The Roar
The Roar

AFL
Advertisement

Who will be your club's leading goal scorer in 2018?

(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Roar Guru
3rd February, 2018
2

It is an impressive statistic that nine of the 18 AFL clubs have a current player on their lists of top ten goal kickers of all time.

While this would be expected at the newer clubs who are yet to establish a lot of goal kicking history, older clubs like Geelong, Hawthorn and Richmond also feature, as does West Coast Eagles, which now boasts 31 years of AFL competition.

Unsurprisingly the two newest clubs, Gold Coast Suns and Greater Western Sydney, still have the number one goal kicker lining up for the club in 2018. Both Tom Lynch (Gold Coast Suns) and Jeremy Cameron (Greater Western Sydney) have proved to be outstanding and loyal footballers whose only challenge from a goal kicking perspective can be to raise the record of goals kicked at the club to a higher level, which will ensure they retain a prominent position on the club’s all-time list for many seasons to come.

Two of the three clubs that have the number two top goal scorer still playing are the West Australian teams, but the likelihood of those players gaining their respective number one positions could not be more different.

At Fremantle Hayden Ballantyne sits at number two behind former superstar Matthew Pavlich, but the chances of him ever overtaking the champion are a million to one. In contrast, it is possible that Josh Kennedy could be the new number one goal kicker at the Eagles by the end of Round 1 this year. Only seven goals are needed, so it shouldn’t take more than two or three weeks.

(Morne de Klerk/Getty Images)

At Adelaide Taylor Walker may one day take over the mantle from Tony Modra, but it is unlikely to be in 2018 as he currently sits 83 goals adrift of the 1990s high flyer.

Port Adelaide’s Justin Westoff should overtake Jay Schultz to sit in number two. If not, the fourth-highest goal kicker at the club, Robbie Gray, should do so.

Advertisement

Tom Hawkins at Geelong sits at number five on the Cats list and number 83 on the AFL all-time list. Immediately above him on both lists is fellow cat Billy Brownless, and as the difference between the two is only three goals a change in the order is expected – and the fact a significant number of goal kickers are in the low 440s means Hawkins is expected to move rapidly up the ranks.

The sharpshooters at Hawthorn (Jarryd Roughead) and Richmond (Jack Riewoldt) both sit at number six on their respective lists and are only three goals apart, sitting at equal 48th and 50th on the AFL goal kicking list, so a good tussle between these two and also Eddie Betts and Josh Kennedy for goal kicking honours in 2018 can be expected.

The only other clubs with goal kickers in the top 20 are Sydney and Brisbane, where Lance Franklin and Dayne Zorko both hold down the respective number 12 positions, but AFL fans will take great interest in the progression of all star goal kickers in 2018.

close