Debuting in a VFL/AFL Grand Final is rare

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When Marlion Pickett runs onto the M.C.G for Richmond in the AFL Grand Final this Saturday, he’ll be only the sixth player in 124 finals to debut on the big day.

The sole purpose of this blog post is to illustrate how incredibly easy it is to figure this out, thanks to the dplyr and fitzRoy packages.

library(dplyr)
library(fitzRoy)

afldata <- get_afltables_stats()

afldata %>% 
  select(Season, Round, Date, ID, First.name, Surname, Playing.for, 
         Home.team, Home.score, Away.team, Away.score) %>% 
  group_by(ID) %>% 
  arrange(Date) %>%
  # a player's first game 
  slice(1) %>% 
  ungroup() %>% 
  # grand finals only
  filter(Round == "GF") %>%
  # get the winning/losing margin 
  mutate(Margin = case_when(Playing.for == Home.team ~ Home.score - Away.score,
                            TRUE ~ Away.score - Home.score)) %>% 
  select(-Home.team, -Away.team, Home.score, Away.score)
Season Round Date ID First.name Surname Playing.for Margin
1908 GF 1908-09-26 5573 Harry Prout Essendon -9
1920 GF 1920-10-02 6677 Billy James Richmond 17
1923 GF 1923-10-20 6915 George Rawle Essendon 17
1926 GF 1926-10-09 3824 Francis Vine Melbourne 57
1952 GF 1952-09-27 9361 Keith Batchelor Collingwood -46

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