GEELONG, AUSTRALIA - MAY 18: Gary Rohan of the Cats celebrates a goal during the round nine AFL match between the Geelong Cats and the Western Bulldogs at GMHBA Stadium on May 18, 2019 in Geelong, Australia. (Photo by Darrian Traynor/AFL Photos/Getty Images)
We’re back for Round 14 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 just gone, the absurd, the ridiculous and just the plain outrageous.
With the shortened round it's just four stats this week but these are the most captivatingly Useless Stats from the week just gone.
Want more Useless Stat content? The team at Useless AFL Stats have just released a Podcast you can check it out now via the Unnecessary Statness Podcast.
As Joel Selwood called his team in for the last minute chat pre-game a “match fact” appeared on the screen that said Cats have won 31 of their last 23 games at home.
Now we don’t always get everything right at Useless AFL Stats, but even we know someone stuffed that stat up. Luckily for the Dogs they probably didn’t know what unsurmountable odds they were facing as they had the game all but won.
The Gary Rohan kick to secure the win became the 53rd time a game has been won with a goal after the siren, and Rohan joined Barry Hall as players to have done it twice - interestingly both did it with two different teams.
Hall firstly with St Kilda and then Sydney, whilst Rohan kicked his first for Sydney in 2017 against Essendon albeit a lot easier one from just a metre out. Both of Rohan’s goals also came in Round 14.
Had Rohan kicked a behind, he would have created history another way and joined Tom Hawkins as the other players to have a kicked a goal after the siren to win and a behind to draw. Hawkins can now hold that record alone for a while longer now.
Jarryd Lyons was credited as one of the best players for Brisbane in their win over North Melbourne - for those who like their Fantasy Footy he scored 161 pts which is a huge effort.
He had a rather amazing stat sheet with 12 tackles, six marks and 36 disposals
, but what is even more amazing is that from all those 36 - which included 22 kicks and 14 handballs - none of them were credited with a score involvement.
This meant every time he disposed of the ball it was turned over or went out of bounds at some subsequent point. This gives him the new AFL record for disposals without a score involvement.
The previous record holder was Fremantle defender Luke Ryan with (34), whilst Liam Picken and Jake Lloyd (33), Aaron Hall and Rory Laird (32), Andrew Gaff, Matt Priddis and Luke McDonald (30) have also had decent tallies without a score involvement.
Earlier in the week we posted a stat about games won by teams wearing different colour footy shorts, updating to include Round 14 were white shorts won four of the five matches. White now has 47 wins a draw ahead of black on 17 wins and from what we termed midnight blue, worn by the Crows, Melbourne, Geelong and Carlton, on 14 ahead of Red 13 and traditional blue worn by the Eagles and Dogs on 11 wins a draw.
Purple, Grey/Charcoal, Maroon and Brown all with a handful of wins or less making up the numbers. We presented that info as a nifty little pie chart on our Facebook page if you want to check it out.
Interestingly, Essendon, who were the last team to win in white shorts, were also the first to wear them in 1902, whilst every club had either worn blue or black until that point.
Other clubs over the following years then started to wear white shorts until the 1930 season, when the VFL as it was way back then made it a rule to bring in black (or dark) shorts for home games and white shorts for away - one of the rare rules which hasn’t been changed for the AFL for a very long time.
The five matches played over Round 14 was the lowest tally of games seen on an AFL weekend for quite some time.
You need to go way back to Round 6 1994 to find a round with less and on that occasion just four games were played as seven teams were given a bye.
To find a week where exactly five games were played you need to go back to 1987, when a very strange anomaly occurred with the then-VFL playing Rounds 16 and 17 over three separate weeks.
The weird situation saw five matches played on the weekend starting July 10th, three of these were Round 16 fixtures and two were from Round 17. The following week saw another five games with again three from Round 16 and two from Round 17, whilst the last week saw the remaining Round 16 game and three Round 17 games played.
It would be interesting to speak to see someone who was around to witness this, but it surely would have been a confusing time for those who followed the game.