Nobody stokes debate or perpetuates a discussion about player worth like Cyril Rioli.
The Hawks speedster’s on-field presence divides fans in a way which is almost partisan – acceptance of his creativity and genius in one corner, unconvinced eyerolls and lamentations in the other.
The idea of how player perceptions are formed are rarely discussed. Is it one or many combinations of the statistical, aesthetical and other traits that has us settle into a view of a certain player? And what does it mean in the bigger picture of a match?
What if Rioli and the fanatical manner in how he divides footy observation, allows us to go even deeper into aspects like tactics and human perception biases? Perhaps we’re affected into perceiving things without even knowing so, meaning our overall conclusion might be flawed as a result.
Rioli, at least in my opinion, might be both overrated and underrated in different ways. It really depends on the context.
Overrated as a Player
Perhaps rephrasing this is better; Rioli in my view does not reach the level of expectation that he is lauded for by some pundits. I do think despite his fantastic highlights reel, it’s ultimately deceiving as to the overall nature of his output.
This can be deceiving due to a simple trick of visual perception.
In ‘The Numbers Game’, a fantastic read by Chris Anderson and David Sally, they seek to bust myths in football by using arguments based in behavioural psychology and economic theory.
An illustration of how a ‘highlight reel’ can be an illusion, is summed up by the story of Sir Alex Ferguson selling Dutch international defender Japp Stam in 2001. Despite the world being stumped at him being moved on, Ferguson had privately used match data of Stam’s to justify his transfer from the club. He argued Stam was tackling less and less, and therefore his output was diminishing.
Ferguson later admitted it was one of the biggest mistakes he ever made. Anderson and Sally argue the mistake Ferguson made, was one of confusing absence vs. presence.
Absence vs. presence is the occurrence in human perception where we prioritise mentally the things that happen over the things that don’t. For instance in the case of Sir Alex Ferguson, he was overvaluing the measure of tackles.
Tackling in the round ball game occurs when someone makes a mistake - if the defender is marking/jockeying a player correctly, there’s no need to tackle. Ferguson needed counterfactual thinking – just because Stam was doing less, didn’t mean he was doing anything wrong.
In the case of Rioli, just because we’re able to visualise his occasional brilliance, doesn’t mean it’s illustrative of his game as a whole. When we’re thinking of Rioli’s output, we’ve prioritised the things that have happened (ridiculous goals, marks) over things that haven’t (the multitude of times he’s had quiet games and isn’t having an influence).
Also, Rioli’s unfortunate struggles with injury don’t help. It’s quite clear his fragile hamstrings and tightly regimented medical program to keep him on the field has hurt his stamina. A player of his sublime creativity not being able to get to the amount of contests other “A-graders” do, hurts his ability to impact games at the level he’s suggested of being at.
Underrated in his Role
Inversely within Hawthorn’s machine, he’s an incredibly vital cog.
Statistically, while his game to goal ratio (1.3) may pale in comparison to Eddie Betts (1.7) or Lindsay Thomas (1.6), the less publicised stats is where he shines.
Goal assists is Rioli’s mainstay. For total goal assists in a season, he was ranked in the league fifth in 2008, third in 2011, third in 2012 and seventh so far in 2015.
It’s clear in this that his creativity isn’t just in his disposals inside the forward half, but pitch hitting in the middle and his fantastic ability to chase, tackle and guard space. There’s no exact numerical formula (yet) to measure that sort of match awareness or influence.
His ability to take the opposition’s best small defender allows Luke Breust to captialise by taking a lesser defender. And this doesn’t begin to cover his ability to do the unthinkable – a wild snap from the boundary or an obscenely well-timed paddle to a team mate which keeps the ball alive.
His role in the team is to execute and top off the grunt work down the ground. As we saw on the weekend, the Hawks did okay without Rioli but it wasn’t the same. There wasn’t that explosive and violent unpredictability at the feet of Roughead or Hale.
This is all perhaps less to do with my opinion of Rioli (which could be wrong), but rather an explanation of how we come to our relative conclusions about footballers.
Everyone is guilty of making a judgement on player X because they’re unable to do action Y well or often enough, despite bringing another valuable attribute or team balance to the table. Think more in terms of roles, contexts and perceptions rather than on face value or a common consensus. It’s impossible to have 22 complete players in a team.
Team sport is about chemistry and mixing attributes to finding a winning concoction. Overrated doesn’t mean not important.
