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The Wooden Spoon Table
Aug. 8th, 2017 12:50 pmSo I was sitting here, not actually typing away on Semagic or even reading Dreamwidth, but just sitting around on the couch feeling revolted that the Mighty Blues had let Brisbane get 54 points up at half time, got back to within 11 points and then let Brisbane win.
"Fucking hell," I thought sadly, "we're looking at a fifth wooden spoon in sixteen years."
Some checking on AFL Tables corrected me: it would be our fifth woodens spoon in fifteen years. I then wondered whether this was the quickest acquisition of that many wooden spoons. Well, there's no table for that on AFL Tables, so I thought I would while away the time by putting one here.
| WOODEN SPOON ACQUISITION | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TEAM | SPOONS | YEARS TO ACQUIRE | YEARS SPANNED | AVERAGE |
| Adelaide | 0 | |||
| Brisbane Bears | 2 | 2 | 1990-1991 | 1 |
| Brisbane Lions | 1 | 1 | 1998 | 1 |
| Carlton | 4 | 15 | 2002-2015 | 3.75 |
| Collingwood | 2 | 24 | 1976-1999 | 12 |
| Essendon | 5 | 110 | 1907-2016 | 22 |
| Fitzroy | 8 | 81 | 1916-1996 | 10.125 |
| Fremantle | 1 | 1 | 2001 | 1 |
| Geelong | 5 | 50 | 1908-1957 | 10 |
| Gold Coast | 1 | 1 | 2011 | 1 |
| Greater Western Sydney | 2 | 2 | 2012-2013 | 1 |
| Hawthorn | 11 | 41 | 1925-1965 | 3.7272 |
| Melbourne | 12 | 91 | 1919-2009 | 7.5833 |
| North Melbourne | 13 | 47 | 1926-1972 | 3.6153 |
| Port Adelaide | 0 | |||
| Richmond | 6 | 91 | 1917-2007 | 15.1666 |
| St Kilda | 27 | 118 | 1897-2014 | 4.2222 |
| Sydney | 11 | 92 | 1903-1994 | 8.3636 |
| Univeristy | 4 | 4 | 1911-1914 | 1 |
| West Coast | 1 | 1 | 2010 | 1 |
| Western Bulldogs | 4 | 45 | 1959-2003 | 11.25 |
| Notes: Data from http://afltables.com/afl/teams/allteams/seasons.html#over Sydney results incluide South Melbourne Western Bulldogs rsults include Footscray Brisbane Bears and Brisbane Lions treated as separate teams Brisbne Lions results do not include Fitzroy 'Average' is one spoon every however many years |
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If you look at the third and fourth columns there you will see that I'm not taking the 'span of acquisitions' from the team's entry into the League. I"m interested in how quickly they can acquire wooden spoons once they get their first. This produces the distortion that the West Coast are a crap side and that there's sometning rotten in the state of South Australia, but this is perfectly fair and reasonable as these are interstate teams manufactured by the AFL to take away Carlton's record as being the only team wihtout a wooden spoon. (Okay, we did have some by the time GWS and GCFG entered.) Well, anyway, I wasn't interested in how long a team could be in the League witghout a wooden spon (106 years, 1897-2002) but the speed of the acquisition.
Five wooden spoons in 16 years, a situation which is by no means unavoidable as we careen into round 21 later this week Australian time, would be one spoon every 3.2 years for the mighty Blues, making us easily the fastest acquirer except for the defunct Bris0bane Bears and University and the other teams that haven't been in the League that long. Certainly the fastest acquirer of any team that has been in the League since its invention at the end of 1896.
I suppose I could do a calculation that assumes everyone has been in the League for 121 years and see how that goes. Maybe. It's worth thinking about.
Go Blues!
