AFL Player Match Statistics 2000-2023

AFL Player Match Statistics, 2000-2023: 206,722 player-match records from 4,670 Australian Football League games across 24 seasons, with match context, weather, attendance and the advanced statistical suite (pressure acts, contested one-on-ones, metres gained, score involvements, ruck contests) alongside AFL Fantasy and SuperCoach scores. One row = one player in one match. 81 columns, 2,599 players, 27 venues. UTF-8 CSV, RFC 4180 quoting, approximately 60 MB.

Most public AFL datasets stop at the basic box score. This one carries the advanced tracking statistics that only became available from the mid-2010s, plus per-match weather and attendance, making it usable for venue, fatigue and conditions modelling rather than just counting stats.

COLUMNS. Match context: match_id, match_date, match_local_start, match_round, venue_name, home/away teams, attendance, per-team goals/behinds/score, margin, winner, weather temperature and type. Player: player_id, name, team, height, weight, position, guernsey number. Core statistics (all rows, 2000-2023): kicks, marks, handballs, disposals, disposal efficiency, goals, behinds, hitouts, tackles, rebounds, inside fifties, clearances, clangers, free kicks, contested/uncontested possessions, contested marks, one percenters, bounces, goal assists, time on ground, Brownlow votes. Advanced (2012 onward): centre and stoppage clearances, score involvements, metres gained, turnovers, intercepts, tackles inside fifty, contest one-on-ones, pressure acts, effective kicks, ground ball gets, hitouts to advantage, intercept marks, rating points, ruck contests, score launches, shots at goal, spoils. Fantasy: afl_fantasy_score, supercoach_score.

KNOWN LIMITATIONS. Weather covers 125,278 rows (60.6%), from the 2010 season onward; empty for 2000-2009. Advanced statistics begin in 2012 (approximately 108,000 rows, 52%). match_local_start has been reconstructed: the source stored a correct local time-of-day against a placeholder date, recombined here with the real match date; no timezone conversion applied. Missing values are empty rather than the literal string "NA" (3.27 million such cells converted). The 2020 season was shortened and relocated, so match lengths and venues that year are not comparable. Player names are not globally unique; join on player_id.

PROVENANCE AND LICENCE. Derived from publicly published AFL match statistics assembled via the fitzRoy R package and cleaned as described. Statistics are factual records of public sporting events. Released under CC BY 4.0, free to use including commercially, with attribution to Bet Better (https://betbetter.world). Maintained by Bet Better, which also publishes a free sports model API of win probabilities across nine sports at https://betbetter.world/api/. Also available on Zenodo (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21612783) and OSF (DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/V5A89). This dataset contains no betting odds and no wagering data of any kind.