Effective Disposal Percentage

The in-vogue AFL stat, effective disposal percentage measures how often a team or player's disposals are to the advantage of a teammate.

This has become a crucial statistic in the AFL, as it measures how clean players and teams are with the ball in their hands.

As disposing of the ball by hand or foot is the essence of the game, a stat that conveys how accurately players do this is rightly highly valued.

Example: “Hawthorn are a clinical team, with a high effective disposal percentage of 77% across their last 3 games.”

While this stat can be a great indicator of a team or player with a high skill level, it can also be misleading.

Punters need to beware of paying too much attention to this AFL stat, as it can also be skewed towards teams that play overly safe football, just chipping the ball around in the back half.

Teams who tend to bomb the ball long and work off the contest might have a low disposal efficiency, yet be successful on the scoreboard. However, in the long run, a consistently high effective disposal percentage will result in a fair share of victories.

Benchmark: 73% is considered the average Effective Disposal Percentage in the league. Above that is great, below is poor.