ANOTHER weekend goes by, another win to the red-hot ‘Pies, and another press conference where Mick Malthouse declares ‘ferocious tackling’ as the reason his boys won.

It’s a familiar story, but is it accurate? Is picking a winner as simple as choosing the best tackling team?

If you take St Kilda of 2009 as a case study, then the answer is definitely ‘yes’. The Saints averaged 72 tackles per game last year - a league record - and finished atop the ladder.

But hang on a second.

Look at teams two and three in the ‘09 tackle rankings: North Melbourne and Sydney. Great tacklers clearly, but the only thing they were tackling come September was a few quiet beers on their footy trip.

In fact, despite what Tony Liberatore might try to tell you, the stats show it’s just too simplistic to pin hopes of victory on tackling alone.

In the past two seasons, only 58 per cent of teams to win the tackles won the match. Even when teams romped the tackles in by over 20, their win ratio was still not that decisive - 69 per cent.

The reason is that tackling only measures a team’s defensive intent. They might be having a red hot crack when they haven’t got the footy, but that’s not much good to anyone if they never get hold of it.

To get a true indication of which team will win, we need to add in a measure of attacking intent - contested possession.

Look at the graph below. The blue bars show the winning success of teams when they win the tackles by at least one and then by more than five, 10, 15 and 20. As we’ve said - not that decisive.

The red bars show the success rates when teams win the tackle count by those same margins, and win the contested possession count too (by any margin).

As you can see, when teams win the tackle count and the contested possession, they win the game almost 80 per cent of the time. When they win the tackles by more than 20 plus the contested possession, the figure jumps to almost 90 per cent.

So, when you’re doing your tips this week, don’t get seduced by the teams in top tackling form. Consider those that can win the contested footy too, and you’ll be well on your way to picking a winner - at least 78 per cent of the time!