Josh Kennedy has kicked another bag of ten goals, against another pretty ordinary looking side in Carlton.

The question arises as to how good Kennedy actually is. His overall output in recent years is pretty close to more highly rated gun forwards like Lance Franklin and Jarryd Roughhead (averaging 3 goals a game last year) but he probably doesn’t get the attention or accolades that those two do.



Last year, Kennedy kicked 4.7 goals a game against bottom-ten sides and 1.5 goals against top 8 sides, which strongly supports the label of “flat-track bully” but we need to dig into this deeper into this.

What is a flat-track bully?

A flat track bully is an athlete who pads their stats against bottom sides or in easy situations while struggling and disappointing against tough competition. This gives them the overall appearance of being very good, but a deeper look shows that they are relatively poor when the going gets tough. A man with a very high batting average against Bangladesh but very low against India or Australia might be described as a flat track bully.

This should be a relatively uncontroversial definition.

Measuring a flat-tracker

We can easily measure Kennedy’s output, as noted above with his 4.7 goals versus 1.5 goals per game against top and bottom sides.

The danger here is that players are not isolated from team effects. For AFL forwards, when the midfield is more on top it has more time and space, it can deliver better ball, while the forwards are being impeded less effectively.

The Eagles as a whole have the perception of beating up on lowly teams while looking a mile off from quality competition. Beyond that, logically all players should perform worse on average against better competition. (Once can discuss “big game specialists” as a conceptual exception to this, but even if true, the rule should hold on average for most players who aren’t Lewis Roberts-Thompson.)

What we should do is look within a team at different players. If certain players’ output drops more than average during difficult games, that makes them a candidate for the flat-track bully label or its cousin, the downhill skiier.

In this instance, we can compare Kennedy to other goalscorers to see who keeps performing when things get tough and who wilts away.

The numbers on West Coast’s goalscorers

West Coast’s top 7 goalscorers over the last three seasons were Josh Kennedy, Jack Darling, Josh Hill, Mark LeCras, Luke Shuey, Nic Naitanui, and Dean Cox.

Below are the raw numbers against top and bottom sides, which we have defined by finalists and non-finalists. In 2013 both Carlton and Essendon are being counted as finalists.

The four measures chosen are goals, scoring shots, marks and disposals. Goals are a forwards primary output and what Kennedy should be judged on, but other indicators are important context.

Aside from Cox and Darling all of these players have endured periods of injury, with only those two managing more than 60 games across a possible 68. However, we have a reasonable sample here across the last three seasons.

Results: Cox the flat-track bully?

Converting the tables above to “relative drop in output” we get the table below showing above and below-average dropoffs. These seven players drop off on average 23% across the four indicators, with a 43% drop on goals, 30% in scoring shots, 11% in marks and 6% in disposals.



We can see that Dean Cox and Luke Shuey suffered the worst drops in these areas of output during tough games. Making a subjective judgement, we suspect this shows them playing different roles in tough games, with Shuey fighting a tag and Cox probably playing more defensively and focusing more on ruckwork.



For the purpose of comparing Kennedy, we’ll exclude Shuey and Cox from the analysis below but include Naitanui as he’s a genuine forward option as well as a ruck.

Comparing Kennedy to other forwards we can see he drops off much more than other forwards in goals and scoring shots but holds up okay in terms of marks and disposals. Overall, Mark LeCras is least impacted by opposition quality.

Clearly whatever the reason, among specialist forwards, Kennedy is the player with the biggest difference between his goal and scoring shot output versus bottom sides and top sides.



Interestingly, Kennedy actually has 0.8 more disposals in games against finalists. While a modest increase, this suggests he may play a slightly different role when things get tough, pushing up the ground to get involved.



So is Kennedy a flat-tracker?

Probably a little. He does appear to inflate his goalscoring stats against bottom sides in a way he struggles more than most to replicate in tough games. Kennedy scores 1.8 goals per game against finals-bound sides compared to 1.7 from Darling and 1.6 from Mark LeCras. Against bottom sides he scores 3.7 versus 2.4 and 2.3.

Judged as a goalscorer, Josh Kennedy’s output suffered the most across the last 3 seasons compared to specialist forwards.

However, this doesn’t mean he is not as involved in the play in such games, with his disposal count holding up better than other forwards and his marks only declining an average amount.

-S