It continues to be 50 or so days to the opening of the 2021 AFL males’s season, though we have now the AFLW to take pleasure in in the meantime.
The season begins with the conventional Thursday evening recreation between final 12 months’s premiers and the bettering Blues at the MCG on March 18.
But these statisticians amongst us can hardly wait to see the subsequent chapter of conventional and historic achievements be established, equaled or damaged as one other season unfolds.
Will the Tigers’ juggernaut prolong its file unbroken sequence of wins towards Carlton to 11, and equal the finest present successful sequence by any workforce over one other?
At the finish of the home-and-away season final 12 months, Richmond had the finest present successful sequence towards anybody workforce in the league, having crushed Brisbane on 15 straight events. But that every one went pear-shaped with a loss to the Lions in the first week of the finals, so the counter was reset to zero.
Round 21, 2013 was the final time that Carlton beat Richmond. Mick Malthouse was coach and the win by ten factors squared the ledger with Damien Hardwick in Richmond-Carlton video games at one win apiece.
Two additional makes an attempt by Malthouse, one by John Barker, 5 by Brendon Bolton and two by David Teague have all proved unsuccessful since, however occasions are altering.
In the first win of the present Richmond sequence, Carlton had solely two of their present taking part in checklist in the workforce whereas the Tigers had already recruited the eight gamers who are actually prime 100 champions underneath the teaching of Damien Hardwick.
All eight gamers had been in that workforce that began the present interval of Tigers domination and they’ve been the spine of the successful sequence ever since.
Jack Riewoldt is a kind of eight gamers. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
These eight gamers have now been collectively for therefore lengthy that 4 of them now seem in the prime 20 recreation gamers of all time at the membership, and two extra are inside the prime 50.
In this rarefied ambiance it’s no shock that their video games file is now impacting on a few of the best names which have performed for the membership over its 114 years in the competitors.
Shane Edwards will move Joel Bowden – who was nonetheless at the membership when Edwards began in 2007 – and change into the eleventh best recreation participant at Richmond.
Trent Cotchin – who already holds the file for many video games as captain at the membership – will surpass the video games whole of one in every of the best AFL legends of all time in Kevin Sheedy.
Two different former captains, Roger Dean and Roy Wright, will be equaled by Dustin Martin (who will move current CEO Brendon Gale) and Bachar Houli respectively, and Dylan Grimes will equal the video games file of Andrew Kellaway.
The AFL’s conventional spotlight of Round 1 will hopefully be Eddie Betts’ two hundredth recreation for the Blues, becoming a member of Michael Sexton on this quantity, and being the thirty seventh Carlton participant to succeed in that landmark.
Betts – courtesy of his six-year, 132-game and 310-goal sojourn with Adelaide – options prominently in each the AFL recreation gamers and aim scorers lists. His 332nd recreation will see him be part of Leigh Matthews, Drew Petrie, Corey Enright, Justin Madden and – briefly a minimum of – the second most skilled AFL participant nonetheless taking part in, David Mundy.
Ed Curnow will be part of former Blue Cresswell William ‘Mickey’ Crisp on 183 video games whereas Levi Casboult will move Alex Duncan. Duncan was born in 1900 and was a star at Carlton in the Nineteen Twenties, a lot in order that one match was remembered as “Duncan’s match”.
Collingwood, a membership not usually recognized for magnanimous gestures in the direction of its opponents, had been so impressed with Duncan’s excellent efficiency (maybe, even, a better of all time efficiency) that they’d the match ball suitably mounted and inscribed and offered the trophy to Duncan.
