We’re back for Round 15 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.
Round 15 did not disappoint with a plethora of Useless Stats to choose from however these are the most captivatingly Useless Stats from the round 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.
The Richmond and St Kilda game produced so many Useless Stats that we had to break it into two segments. We will start with the winners St Kilda and their stats.
Nick Coffield became the first named sub to become subbed off in AFL History. Coffield was scheduled to be sitting on the bench but got the late call up on the field when Jack Billings hurt his knee in the warm-up and unfortunately for Coffield he did his hamstring in 3rd quarter to get subbed out and earn this rare first.
The Saints also became the 14th team to lose to the current wooden spooners and then beat the reigning premiers in successive rounds whilst their 126pt turnaround having been beaten by Richmond by 86pts earlier in the year raised a few questions our way but is far from the record.
This belongs to Adelaide who in 1992 lost to Geelong in Round 8 by 123 points and then defeated them by 91points in Round 23, an amazing 214 point differential.
Reigning premiers Richmond’s score of 2.10.22 is the lowest score by a defending champing since Melbourne scored just 2.7.19 against Collingwood way back in Round 4 1960. Overall it’s the fifth lowest with Essendon holding the record scoring one less goal 1.10.16 in Round 12 1902 against Carlton after winning the 1901 flag.
Richmond received 23 free kicks in the match, one more than their total score - and this has been done many times over the years. Fremantle most recently did it in 2020 scoring 2.4.16 whilst receiving 19 free kicks against Geelong but the record for this is truly staggering. In Round 16 1971 South Melbourne scored 3.15.33 but received 72 free kicks in an era where the whistle was blown with alarming regularity. The 39 free-kick to score differential a record that surely will never be broken.
Samson Ryan became the tallest ever Tiger to grace an AFL field at a towering 206cm, however he unfortunately had a debut to forget. His first contest saw him concede a free kick whilst in his second he had the absolute stuffing knocked out of him. He then went on to record just the solitary hit-out for an AFL Fantasy score of -2.
Forward
This surprisingly ranks him as the equal 18th lowest fantasy score on debut. The record for the lowest is held by St Kilda’s Jackson Ferguson who in his only game had three handballs and conceded four free kicks before his coach Scott Watters subbed him out and later delisted him. Let’s hope young Samson has a better fate and can get another crack at it.
However of course our favourite stat from the weekend was that Dustin Martin became the first player ever to grace a football field having won more Norm Smith Medals than his team kicked goals during the game, Dustys three medals trumping the two Richmond goals, of which he actually kicked one. That stat has had over 9000 reactions and half a million views on our Facebook page - sometimes it’s the simpler the stat the more amusing it becomes.
The margins of the four AFL games played on Saturday produced an amazing result, with Fremantle winning by 12 over Collingwood, North Melbourne by 9 over Gold Coast, Port Adelaide by 10 over Sydney and the night game saw Melbourne defeat Essendon by 11 points.
Rearranging these margins from lowest to highest sees them recorded as 9 10 11 and 12 to become just the second time ever in AFL History we have had 4 games in sequential margin order on the same day.
The only other time this has occurred was in Round 19 1974, where Collingwood won by 23, Footscray by 24, both Hawthorn and Richmond by 25 and South Melbourne by 26.
Western Bulldogs defender Bailey Dale went within one running bounce of setting what would have been a very unique Useless Stat. Dale had six consecutive running bounces in the last quarter for the Bulldogs, running out of defence before he was corralled on the far wing by Andrew Gaff and forced to handball backwards.
Had Dale of managed a seventh bounce he would have joined just three other known efforts by players to have had seven consecutive bounces - they are Michael Mitchell, Mick McGuane and Brent Harvey. McGuane and Mitchell both won goal of the year with their efforts in 1994 and 1990 respectively, with Harvey credited with the behind of the century for his Rd 3 2010 effort against West Coast.
So had Dale completed that seventh bounce would have been the only player to ever do so without kicking a score. You can check out replays of those seven bounce efforts on our Useless AFL Stats Facebook Page
With the NBL finals having wrapped up and the NBA playoffs in full swing, the UAS team took a deep dive into AFL triple doubles. The AFL equivalent being a player who can record double digit stats in three or more of the basic categories of kicks, handballs, mark, tackles and goals, and we found some amazing results.
Just two players have recorded four consecutive games of triple doubles and they are Tom Rockliff and Beau Waters. Only six players have recorded a quadruple double, with 10+ kicks, handballs, marks and tackles being Scott Thompson, Joel Selwood, Brent Stanton, Ben McGlynn, Tom Rockliff and Corey Enright, surprisingly only Selwood picked up the three Brownlow votes.
A triple double of 10 handballs, 10 marks and 10 tackles but less than 10 kicks has never been recorded. Similarly 10 kicks, 10 marks and 10 tackles but less than 10 handballs is extremely rare - in fact it had only happened once in AFL history - that being by Jimmy Bartel until the last few weeks. Tim Taranto for GWS in Round 14 did it and then Dayne Zorko on Thursday against Geelong. Both had very similar stat lines with just the 6 handballs and 18 kicks to go with 12 tackles, with Taranto 11 marks and Zorko 10.