Tom Rockliff
Break up of scores with no allowance for injuries
Season - 16 games at 101.9 (2014 18 games at 132.0)
Home - 9 games at 101.1 (Home wins 3 at 129.3, Home losses 6 at 87.0)
Away - 7 games at 103.0 (Away wins 1 at 97.0, Away losses 6 at 104.0)
Wins - 4 games at 121.3
Losses - 12 games at 95.5
Trying to define Rockliff's injury affected games was very problematical. Some are obvious, some are a result of possibly returning too soon from injury. Let's look at a brief history of his early season injuries:
Rnd 1 v Collingwood -
Broken Ribs (TOG% 50%)
misses rnds 2 & 3, plays rnd 4 but only manages 16 disposals in TOG% 80%
Rnd 5 v Gold Coast -
Knocked out in the first 10 minutes TOG% 8%
plays rnds 6 & 7, and in both games has 19 disposals in TOG% 89%, rnd 8 shows signs of improvement with 27 disposals in TOG% 79%
Rnd 9 v St Kilda -
Rebreaks ribs (TOG % 75%)
Takes proper break this time. Misses rnd 10, bye rnd 11, misses rnds 12, 13 & 14.
So the question becomes, where do we draw the line? Was he back to normal by rnd 8, only to get injured rnd 9 again?
I've taken the easy approach, and called all the games up to rnd 9 injury affected, and all the games rnd 15 and later as "normal".
The table above has those injury games highlighted. When we remove those from his analysis we get:
Injury affected - 7 games at 77.0
Non-injury affected - 9 games at 121.3 (2014 22 games at 93.5)
Home - 5 games at 117.6 (Home wins 2 at 148.5, Home losses 3 at 97.0)
Away - 4 games at 126.0 (Away wins 0 at 0.0, Away losses 4 at 126.0)
Wins - 2 games at 148.5
Losses - 7 games at 113.6
Of note...
On Rocky's return in rnd 15 he managed 27 disposals (TOG% 83%) against Sydney, but then fell to 14 disposals and 16 disposals against Melbourne and North in the next 2 games. Was this Rocky still being injury affected, and working his way back? I've elected to say no. His work rate was there, as evidenced by his 17 tackles against Melbourne. More tackles than possessions! 17 tackles is the equal 2nd highest ever recorded in a game (A feat achieved 3 times in 2015. Johncock holds the record with 20!).
So the above figures look cut and dry. Rocky comes off a Ablett-esque season of 132 in 2014, and manages to record 121 in his 9 non-injured games, and we get to buy him this season at a price of 102 (around $550k). So we all start with him, and why not, he'll be around $160k cheaper than he was in rnd 1, 2015!
But wait!!!
Let's remember we were all worried about how Beams would affect Rocky in 2015! Didn't Beams go missing about the time Rocky came good? I hear the smarter ones of you say. The answer is YES!!!
Let's look at those 9 games again!
Rnd 15 Beams has no problems, Rocky scores 126.
Rnd 16 Beams injures shoulder. Reported as season over (but it isn't!). Rocky scores 101
Rnd 17 Beams misses game, Rocky gets a "Jacobed" 50, as North pants Brisbane 110-38
Rnd 18 Beams plays, but is obviously affected. His last game for 2015. Rocky scores 135
Rnd 19-23, No Beams, Rocky's scores are: 115, 145, 122, 146, 152 (ave 136.0)
If/when you take out Rockliff's injury games, it's a very small sample pool to look at, to see if Beams negatively impacts Rockliff's SC scores or not. One could possibly argue, the only "pure" game they played together, where neither was affected, was Rnd 15, where Rockliff scored 126. It's all pretty inconclusive, and does put another (or the same as 2015) question mark over taking Rockliff in 2016. Certainly Rockliff looked like his 2014 self in the last 5 games, once Beams was gone!
