Extent of flag fancy’s crisis laid bare, surprise contenders’ lucky run: AFL injury ladderMax Laughton
Fox Sports
May 6th, 2021 The dramatic scale of West Coast’s injury crisis has been laid bare, with the 2018 premiers clearly the team most impacted by lost players in the 2021 season so far.
But at the other end of the spectrum, the top three sides on the ladder - Melbourne, the Western Bulldogs and Port Adelaide - have been three of the four luckiest at avoiding key injuries.
The numbers were revealed by Fox Footy analyst David King on Wednesday night’s edition of AFL 360, and come from Champion Data.
Rather than simply looking at how many players are out, the stats gurus use a rating of every player to give them a points value, showing just how much their team has missed out by not having them in games already played.
West Coast (145 points) has clearly been the worst-off so far. The gap between them and second-placed Fremantle (115) is larger than the gap between Fremantle and eighth-ranked Richmond (87).
In contrast, the undefeated Demons have been very healthy before losing Adam Tomlinson to an ACL rupture on the weekend, while the Power and Bulldogs are each missing a handful of best-22 members - Xavier Duursma and Zak Butters for the former, Josh Dunkley and arguably Ryan Gardner for the latter.
“While you’re healthy, you’ve got to bank your wins,” King said.
“You’ve got to get your wins on the board, otherwise you’ll run aground come later in the season.”
POINTS LOST TO INJURY (Rounds 1-7, 2021 season)1. West Coast Eagles - 145
2. Fremantle - 115
3. North Melbourne - 107
4. Hawthorn - 102
5. St Kilda - 91
6. Essendon - 89
7. GWS Giants - 88
8. Richmond - 879. Adelaide Crows - 84
10. Geelong Cats - 64
11. Sydney Swans - 63
12. Collingwood - 60
=13. Brisbane Lions - 54
=13. Carlton - 54
15. Western Bulldogs - 47
16. Melbourne - 46
17. Port Adelaide - 40
18. Gold Coast Suns - 32
https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/afl-2021-afl-injury-ladder-injury-news-west-coast-eagles-injury-crisis-luckiest-teams-analysis-news/news-story/93e40b789595c48a8ed248fe4f1bdf01
