Thomahawk leads race for the Coleman medal

Everybody loves a goal kicker. The fans, the media, marketing departments – absolutely everybody.

But as today’s forwards are stifled by tactics more defensive than at any other time in the game’s history, big bags of goals by the glamour players are becoming harder to come by.

We don’t need to analyse the statistics, the proof is right there in front of us every time we check the leading goal kicker tables in Monday’s newspapers.

That we are ten rounds into the season and no one has kicked 30 goals.

Richmond’s Jack Riewoldt comes closest with 28, but that tally received a handy boost with his 11 goals against an abysmal Greater Western Sydney last weekend.

In fact, three of the top four goal kickers this year have had their tallies boosted by bags against the cellar dwellers.

West Coast’s Josh Kennedy sits fourth on the table with 25 goals, but like Riewoldt, 11 of them came against Greater Western Sydney.

Port Adelaide’s Jay Schulz is third on the list with 26 goals. Seven of them came against bottom placed Brisbane and a further six came against – you guessed it – the hapless Giants.

Take those games out of the equation and Riewoldt, Kennedy and Schulz look decidedly less effective in front of goal.

Not that their tallies are anything to write home about anyway.

Or are they?

As our leading goal kickers race with glacial type speed towards claiming the Coleman Medal, how do we rate their performances?

Does a three or four goal bag these days equate to a five or six goal bag from yesteryear?

It would appear so. Throughout the golden era of full forwards (say from the 60s through to the 90s) the best players regularly kicked five goals per match.

In fact, five goals would have been considered the minimum to aim for, an indicator that the full forward had played a reasonable game. And it was achieved regularly by the big names, often for weeks at a time.

These days a three-goal haul would seem the likely equivalent, making between 60 and 70 goals per season the new benchmark, rather than the magical 100 which has so fascinated us since Gordon Coventry first cracked the ton way back in 1929.

So using this as a starting point and dismissing the anomalous 11-goal hauls by Riewoldt and Kennedy (and Schulz’s two bags against Brisbane and GWS) who appears to be the most consistent goal kicker so far this year?

Hawthorn’s Luke Breust is hardly your traditional tall forward, but he is relied upon by the Hawks to supplement their weekly score, a job which he does consistently well.

With a bag each of five (against bottom side Brisbane) and four goals, and four bags of three goals, the busy Hawk has amassed a creditable 27 goals for the year, enough to have him placed second on the list.

Geelong’s Tom Hawkins, currently fifth on the list with 25 goals, has also been consistently picking up small bags of majors to keep him in the hunt for the Coleman medal. A bag of five against the Hawks and two bags of four (against Collingwood and North Melbourne) were well earned and have been supplemented with three bags of three goals.

A big plus for Hawkins is that he has kicked his goals against quality opposition, something that Schulz (only one goal against Geelong, Hawthorn and Fremantle) and Riewoldt (two against Hawthorn and Geelong) have been unable to do.

Based on that consistency, he’s my tip for the Coleman medal.

Lance Franklin’s form is building nicely after a slow start at Sydney and he may yet surpass Hawkins, but for mine, the big cat is the pick of the forwards at this stage of the season.

Breust is leading Hawkins by two goals at present, but it is always harder for a smaller forward to maintain goal kicking consistency. By Round 22 he will probably have fallen off the pace a little.

If Port Adelaide can maintain their form and keep the supply up to Schulz, then the former Tiger could threaten, but he has managed just one goal apiece in three of his last four games, a lean run broken only by his six majors against easy-beats GWS.

With Jeremy Cameron and Cameron Cloke either battling injury or poor form, Kurt Tippett giving away to much of a head start, and Riewoldt and Kennedy looking better placed than they actually are (take away the 11-goal hauls and they sit on 17 and 14 goals respectively), the door is open for Hawkins to press his claim for the medal.

If he can stay fit and continue to pick up his bags of three or four goals per game, he’ll be nudging 60 goals by season’s end, and that will be enough to take the prize.