Buddy hypothetical

[Captain]

Clearly Buddy would have contributed to an increase in our bottom line. As to the amount, that’s impossible to quantify, though it would be reasonably significant.

Personally I would have preferred another premiership..

[MattW]

It is obviously impossible to know how we would have played over the last 8 years without Lance. But I think it can be confidently stated and he has been a very big part of our success over that time. There are countless games where his contributions has been decisive.

He has consistently performed over a long period. He rarely has more than two bad games in a row. We are 91-45 when he plays. (At 67%, that's a better win percentage than McVeigh, Goodes, Parker, Kennedy, Rampe, Heeney.) He's had 4 All-Australians and two Coleman Medals as a Swan. We have made the finals every year he has played more than 10 games. He's kicked the 6th most goals in Sth Melb/Syd history, and is on track to finish third.

But more than that, speaking personally, it's been bloody great to cheer for one of the all-time great players. I have enjoyed and savoured every goal. I have also enjoyed watching him mature and the clear pleasure he experiences in the the success of his team-mates.

[Faunac8]

It is obviously impossible to know how we would have played over the last 8 years without Lance. But I think it can be confidently stated and he has been a very big part of our success over that time. There are countless games where his contributions has been decisive.

He has consistently performed over a long period. He rarely has more than two bad games in a row. We are 91-45 when he plays. (At 67%, that's a better win percentage than McVeigh, Goodes, Parker, Kennedy, Rampe, Heeney.) He's had 4 All-Australians and two Coleman Medals as a Swan. We have made the finals every year he has played more than 10 games. He's kicked the 6th most goals in Sth Melb/Syd history, and is on track to finish third.

But more than that, speaking personally, it's been bloody great to cheer for one of the all-time great players. I have enjoyed and savoured every goal. I have also enjoyed watching him mature and the clear pleasure he experiences in the the success of his team-mates.

Great overview totally agree with you

[Captain]

It is obviously impossible to know how we would have played over the last 8 years without Lance. But I think it can be confidently stated and he has been a very big part of our success over that time. There are countless games where his contributions has been decisive.

He has consistently performed over a long period. He rarely has more than two bad games in a row. We are 91-45 when he plays. (At 67%, that's a better win percentage than McVeigh, Goodes, Parker, Kennedy, Rampe, Heeney.) He's had 4 All-Australians and two Coleman Medals as a Swan. We have made the finals every year he has played more than 10 games. He's kicked the 6th most goals in Sth Melb/Syd history, and is on track to finish third.

But more than that, speaking personally, it's been bloody great to cheer for one of the all-time great players. I have enjoyed and savoured every goal. I have also enjoyed watching him mature and the clear pleasure he experiences in the the success of his team-mates.

I actually agree with all this and feel much the same way for most part.

My issue is that we sold the entire farm in order to get all of this along with no premiership.

[mcs]

I actually agree with all this and feel much the same way for most part.

My issue is that we sold the entire farm in order to get all of this along with no premiership.

We had our chances though - 2 grand finals and a prelim thrown in as well. Who knows what might have happened in the counter factual - we might have dropped away to nothing, we might have soared to greater heights?

In general, it is really, really hard to win the flag - do we judge the deal to bring Plugger to the swans a failure because we didn't win a flag? Of Course not.

We've been spoilt by historical standards in the 2000s - 5 grand finals within 11 years, 2 flags (by comparison the dogs yesterday played in only their 4th grand final of the VFL/AFL era).

It could have 3 or 4 flags (or even 5 given 2006) within a decade.

None of that is to say that we didn't bring Buddy to the club to help us win the cup - of course we did. But when one reflects on how tough they are actually to win, its a big call to use that as the primary measure of success or failure when Buddy is just 1 of 22 guys out there on any given day. Which is of course an argument that can be used on both sides - i.e. that you should not overspend on any one player, but alternatively that you can't expect one player (no matter how good they are) to be guaranteed to be the difference between not winning and a flag and winning a flag.

[Ruck'n'Roll]

Not going to try to draw any conclusions from crowd numbers - there are far too many factors in there to say anything with any genuine conviction that there is causality to accompany the obvious correlations.

Appreciate that mcs - but can we really gve any more credence to membership numbers? Are we comparing apples with oranges now? A membership used to involve purchasing a seat for 11 games a season, these days that's probably the minority of memberships.

[Big Red]

In general, it is really, really hard to win the flag - do we judge the deal to bring Plugger to the swans a failure because we didn't win a flag? Of Course not.

It is hard to win a flag, 72 years without one is pretty clear evidence to that. One thing they do have in common is that Buddy and Plugger's time at the Swans didn't yield a single flag. That's 13 years of near misses, compared to 14 years with 2 flags. So maybe a marque key forward is good for attendance/memberships but less good for actually winning premierships. It could be that such a key forward makes a team too predictable, but I think it might have something to do with the big contracts that come with a marque key forward leaving less for other good players.

[Big Red]

It is obviously impossible to know how we would have played over the last 8 years without Lance. But I think it can be confidently stated and he has been a very big part of our success over that time. There are countless games where his contributions has been decisive.

Buddy has certainly been a part of our success, but how much of that on field success was based on Buddy?
Even for a great forward like Buddy, a lot of their success is dependent upon the work of players further up field.

[KSAS]

IMO we would have NOT made the 2014 & 2016 GFs without Buddy. There would be no debate about his contract had we won at least one of these 2 GFs, which is one of many reasons why the 2016 GF umpire gate hurts so much. The week leading up to the 2014 GF the AFL announced our trade ban which I believe was a deliberate ploy to upset our preparation. Not that is an excuse for our performance that day (Buddy was one of our best) but nevertheless it revealed the AFL's retribution that we don't win flag with Buddy.

[Ruck'n'Roll]

Buddy has certainly been a part of our success, but how much of that on field success was based on Buddy?
Even for a great forward like Buddy, a lot of their success is dependent upon the work of players further up field.

I think it's a bit premature to do a retrospective on a currant player - actually I don't think it's possible until ALL the dominoes set in motion by a trade have toppled, which sometimes is well after the player in question has retired.

[mcs]

Appreciate that mcs - but can we really gve any more credence to membership numbers? Are we comparing apples with oranges now? A membership used to involve purchasing a seat for 11 games a season, these days that's probably the minority of memberships.

It has been a long while since a Membership only involved purchasing a seat for every home game for a season however. I've been a member since 2003 and even at that point there were several options that didn't involve 11 matches a season. So for the purposes of considering Buddy's time at the club, that probably isn't a significant factor that needs to be strongly considered - while there has been a bit more flexibility put into membership packs the last few years, the offering has not really substantially changed in broad terms (I.e. still a mix of full access memberships + ones with 3/5 games and some other random combos). The mixture of Memberships across categories would be interesting to see however, but needs a lot more data that simply isn't available (as far as I am aware) - i.e. what is the true 'value' to a club from having a member. An interesting question for another day!

The issue that needs further consideration is what is actually counted within membership tallies, and whether this has significantly changed in recent years. I have no idea what changes to definitions have been made post 2013 - the only mention I've seen (without doing a lot of looking!) is on here, where definitions were actually tightened a little http://www.footyindustry.com/?p=3997

I'd suggest the increase in numbers are too substantial based on historical trends to solely be explained by those types of factors, although they would of course play a part. And the question of 'value' to a club from a membership is an interesting one worthy of consideration if there was true access to the data needed. Its quite clear some teams absolutely smash it in terms of maximising value from memberships (look at West Coast's returns), and others don't - I suspect we are probably an underperformer compared to average in that space.

In broad terms, I think Memberships are a more reliable indicator by quite some distance compared to crowd numbers, but that doesn't in itself make them a wholly reliable measure. But its probably the best indicator we have in some regard too, and should have a reasonable correlation with the 'returns' the club have recieved in relation to off field impacts from recruiting Buddy.

[stevoswan]

IMO we would have NOT made the 2014 & 2016 GFs without Buddy. There would be no debate about his contract had we won at least one of these 2 GFs, which is one of many reasons why the 2016 GF umpire gate hurts so much. The week leading up to the 2014 GF the AFL announced our trade ban which I believe was a deliberate ploy to upset our preparation. Not that is an excuse for our performance that day (Buddy was one of our best) but nevertheless it revealed the AFL's retribution that we don't win flag with Buddy.

+1 This is spot on......especially the last bit. We've had our papers stamped 'verboten'.

[Ruck'n'Roll]

Thanks for your clarification mcs

[neilfws]

In broad terms, I think Memberships are a more reliable indicator by quite some distance compared to crowd numbers, but that doesn't in itself make them a wholly reliable measure. But its probably the best indicator we have in some regard too, and should have a reasonable correlation with the 'returns' the club have recieved in relation to off field impacts from recruiting Buddy.

It is a tricky business, figuring out membership data. I think you're right that information about how many of each type isn't publicly available or at least, very hard to come by.

The Swans Wikipedia page has a table with memberships and average home crowds. I do not know precisely how either are calculated or where the data comes from but hey, we can make a chart anyway. Crowds left, members right.



So home crowds essentially peak following the 1996 GF and since then have oscillated around, depending largely on finals performance. What's interesting to me is that members mirrors crowds, somewhat anyway, up to around 2011 and then absolutely take off. How much of that is due to differences in how they were counted, I do not know.

We can dig into crowds a bit deeper, looking at just SCG crowds and just home & away games.



Well, correlation is not causation. But I think we see rises associated with improved performance and finals success in 1987, the rise to 1996 and again from 2003-2006. Interesting though that 2012 was quite low. Certainly consistently high from 2014 onwards. How much is the star players (Capper, Plugger, Buddy), how much the performance improvements, how much are those things linked? Difficult questions.

It would be interesting to compare with other clubs of course, but I can't think of too many in recent times with so much focus on the signing of one star player as with Buddy. In my mind the only contemporary of similar stature / media interest is Dustin Martin but of course, he has never switched clubs.

[mcs]

Excellent as always Neilfws, knew you would find a few moments to take a look at it

I think there could be some really fascinating stories to be told about the Sydney sporting market if one had access to the right information about crowds/memberships etc. Certainly would be nice to do a bit of empirical testing to consider that question of causality and correlation.