IT’S not as simple as saying high scoring equals good footy.

But jeez, we’d like a few more goals a game at this point.

The 2018 season, while unpredictable and exciting at times, has featured plenty of discussion over the quality of play and whether defence is simply winning out too much over offence.

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Finals Week 1

And now, after 10 rounds, we have the numbers to show the extent of the issue.

The AFL is in the midst of its lowest-scoring season in 50 years, with teams overall averaging 83 points per game.

If that continues over the entire home and away season, it would be the lowest-scoring since 1968, when teams averaged a hair over 82 points per game.

In that year, Geelong finished third and went 15-5 while scoring only 76.4 points per game, while the Grand Final saw Carlton defeat Essendon, 56 to 53.

Keep in mind that the overall league accuracy that season (goals versus behinds) was 47.54 per cent, whereas in 2018 accuracy is at 52.08 per cent (up from 51.67 after Round 6).

So even with teams kicking a lot straighter than they did half a century ago, they’re barely scoring more points.

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Teams are overall kicking one fewer goal per game than they did last year, when the league averaged 89 points.

As recently as 2013, the league averaged 92 points per game, while in 2007 AFL matches averaged two more goals per team per game (95 ppg). In 2000, the league averaged 103 points per game - 20 more, per team, than we have now.

These numbers weren’t helped by Round 10 being one of the lowest-scoring rounds in recent memory.

Footy analyst Insight Lane pointed out on Twitter that Round 10 saw teams average 74.5 points per game - the second-lowest average in the AFL era (since 1990), only beating Round 16, 1996 (74.1 ppg).

Lowest team average scores per round in the AFL-era (1990-2018):



74.1 points R16 1996

*74.5 points R10 2018*

75.5 points R19 1994

*76.4 points R5 2018*

76.9 points R15 2015

77.1 points R4 2001#AFL — InsightLane (@insightlane) May 27, 2018

In Round 10, only two teams scored more than 100 points - Richmond with 105 against St Kilda, and Melbourne, who saved the round from being the lowest-scoring in the AFL era by racking up 146 points against Adelaide.

Seven teams scored 60 or fewer points in Round 10, including pre-season flag fancies GWS and Adelaide.

Is this the footy we really want to be watching?