The final quarter of this season-defining Goulburn Valley League contest made for, frankly, some head-scratching numbers.
Princess Park was subjected to some heavy precipitation later on in the clash, providing a muddy spectacle befitting of the scratch-and-claw nature of Shepparton Swans’ last month or so of football.
Ultimately, though, they fell 16 points short against a determined Mooroopna, despite fiercely controlling several aspects of play.
How did the Swans fall short?
Marks: 16-4
Hit-outs: 23-8
Defensive 50 tackles: 3-0
Inside 50s: 13-9
Tackles: 23-14
It’s a set of numbers that provokes more than its share of questions.
Wet conditions or otherwise, you would typically only see a team take four marks across an entire quarter of football when that team is on track for a thoroughly miserable afternoon.
The Swans, in modestly winning the disposal count 74-64, registered kicks with a little more than 75 per cent of those touches; safe to say, this was not a give-and-go kind of afternoon.
Even so, the Swans had the better of virtually everything aerial, dominating contested marks 8-1 and claiming more intercepts in addition to Mitch Bell’s ruck victories.
Understandably, hit-outs to advantage were way down with rain-infused congestion in abundance, but the statistical dominance is remarkable from a team perspective.
Zac Alderton continued to firm his case for the club’s best-and-fairest via a Herculean effort in the wet with everything to play for, with his double-digit disposal tally in the final term supplemented by six ground ball gets, five tackles and four clearances.
That’s enough about the Swans for the time being, though — after all, the Cats still picked up two majors to the hosts’ one in that crucial period.
The first Mooroopna goal came with arguably maybe two clean disposals throughout the entire passage of play, one of which was the wobbling Bayden Fallon snap that just lobbed its way home.
In stark contrast to what GVL Data analyses are typically here for, this chain was defined mainly by the intangibles — second efforts that constantly kept the ball in motion, gaining consistent metres no matter how clean or awkward the contact.
It was a minute of play that looks set to define Mooroopna’s fortunes this year — and most certainly resulted in the end of the Swans.
It didn’t take 110 disposals or 40 marks or a wealth of inside 50s in the half-hour that was.
It required the old-fashioned and perhaps somewhat cliched metrics of heart and sheer willpower that lack numerical values, which John Lamont’s side displayed in spades even without statistically controlling the ball.