MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - APRIL 15: Jack Riewoldt of the Tigers celebrates after scoring a goal during the round five AFL match between the St Kilda Saints and the Richmond Tigers at Marvel Stadium on April 15, 2021 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
Its back for Round 5! Zero Hanger’s weekly ‘five useless stats’.
Every week Aaron Delaporte from Useless AFL Stats will take a look at the top five most useless, but captivating, statistics from the weekend.
Round 5 once again had us searching for the record books to see what stats had been toppled and here are the best of them.
In what could well be the last Thursday night game of the season given the AFL has seemingly moved away from this timeslot, Jack Riewoldt set a new record for games played on Thursdays at 23 along with the record for goals on a Thursday at 48 after bagging 5.
The Tigers had a massive 260-68 Thursday games experience differential over the Saints, who seemingly went to sleep after quarter time - we will touch more on this later. The 86pt thrashing is the fifth biggest seen on a Thursday and the biggest margin Riewoldt has been involved with personally on this day.
Interestingly, his biggest previous margin was his first Thursday game way back in Round 1 2009 when Richmond were beaten by Carlton by 83pts in what has since become the traditional season opener. The coach for Blues that night was none other than the now Saints coach in Brett Ratten.
West Coast and Collingwood fielded the tallest combined line-ups of the season on Friday night with both sides measuring up at an average height of 189cm.
The Eagles made some interesting moves at the selection table coming into the clash, most notably the addition of second ruckman Nathan Vardy at 200cm, whilst Collingwood dropped Mason Cox, the tallest player in the league at 211cm, but bought in Darcy Cameron (204cm) and Mark Keane (194cm).
However, the Pies may have rued playing 203cm Darcy Moore forward who, albeit kicking three goals, may have been better used in defence as Oscar Allen (192cm), Jack Darling (191cm) and Josh Kennedy (196cm) combined for 12 goals between them. West Coast certainly won the battle in the air taking 13 contested marks to Collingwood’s nine.
The tallest AFL team ever fielded was 191.2cm average by Geelong in Round 8, 2017 who despite a 4.7cm per-player advantage lost to Essendon by 17pts.
Brisbane easily accounted for Essendon in fairly miserable conditions at the Gabba but what was interesting was that the Bombers had 16 more free kicks than the Lions despite the 57-point thrashing they received.
The AFL record margin for a club with a -15 free kick or worse differential is a staggering 92 points by Port Adelaide over Fremantle in Rd 14 2001, whilst this match ranks just fourth for biggest margin.
Many AFL fans often bemoan the umpiring in games and rightly or wrongly believe it has cost their side a win, however, statistically free kicks have little bearing on the results as teams that win the free kick count win just 48.3% of games.
The Western Bulldogs ambushed Gold Coast setting up a 10-goal lead in the first-half, which is what they ultimately won by, increasing their percentage from 171.1% to 178.6%.
This is the highest percentage the Bulldogs have ever held after Round 5 in a V/AFL season, bettering the 173.5% in their premiership season of 2016. If the Doggies win again this Friday they should also break their Round 6 percentage record of 155.8%, however they will need another 20+ goal win to get near the Round 6 record of 234.2% set by Fitzroy in 1900.
Conversely, North Melbourne’s 30-poiny defeat to Geelong saw them with a percentage of just 45.4% (up from 43% after Round 4) and a new club low after five rounds. You need to go way back to 1931 when they had a percentage of 45.9% to find a similar start to the season for the Shinboners. They ended 1931 without a win so fingers crossed that isn’t their 2021 destiny.
Round 5 saw a rather interesting pattern with six teams who weren’t leading at quarter time going on to win matches; namely Richmond, West Coast, GWS, Melbourne and Geelong - who all were behind at the first break whilst Fremantle, winners by 12pts, were level at quarter time with Adelaide.
This is just the 16th time in history six teams have done this in a round with just Round 22, 1997 the sole occasion where seven teams who failed to lead at the quarter break went on to win.
The huge turnaround by Richmond getting home by 86pts after trailing by 1pt at the opening break may sound like its close to a record but it is actually way off. The same two teams played in Rd 16 1980 with the scores at 33-43 to St Kilda at quarter time before the Tigers came over the top to win 222-70.
The 152-point margin is the biggest ever recorded victory after being behind at the first break.
So just how common is it to win after trailing at quarter time you may ask? Of teams trailing at quarter time, 10351 have lost, 4923 won and 153 drawn - so 31.9% or roughly once every three games.