We’re back for Round 9 of Zero Hanger’s weekly ‘five useless stats’ series.
Every week Aaron Delaporte from Useless AFL Stats will take a look at the most useless statistics from the weekend, the ones you never knew you needed to know until now.
Round 9 was another that provided plenty of firsts with another five weird yet captivating and ultimately Useless Stats.
Friday night’s game between St Kilda and Geelong was the first time in AFL history two players who have played 100 games for two teams have played against each other representing a third club.
James Frawley in his Saints debut having played 100 games at Melbourne and Hawthorn and cam up against Cats midfielder Shaun Higgins, who played 100 games at the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne.
Jimmy Webster became the first Saint to reach 100 games in jumper 29. 50 other players over 100 years tried before him before he took ownership of the 29 jumper. Although it took him 10 years and plenty of injuries to make it, he finally got there.
Next lowest in the line of cursed jumpers is the 26 at the Bulldogs, currently owned by Pick 55 Dominic Bedendo and Jumper 28 at Richmond which is currently vacant.
Brisbane’s Ryan Lester may have played just a handful of minutes in his 150th milestone match against the Suns before coming off with a hamstring injury but it didn’t stop him creating a new AFL record.
Lester becomes the first V/AFL player to win his 50th, 100th and 150th game by ascending margins over the same club. Brisbane beat Gold Coast by 54pts in his 50th, 58pts in his 100th and finally 73pts in his 150th. Gold Coast supporters will no doubt be hoping he doesn’t come up against them in his 200th.
Darling kicked five goals in an amazing second quarter at Optus, which is now a record at that venue. The WA record is seven by Scott Lucas in the final quarter of Round 22 v West Coast at Subiaco, where the Eagles still got home by eight points.
The V/AFL record is amazingly eight goals held by four players, with the last to do it being Kevin Templeton for Footscray in 1978. Darling also became the first player to kick 100 goals at Optus. Kennedy and Darling have now kicked 2+ goals in the same game 80 times and 3+ each 31 times.
2021 is looking like the year of new first names with Hugo Ralphsmith and Ronin O’Connor debuting as the 1004th and 1005th new first names to play AFL in Round 9.
They joined fellow 2021 class Braeden Campbell, Nik Cox, Miles Bergman, Rhyan Mansell, Finlay Macrae, Emerson Jeka, Buku Khamis and Isiah Winder - who was the 1000th new first name.
Others who can join them in 2021 are Jamarra Ugle-Hagan at the Dogs, Reef McInnes at the Pies, Denver Granger-Barras at Hawthorn and Phoenix Spicer at North Melbourne.