Modelling Australian Football Performance: valuing players and predicting career success in the AFL

Project Member(s): Coutts, A.

Funding or Partner Organisation: Carlton Football Club

Start year: 2014

Summary: Talent identification and player recruitment is one area within Australian Football that has experienced rapid growth and resourcing. However, most talent identification methods is based on historical practice rather than prediction models from empirical data. Given the emphasis placed on recruitment and performance it is imperative that contributing factors to player and team success are properly understood. Such knowledge allows for 1) the development of prediction models to assist recruitment personnel in the identification of new talent, and 2) a greater understanding of player career success and team success.Therefore the purpose of this project is to provide a predictive model for player performance and long-term career success in talent identified youth AF players. A secondary purpose is to examine the career evolution and performance variability of AF players. Specific areas of research 1. Predictive modelling of AFL careers: Can we predict career success from early match performance data? a. Take match data from first 25/50 AFL games and determine predictive factors that relate to successful careers b. Develop position specific models 2. Match and physical performance characteristics of youth footballers: predictive model for predicting career success a. Look at match data and testing data of youth players to develop a model for career success b. Develop position specific models 3. Evolution of match-related performance characteristics over AFL careers a. Position specific variability and performance stability 4. Risk and reward characteristics of AFL draft picks a. Determine characteristics of early draft pick failures b. Determine characteristics of late draft pick successes

Publications:

Sullivan, C, Kempton, T, Ward, P & Coutts, AJ 2020, 'Career Performance Trajectories of Professional Australian Football Players', International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, vol. 15, no. 10, pp. 1363-1368.
View/Download from: Publisher's site

FOR Codes: Organised Sports, Sport and Exercise Psychology

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.