Andrew Gigacz’s Round 15 Stat. Declaration

THIS IS WHAT I WANTED. BUT IT’S NOT WHAT I WANTED.

Regular readers of this column will be aware that I have been lamenting throughout the season the fact that we have had no one-point margins. Well my prayers were answered on Friday night. The one point game finally arrived. BUT DID IT HAVE TO BE MY TEAM THAT LOST IT?

1 v 100

And no sooner than the 1-point drought got broken, so too did the 100+ point drought, with Adelaide’s 117-point shellacking of the hapless Dockers. So, after fourteen weeks without either occurring, 1 and 100+ are locked together on one apiece.

10 v 1000

While we’re on the topic of multiples of 10, it’s worth pointing out (especially if you’re a Crows fan) that, had this been Round 1 instead of Round 15, Adelaide would now be on top of the ladder with a percentage of 1000.0 and Fremantle would (still) be on the bottom with a percentage of 10.0.

0101

Still on 1s and 0s, Freo’s quarter-time and half-time scores of 0.1 and 0.1, when combined, make up the binary number 0101. The decimal equivalent of this number is 5. Freo have had 4 coaches (not including Ben Allan’s half-season in a caretaking role) in their history, so perhaps the half-time score was an indication that it was time to try a new fifth coach.

PRIME NUMBER DOES NOT EQUAL PRIME FORM

If anyone had believed Fremantle was primed for Saturday night’s game against the Crows, they were sadly mistaken. Although not completely. The Dockers’ final score of 13 (yes, you read correctly) was, at least, a prime number.

LOW SCORE HIGHLIGHTS

So low was Freo’s score of 1.7 (13) on Saturday night that an entire Stat. Dec. could be devoted to the team’s (lack of) achievement. It won’t be but here are the highlights:

•    It was Freo’s lowest ever score
•    It was the lowest score by any team since Richmond kicked 0.8 (8) in Round 16, 1961
•    It was the first time since 1991 that a team has been kept to a single goal in a match
•    It was the 161st occasion on which a side has been held to a score of less than 20. This might make it seem not all that uncommon but 128 of those 161 occurred before 1910. That makes only 33 in the last 100 years.

ANOTHER PAIR

Appropriately, at the time that the first test of the Ashes series was being played, Freo scored the footy equivalent of a “pair”, going two consecutive quarters without kicking a goal. It was the eighth such occurrence this year. As mentioned in last week’s Stat Dec, this did not happen once last year and finding out the last season we had as many as eight in a single season is the subject of the ongoing Gig-Dig No. 7.

IF ONLY IT WAS ROUND 2

Had it been round 2 this week and not Round 15, Melbourne would currently be equal top of the ladder and Geelong would currently be equal bottom.

An interesting question to ask would be: when was the last time the Demons won two on the trot? In fact it was only two years ago, when Melbourne defeated Adelaide and Collingwood in  Rounds 10 and 11.

Perhaps there’s a more interesting question: when was the last time Geelong lost two in a row? Not that much earlier as it turns out. It was in rounds 4 and 5 in 2007 that the Cats lost to Hawthorn and North before embarking on their incredible 55 from 58 sequence.

But maybe an even MORE interesting question would be: when was the last time we had two consecutive rounds where Melbourne won AND Geelong lost? Well, it was way back in rounds 14 and 15 of the 2006 season.

OK, maybe they weren’t such interesting questions…

THE MARGINAL MEDAL – EAGLES’ 20-20 VISION

Two 20-point margins this week have lifted 20 into a three-way tie for the lead with 15 and 22. One of this week’s 20-point margins was West Coast’s loss to St Kilda. West Coast also lost by 20 points last week, to Melbourne. The week before when they beat Hawthorn the margin was – you guessed it – 20. So the aim of Gig-Dig No. 8 will be to find out the last time a team was involved in three consecutive games where the margin was the same.

POSTCODE OF THE WEEK

This week’s postcode belongs to Geelong. Their quarter-time/half-time scores of 3.2 and 6.5 lead us to Dixie in western Victoria. Dixie’s postcode is 3265 and this is rather ironic, given that the only team whistling Dixie at the ‘Gabba on Saturday night was Brisbane.

ST KILDA – ALMOST THE PERFECT COMBINATION OF ART AND SCIENCE

It seems St Kilda’s search for perfection doesn’t just encompass the sphere of football. Their quarter-by-quarter scores against the Eagles on Sunday were 3.4, 5.7, 8.9 and 13.12. The goal parts of those scores (3, 5, 8, 13) form part of the famous Fibonacci sequence. By the definition this sequence starts with 0 and 1 and then each remaining number is the sum of the previous two. Thus, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 etc.

But St Kilda came close to something even more mathematically exciting. (No correspondence about mathematics and excitement being contradictions in terms will be entered into.) Had they scored one fewer behind in the first quarter, two fewer in the second,  one more in the third and one fewer in the last, their quarter-by-quarter score would have been 3.3 (21), 5.4 (34), 8.7 (55), 13.11 (89). This would have meant that their goal tallies would have formed 5th to 8th numbers of the Fibonacci sequence, while their total score tallies (21, 34, 55, 89) would have formed the 9th to 12th numbers of the sequence. That, my friends, is FIBONACCI FOOTBALL PERFECTION.

THIS WEEK’S RIDICULOUS FOOTY ANAGRAM:

That St Kilda survived unbeaten after its game against West Coast on Sunday was due in no small part to Leigh Montagna. The way Montagna danced around his Eagle opponents time and again was breathtaking. No wonder Montagna is an anagram of “TANGO MAN”.

About Andrew Gigacz

Well, here we are. The Bulldogs have won a flag. What do I do now?

Comments

  1. Peter Flynn says

    Gigs,
    Very impressive re Fibonacci reference.

  2. MagnifiCATS says

    Gigs – a wonderful mathematical smorgasbord; loved the “almost” Fibonacci perfection. Hope it happens one day.

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