YOU MIGHT know the phrase from your local weeknight basketball league, but increasingly it's a term that's been adopted within the vernacular of AFL clubs and in particular within their analytics teams.

"Work the arc, work the arc, work the arc."

It's a phrase, however, that has seemingly bypassed the 'Blaze Away Blues'.

Clubs refer to 'working the arc' as the practice of finding the optimal place to deliver the ball inside-50. The analytics stress that it's often best to patiently work the footy towards the arc, or around the arc, as opposed to immediately banging the ball long and deep from anywhere. 

But not at Carlton, where blazing away – often to outnumbered forwards from a variety of non-conducive positions on the ground – has become a feature of a frustrating, misfiring team.

In Thursday night's sobering defeat to a rebuilding Richmond, the numbers paint Carlton's sorry plight in dismal detail. The 13-point loss was a record defeat for any side to have finished the match +20 for contested ball and +25 for inside-50s.

So how did it happen?

While the laptop screens in Michael Voss' coaches' box might have been lighting up with green – the Blues dominated large parts of the territory game – the way the team attacked, once again, left a lot to be desired. In the end, it derailed any chance of a win against a much younger, yet much more organised Tiger outfit.

Champion Data statistics highlight how optimal scoring takes place from inside-50 entries that are generated from an area defined as 'near the arc'. That refers to the point of entry coming from between 50m to 70m out. Hence the increasing demands for teams to 'work the arc'.

Shallow entries from 'near the arc', where the ball drops between 30m to 50m from goal, suggests a lowering of the eyes and subsequently generates a score on average 43 per cent of the time. It's the most effective way to score.

Deeper entries from 'near the arc', with the inside-50 dropping to within 30m of goal, suggests a tougher kick overall but still generates a score chain on average 36 per cent of the time.

Both shallow and deep entries, so long as they are 'near the arc', are the most effective and efficient ways of producing scoring chains. Carlton, though, frequently takes another route to goal with little success.

On Thursday night, 65 per cent of Carlton's inside-50s – the most of any side in the competition – were from beyond the area defined as 'near the arc'. Furthermore, another 34 per cent of those entries landed within 30m of goal. That's typical of a side that combined hopeful long entries with deep, more difficult kicks. In other words, they took the least optimal options the overwhelming majority of times.

The 34 per cent of deep entry kicks that were delivered from beyond the 'near the arc' area ranked second-most in the League, behind only Port Adelaide. It should be of little surprise the Power also lost badly to the tune of 91 points.

The results, from a Carlton perspective, were clear. The side's 65 inside-50 entries were the second-most across the entire weekend, and yet the Blues only converted 14 per cent of those into goals. In the second half, Carlton's conversion rate dipped to an even more dispiriting seven per cent.

Gold Coast and Collingwood were the only other sides for the entire round to produce more than 65 entries in a game. But where the Suns (20.16.136) and the Pies (21.10.136) both generated scores easily able to secure convincing victories, the Blues (9.15.69) barely got close.

The wastefulness was staggering. Carlton's 62 kicks inside-50 ranked No.1 in the League for round one. But the 40 per cent retention rate that followed those kicks ranked second last, while the 13 per cent mark rate ranked fourth last.

Worryingly, it wasn't a one-time thing. Despite having two of the last three Coleman Medal winners on their list in Charlie Curnow and Harry McKay, the Blues ranked bottom five in both retention rate and mark rate last year as well. Thursday night was instead the culmination of a long pattern for this football side.

Rather than 'working the arc', the Blues are blazing away. Rather than finding the optimal places to score from, Carlton is lumping the ball long and unfavourably to their frustrated forwards.

If the pattern doesn't change quickly, the season could spiral out of control.