's a significant >50 point gain
• The 5 pairings that would result in these gains: McEvoy for Gunston (Rd 17), Caleb Graham for Curtis Taylor (Rd 13), Rozee over Draper (Rd 3), Stanley for Hardwick (Rd 15), Ryder for Breust (Rd 16). This assumed that the coach chose to use the tactic. Seoul had 8 OOP opportunities before their first big tactical win arose to use one.
• Some of the other big wins include tactically dropping the likes of the following: OMac, Goldstein, Pittonet, ROB.

In reality, there's very few scenarios where this is actually beneficial, a 25% chance of being right if you select randomly, even Rome with Draper or Rio with TDK/SHayes would've make a mistake over 50% of the time. There's no basis for this being game changing, there's no basis for this completely ruining trade value. It mayhave a minor effect on the pursuit of backups rucks, but come finals you still need your ruckman playing. The aim of this competition to build a balanced, good squad is still very much intact.

If you want to vote against this, it's because you don't like rucks being given the opportunity for some OOP leeway, like we currently have for defenders and forwards. It is NOT because you think this is an over-powered tactical advantage

PowerBug

[Holz]

PBs Ruck suggestion is again one which has been brought up before (3 years ago), given that a few teams have neglected their ruck lines its worth them trying to get this rule pushed rather then actually drafting and trading in rucks like the rest of the competition does.

Reason to vote

For:

- It benefits your team

Against:
- Fundamental rule change that effects past trade and draft decisons.
- Gives ruck relief when you havent got ruck cover like the rest of the comp has paid up for
- You want Flood/Attack scrapped and this just adds to the 'free pass' for poor squad depth
- You believe being ruckless is always worthy of a penalty due to the importance of rucks in the AFL
- Being able to name a "7th mid" (4 + 3 util) is too over powered, even if it's only 5 times a season and not in finals.
  -It vastly changes trade value of rucks and ladder positioning, HG and double chances which are necessary in finals.
  - The realism of teams opting to run the extra mid/runner at the expense of a ruck is the same as a team playing a mid up forward in fact mids going up forward is far more common and the roles are more compatible 
     so if this added no reason we cant just add another mid fwd
   - not comparable to relief provided for Fwds and Defs due to the differing nature of the postions.
  - There are no penalties attached so there is limited to no tactical implication apart from covering a OOP or passing on a spud ruck for a premo on another line.

[Holz]

Rule suggestion:

Flooding and Attack (and Small if it gets through) is allowed only if you have 4 players play that week in the position you are choosing to play 3 players in.

This is to make it more of a tactical move and to take out just covering an OOP.

[Purple 77]

16 votes in


17. Ruck OOP penalty to be reduced to 25% penalty if using player 196cm or taller
A) Keep as is 12
B) Reduce penalty as outlined above 4

18. Move the requirement for teams to be above the minimum salary cap to post the PSD draft, rather than before the international draft
A) Keep as is 10
B) Move the requirement as outlined above (note that all teams will accept the risk of potentially not having access to players with sufficient salary in the drafts required to get above minimum cap, and if any team finishes below the minimum cap after 'filling' your list according to the size requirements as at list lodgement, you will be subject to the penalty of a loss of 1st round draft pick and 4 premiership points the following year - NO EXCEPTIONS) 6

20. Trading of future first round picks
A) Keep as is (Can trade your future 1st, but cannot do so in consecutive years) 3
B) No limitations (Can trade your future 1st every year) 13

[Purple 77]

All coaches have voted

19. Implement tagging as outlined in below post
https://www.fanfooty.com.au/forum/index.php?topic=114557.msg2026558#msg2026558
Key points
- Can use a tag 5 times per year
- only mids can tag other mids
- no OOP mids can tag another mid

A) No 8
B) Yes 10

21. Introduce the ability to go "Small" in addition to Flood/Attack, where you can name a U3 in place of a R1 (forms part of the current allowance of 5 times per year)
A) No 8
B) Yes 10

[Purple 77]

Rules are now locked in for 2023