SA FOOTY PHILosophy - 2009 #1 : SA FOOTY DOES IT AGAIN !

[PhilH]

Welcome to a new SANFL season and a new series of SA FOOTY PHILosophy Pieces. This year the aim is to write something weekly covering many of the snippets of news around the SANFL. It should contain a top story, SANFL By The Numbers and a comment.

TOP STORY - SA FOOTY DOES IT AGAIN

Last year, this very web site shocked the Australian Footy internet community when it was ranked #7 most popular out of all AFL related sites beating all others based in South Australia.

Well for those who though it was a lucky fluke in this Monday's The Australian (March 30) there was a new list from Hitwise and despite it being measured pre-season (week ending March 25 2009) safooty.net it still ranked in the top 10 and #9 with a 2.21% market share

The top 10 is as follows
1) AFL Web Site 25.23%
2) The Age - Real Footy Site 10.69%
3) BigFooty.com - 10.36%
4) Essendon FC - 3.83%
5) Carlton FC - 3.30%
6) Collingwood FC - 3.30%
7) Richmond FC - 2.51%
8) Hawthorn FC 2.45%
9) SA FOOTY - 2.21%
10) Melbourne FC 1.92%


SANFL BY THE NUMBERS

Stat of the Week

Between them, they have won the last five Ken Farmer Medals but Daniel Shell (2004- 05), Mark Passador (2006) and Brant Chambers (2007-08) are all goalless after Rd 1.

Pre-season injuries kept Shell (Back) and Passador (Hamstring) off the field but Brant Chambers did play. He was held to just one kick for one behind at the same ground where he broke the 100 goal barrier back in 2007. It was the first time he has been held goalless since Rd 4 (April 28) 2007.


Other Notes from Round 1

- Central won their 8th straight season opener with an 8 point win over the Eagles.

- South won despite having 57 less possessions, 29 less marks and 5 less scoring shots than the Bloods.

- Norwood’s victory broken a recent trend where that had lost 4 of their previous 5 Friday night season openers at the Parade.

- The total attendance for Rd 1 was 17,935. This was 234 more than the first round last year and the second highest SANFL opening week attendance this decade.

- Of the 168 players who took the field, 51 (30%) kicked a goal but only 13 (7.7%) scored two or more.

- 24 players made their SANFL league debut ;
Port (5) – Gareth Bowes, Jarrod Young, Jordan Barham, Issac Weetra, Jay Shannon
South (5) – Shaun McKernan, Nick McKenna, Lee Schmidt, Chris Minns, Liam Corrie
Eagles (4) – Jay Cheep, Jarred Allmond, Angus Rowntree, Todd Miles
West (3) – Fortunato Caruso, Bronik Davies, Jason Davenport
Glenelg (2) –Wayde Mills, Daniel Meyer
Central (2) – Justin Hardy, Luke Barmby
Norwood (2) – Andrew Lee, Dean Terlich
Sturt (1) – Matthew Payne


Stat Stars

- Ben Warren (South), not only did his accurate kicking (7.1) provide the scoreboard difference against West he also set up at least two other goals in the first quarter as well.

- Nick Lower (Norwood) was surprisingly the only player to rake up more than 30 possessions (31). Five of the top six disposal leaders from Rd 1 were from the Redlegs.


Coming Up This Week

- Eagles have won 11 of the last 12 against West and 5 of the last 6 at Richmond.

- Central have won 27 of their last 31 against North but the Roosters have won the last 2 played at Prospect.

- Glenelg have won their last three against the Magpies. Before their Rd 22 win last year the Tigers had gone winless their last 16 games at Alberton.

- Sturt have won 4 of the last 5 head to head against the Redlegs but Norwood have won 3 of the past 4 at Unley.


CLOSING COMMENT

For mine it was a solid if not overtly spectacular start to the SANFL season last week.

Defence & accountabilty appear to be more in vogue this year with only one side, Norwood scoring above 100 points, all matches played in good conditions.

Crowd wise we all wanted massive numbers and many felt disapointed when only 17.900 turned up accross the four games, despite this being 200 more than last year and the second highest opening round attendance this decade.

The reality is minor round crowds over 20,000 will only occur in an AFL free environment and the slotting of Crows v Collingwood on Saturday afternoon had a direct effect on two of the matches played.

Hopefully the occupation by some elements of the main-steam media with certain off field issues (club finances, salary cap) will not detract from the overall big picture that the SANFL is a strong sporting competition in its own right with growing not diminishing support. Time will tell.

Phil Herden

[Wedgie]

Great article Phil, not sure if I'm happy or not we're ahead of Geelong but great to see us cleary in front of the SA based competition!

[JK]

Great stuff Phil, thanks for this, always enjoy reading your contributions

[zipzap]

It's sad how the worst site is the top one.

[spell_check]

It's sad how the worst site is the top one.

I think it's because everyone is forever hitting refresh to load it.

[Pseudo]

It's sad how the worst site is the top one.

No, the worst site came 3rd.

[nickname]

I think that should be 'Australian Rules-related' site, not 'AFL - related'.

[Barto]

It's sad how the worst site is the top one.

No, the worst site came 3rd.

Good call

[spell_check]

It's sad how the worst site is the top one.

No, the worst site came 3rd.

True, I was thinking about layout.