Actually he has improved his statistics in nearly every single field this year including tackles, contested possessions, clearances and one percenters which most people would include in the "hard stuff". Although I've always said he shirks it a bit he is improving, but WP was on the right train of thought but in fact wrong regarding this example. Once we play bad people glance over the improvements and assume everyone is playing much worse.
Understand your point, would be interested to know what sort of improvement statistical there's been. Eg tackling if he was averaging say 1 tackle a game in 2013 and now averages 2.5 then it isn't that great an improvement.
But having said that stats can be misleading, very misleading. Or as a wise man once told me "you make stats tell whatever story you want them too"
For example I think he is an excellent long kick but the majority of his kicks this season seem to be short "chippies". Going into the dreamtime game he had; had 29 long kicks as opposed to 51 short kicks. He may have improved his tackling stats but again going into Dreamtime he wasn't in the top 5 tacklers in the side (Conca was way out in front with 62, Jackson 5th with 32 in 7 games). Ditto with hard ball gets not in the top 5, so although his stats in certain areas may have improved they don't appear to have improved enough to get him into the top 5 in a lot of the categories.
The other thing I noticed is his numbers say that just on 73% of his possessions are uncontested, so again although the stats say his contested possession numbers have improved they don't even make up 30% of his total possession. So if it is sitting around 27% in 2014 what was it previously?
But the glaring one for me is at "crunch times".
And with that in mind stats mean very little when a game is on the line and it's just you and your opponent and as the ball comes into the oppositions F50 you stand there like a stuffed donkey because you're not prepared to get hit and let said opponent gather ball and kick the winning goal (see round 3 -v- Footscray and Gia's goal). That's where stats lie because nothing would have registered on the stats sheet but in this case it certainly registered on the scoreboard and when you lose the scoreboard doesn't lie
But as I said would be very interested in the numbers regarding the improvement
ED: just noticed that going into Dreamtime Ellis' was averaging 2.9 tackles a game, two best on the list were Thomas at 7.7 per game & Conca 6.9 per game
