Add Category
The contested possession has increasingly gained prominence in recent years, with players, coaches, commentators and fans offering different opinions on its role in the AFL.
Star Sydney Swans midfielder Errol Gulden has described contested possessions as "a key indicator for success", but not everyone in the AFL is enamoured by the concept.
"Contested ball is just a fancy term for everyone in the media," Alastair Clarkson said in 2016.
"We don't give a toss about that … we've won five contested-ball contests in about two years, so we've still won lots of games of footy."
So how important are contested possessions?
And what even is a contested possession?
The term was coined by Carlton premiership player and Champion Data founder, Ted Hopkins, in 1995.
The concept behind contested possessions stems from a simple principle: you can't score if you don't have the ball.
Hopkins saw the clear potential for contested possessions to describe who can control the terms on which football is played more successfully.
Originally, Hopkins dubbed contested possessions "disputed ball". The stat was meant to work out who was winning the ball when its control was in doubt.
Contested possessions are not about physical contact or contests. Instead, they are more about winning the ball when no team clearly has possession.
Champion Data defines contested possessions as "a possession which has been won when the ball is in dispute".
Contested possessions include "loose-ball gets, hard-ball gets, contested marks, gathers from a hit-out and frees for", according to Champion Data.
Independent football analyst Andrew Whelan decided to decode what makes up the broad term into more discrete categories.
"There's so many football statistics out there that aren't clearly defined," Whelan said.
"Many of these aren't well understood by the public."
Whelan's work helps us break down the concept of the contested possession into something a bit more tangible.
He was inspired to do this as he wanted to determine what goes into contested possessions so he could better understand the game and the fortunes of his side.
"Contested possessions are consistently quoted by the media but there's rarely a distinction between pre and post-clearance, or the types of possessions that make up contested possessions," Whelan said.
Different levels of contest
The gap between a contested possession and an uncontested one can be trivial at times.
See if you can pick the one contested possession in this passage of play below.
If you guessed the strong mark by Fremantle's Sam Sturt at the end of the clip, you would be wrong.
You would also be incorrect if you thought it was the Dockers' Jordan Clark's athletic grab off the Isaac Heeney ground kick.
Instead, it is Jake Lloyd's leisurely gather with all the time in the world on his hands.
Taking the ball on the full rather than the bounce makes the intercept an uncontested mark, rather than a loose-ball get.
And by definition, all loose-ball gets are contested possessions.
That is despite all three possessions happening as intercepts and the Fremantle marks coming under more pressure.
But before we jump too far ahead, let us break down those categories identified by Champion Data and demonstrate what they look like.
Hard-ball gets are possessions gained under direct physical pressure. This is the true coalface of football matches, where the ball is to be had and won.
No player has claimed more hard-ball gets than West Coast veteran Elliot Yeo in 2024. Yeo has set the tone for a younger Eagles midfield group.
The top end of the charts for hard-ball gets includes many taller players and bigger bodies, although there are a couple of notable exceptions.
This is where physicality and training play a key role.
A close cousin to the hard-ball get is the ruck hard-ball get. That is where one of the two nominated rucks — at a ruck contest — grabs the ball directly and gets it out.
GWS Giants' Kieran Briggs has dominated in this area so far this year. Unsurprisingly, it is rucks that tend to dominate this area.
There is one notable surprise: Carlton star midfielder Patrick Cripps currently rates in the top 20 in the area, sitting higher than several true rucks.
If Cripps takes a ruck contest, he is the only player more likely to grab the pill than register a hit-out.
There is also one more type of hard-ball win, one that happens in the air. Contested marks are increasingly an important function of the game: not only to score, but to move the ball down the ground.
All-Australian forward Charlie Curnow leads the AFL in contested marks this season, followed closely by an All-Australian defender, Harris Andrews.
Not much separates Curnow and Andrews in winning the hard aerial ball.
At the other end of the scale are loose-ball gets, when a player gains possession under no physical pressure.
If you sit far enough back in the outer you will hear players who rack up a lot of loose balls described as seagulls, hovering around the bulls contesting the hard ball.
But there is more to loose-ball gets than just hanging around the outside. They often come after hard work is done off the ball. Positioning is everything in footy and it often helps the hard look easy.
The best this year is one of the best at reading the game: Collingwood's Nick Daicos.
Daicos's elusiveness is core to his game, as he twists and turns his way through congested spaces to the ball.
He also leads the league in a semi-related area. Gathers from hit-outs happen where a player gains the ball from a hit-out to their advantage from their ruck.
The Magpies have optimised their stoppage set-ups to provide Daicos the room to operate. The young gun and his two primary rucks, Darcy Cameron and Mason Cox, have forged a strong relationship in reading each other's signs.
There is also a couple of types that do not neatly fit as hard or loose contested possessions.
Free kicks that happen in play also count as contested possessions, as do maybe the most interesting contested possession: contested knock-ons.
Often happening under physical pressure, contested knock-ons are where a player taps, punches or knocks the ball to a teammate's advantage.
One player stands streets ahead of the pack when it comes to this dirty ball.
Western Bulldogs captain Marcus Bontempelli has more knock-ons than the next two players combined.
Bontempelli excels at holding off opponents and still being able to make a difference with limited control of the ball.
All up, contested possessions are not just one thing: they are a combination of several elements.
Post-clearance contested possessions
But there is also another important split to consider.
Another set of terminology has increasingly entered the coaching lexicon in recent years: post-clearance contested possession.
The difference between a pre-clearance and post-clearance contested possession is simple. A pre-clearance contested possession happens before the ball is cleared from a stoppage (including a centre bounce), with the post-clearance happening after.
Last weekend, Essendon coach Brad Scott talked about controlling the stoppage against controlling the broader contest, and what really matters.
"I'll have to break down the clearance numbers into a little more detail," Scott said after the Bombers lost to the Demons by 17 points at the MCG.
"They won the pre-contest ground ball but then we won it post-clearance, the ground ball.
"It wasn't their inside players, it was more their peripheral players who were clearing the ball.
"Then when we were first to it. To their credit, their pressure was right on us and didn't allow us to move the ball the way we wanted to."
The Bombers — aided by the absence of star Demons ruck Max Gawn — were able to comfortably win the hit-out count.
But the Bombers were unable to control early possession around stoppages, which led to several Melbourne goals.
It is this type of difference that spurred Whelan to do his research.
"Contested possessions are consistently quoted by the media but there's rarely a distinction between pre and post-clearance, or the types of possessions that make up contested possessions," Whelan said.
"There should be a greater focus on the post-clearance numbers when referring to teams contested possessions."
Approximately two-thirds of all contested possessions happen after the clearance, using estimations generated by Whelan.
Most post-clearance contested possessions happen as a part of an intercept.
What's it really worth?
Digging into all the different layers of contested possessions might make you think: what does it all matter?
It turns out a bit, but maybe not everything.
Teams that win contested possessions over the past four years have won 70 per cent of matches.
That rises to 79 per cent when they win at least 10 more contested possessions than their opponent.
That is about the same ratio as the number of teams who have won matches after winning the uncontested possessions battle.
Post-clearance contested possessions appear to correlate better with winning than pre-clearance contested footy.
Moreover, it appears that the size of the gap impacts each category of possession differently.
Any sort of advantage after the clearance translates more readily into wins, while a team needs strong inside dominance to be impactful.
At the end of the day, getting the ball is more useful than not gaining possession.
Sports content to make you think... or allow you not to. A newsletter delivered each Saturday.