1. INTRODUCTION

An exploratory analysis of the top 20 AFL goal scorers during the 2023 season was performed. Data was collected using the r package fitzRoy, which scraps data from various sources such as AFL tables and Footywire.

2. The top 20

The number of goals each player scored for each game of the 2021 season was summed and then sorted by the top 20. This list is provided in the table below:

library(fitzRoy)
data <- fetch_player_stats_afltables(season = 2023)
ID First.name Surname goals Playing.for
12421 Charlie Curnow 81 Carlton
11713 Taylor Walker 76 Adelaide
12563 Nick Larkey 71 North Melbourne
12025 Toby Greene 66 Greater Western Sydney
12199 Joe Daniher 61 Brisbane Lions
12277 Charlie Cameron 59 Brisbane Lions
12017 Jeremy Cameron 53 Geelong
12655 Oscar Allen 53 West Coast
12349 Kyle Langford 51 Essendon
11548 Tom Hawkins 49 Geelong
12321 Jesse Hogan 49 Greater Western Sydney
11954 Luke Breust 47 Hawthorn
12639 Brody Mihocek 47 Collingwood
12594 Aaron Naughton 44 Western Bulldogs
12454 Eric Hipwood 41 Brisbane Lions
12851 Oliver Henry 41 Geelong
12983 Jye Amiss 41 Fremantle
12728 Ben King 40 Gold Coast
12083 Jamie Elliott 39 Collingwood
12704 Jack Lukosius 39 Gold Coast

2.1 Teams

We then investigated the top 100 goal scorers of the 2023 season and tabulated this against their respective teams. Overall, Collingwood had the most players in the top 100 and West Coast had the fewest. This is clearly reflective of the actual results (as per the ladder standings) for the season.

3. Limitations

Whilst goals scored are important (more goals = wins), we have to be cautious when interpreting these results. In particular, all positions (including defense) were lumped together, so many of the good non-goal scoring players were excluded from the top 100 list.

Interestingly, an inspection of number of kicks by goals scored (per game) reveals a very unique distribution:

Here, it appears that more kicks = more goals up to a certain point only. This is unlikely to be true however. What’s most likely occurring is that we are picking up on other positions as well within this plot - which future studies should investigate.