A fifth of the players. Close to a third of the football. And almost none of it where you would expect to find it.
The football does not leave evenly. Sydney lead the AFL this season for metres gained, inside 50s, rebound 50s, intercepts, goal assists and marks inside 50 — six league-best measures. The five account for close to half of every centre clearance the club wins and close to a third of the ball it moves, but only about one in seven of its marks inside 50 and one in nine of its contested marks. The forward line, the ruck and the intercept spine are close to untouched. Winning it at the source, and getting it out of defence, is where the football actually goes.
Five players out of twenty-three is a little over a fifth of a side. That is the line every number below should be read against: if the five were an ordinary fifth of Sydney's football, every bar in this chart would sit on the dashed line. Almost none of them do.
What the chart shows is not that these are good players — everyone already knew that. It is where they are good, and how unevenly it lands. At the top of the chart are the things you do at a stoppage and on the way out of the back half. At the bottom are the things you do with your hands above your head inside 50. That gap is the entire story of what this side looks like without them.
Sydney send four players to every centre bounce, which across a season comes to about 125 attendances a game. Isaac Heeney takes 23 of them and Chad Warner 18 — the eleventh and fifty-first busiest centre-bounce players in the competition. Add James Jordon's seven and the five are standing in two of every five of Sydney's centre bounces.
What makes this the sharpest part of the whole read is who would normally walk into those spots. James Rowbottom, who takes eleven bounces a game, is out with a hand injury. Justin McInerney, who takes eighteen — more than Warner — has a hamstring. Peter Ladhams, who takes twenty-one when he plays, is unresolved. All three are on the club's injury list as of 18 August.
What is left is genuinely good, and it is fewer bodies. Brodie Grundy stands at more centre bounces than anyone at the club and is one of the three highest-rated Sydney players of the season. Errol Gulden has the best contribution rating on the list and, after ten games broken up by injury, played a 47-disposal game in Round 23 — his return is the single most useful thing on Sydney's team sheet right now. Angus Sheldrick has seventeen games and twelve bounces a game in his legs. That is a real midfield. It is also three names where there were six.
Nick Blakey gains 594 metres a game. Only four players in the AFL move more ground than that, and it is a little over one metre in every eleven Sydney gain all season — from one player. He is fourth in the competition for rebound 50s. Riley Bice, on the other side of the same defence, is in the top fifth of the league for contribution rating with twenty games at four-fifths of the match on the ground.
Here is the part worth sitting with. Sydney lead the AFL for intercepts — and Tom McCartin, Callum Mills, Lewis Melican, Dane Rampe, Sam Wicks and Jai Serong are all still here. The ball-winning half of that defence is intact. What thins is what happens in the next four seconds: the kick that turns an intercept into territory. Sydney lead the competition for both rebound 50s and metres gained, and the two players who do most of that work are the two who are out.
That is why the table below moves the way it does. It is not a defence that stops functioning. It is a defence that keeps winning the ball and has fewer ways to send it anywhere.
| What Sydney do | Per game | In the AFLNow | Five out | SitsFive out |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Centre clearances14.2 → 9.1 per game | 14.2 | 3rd | 9.1 | 18th |
| Clearances, all37.2 → 27.6 per game | 37.2 | 5th | 27.6 | 18th |
| Rebound 50s42.1 → 34.6 per game | 42.1 | 1st | 34.6 | 18th |
| Metres gained6,584 → 5,474 per game | 6,584 | 1st | 5,474 | 17th |
| Kicks206.5 → 176.5 per game | 206.5 | 13th | 176.5 | 18th |
| Pressure in the back half128.8 → 118.0 per game | 128.8 | 6th | 118.0 | 17th |
| Inside 50s60.0 → 51.3 per game | 60.0 | 1st | 51.3 | 12th |
| Contested possessions138.6 → 125.8 per game | 138.6 | 2nd | 125.8 | 13th |
| Score involvements110.9 → 100.1 per game | 110.9 | 2nd | 100.1 | 11th |
| Intercepts72.8 → 67.6 per game | 72.8 | 1st | 67.6 | 6th |
| Marks inside 5014.0 → 14.0 per game | 14.0 | 1st | 14.0 | 1st |
Four numbers Sydney lead or nearly lead the competition in sit last or second-last once the five come out — and all four are the same job.
One player out of a good side barely shows. Sydney played twelve games this season without Errol Gulden, the best-rated player on their list. In those twelve they had more of the ball, not less — more disposals, more metres, more score involvements — and went 10–2. They played two without James Rowbottom and won both. Football sides redistribute: twenty-two players each doing four per cent more is invisible on a stat sheet, and the table above assumes none of that happens.
But one number did not redistribute. In the two games Isaac Heeney missed, Sydney's centre clearances fell by roughly a quarter — almost exactly his share of them. Everything else absorbed; that did not. A specialist stoppage number has nowhere to go, because the players who would absorb it are already at the bounce. Ball movement and possession volume spread out. Centre-bounce work does not.
And the arithmetic changes again if McInerney gets up. With Justin McInerney fit, the centre-bounce shortfall roughly halves and the inside-50 gap closes to near nothing. The one thing his return does not touch is the exit out of defence, because nobody left on the list plays Nick Blakey's game. Callum Mills is the closest, and he is already in the side.
What we would not claim. The with-and-without samples for Heeney and Rowbottom are two games each — enough to point, not enough to settle. Injury status moves daily. And none of this is a statement about any match: it is a measurement of what a list is carrying.
Sydney sit second after Round 23 at 17–5, and they got there by being the best team in the competition at two things: winning the ball at the source and moving it further than anyone. Those are not two of their strengths among many. They are, on this season's evidence, the strengths — six league-best measures, four of them territory or supply.
The five who are out hold close to half the first of those and close to a third of the second. The forward line, the ruck and the intercept defence they leave behind are as good as they were on Sunday, and Errol Gulden walking back in is a genuinely significant thing for a side about to play finals. What the evidence carries is that the hole has one shape, in one place, and that the two men who would ordinarily fill it are on the injury list.
How much of it a top-two side absorbs in September is the part the numbers cannot tell you. That is yours.