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Tonight’s review of Part two of Round 10 involves only two games due to Port Adelaide and the Gold Coast Suns having a bye as a result of their Chinese endeavour.
Those two games had the potential to be brilliant exhibitions of the game of AFL but – despite both being tight encounters at three-quarter time – neither game rose to great heights and both Essendon and Geelong did enough to record significant wins by 35 and 28 points respectively.
Smoke haze was a big problem at the Sydney match and at the cattery in Geelong – after a promising early goal kicking blitz by the Cats – the game deteriorated due to the endeavour of the Blues to not allow their opponents any latitude.
Amongst the early goal kickers for Geelong was one Gary Ablett who thrilled the crowd in his return game at Kardinia Park as a Cat. The goal was his 266th goal in a Geelong jumper and he now sits only six goals away from being a top 20 goal scorer at Geelong.
More importantly, that goal moved him above the ruck of players sitting in 98th position on the AFL top 100 goalkickers list and he now holds position #98 on his own.
The three players who finished their careers on 389 goals: Phillip Matera (West Coast Eagles), Lloyd Hagger (Geelong) and Alec Albiston (Hawthorn and North Melbourne) now slip to 99th position and would be nervous about the likelihood of the two current players who have the potential to take their goal tallies to 389 and beyond this season.
Doing just that and causing them to drop out of the top 100 goal kickers of all time will therefore lose their entitlement to a guest pass to the AFL top 100 functions in the future.
Those two players play in the later Sunday games. Taylor “Tex” Walker currently sits on 374 goals and therefore needs only 16 goals to cause the three players to slip to equal 100th position. Jarrad Waite, the only other possible player who could reach the 390 career goal tally, currently sits on 364 goals and therefore needs 26 goals before seasons end to cause the demise of these three champions from the top 100 list.
On current form, Waite should be able to achieve this total in 13 games (plus, maybe, finals) but the chance of injury or suspension is always present with this colourful character. One of the sad features of the top 100 concept is the loss of big names from the past who played in different eras and under different circumstances.
Lloyd Hagger, who worked as a cartoonist at The Sun, was famous for his constant chatter on the field. He briefly captain-coached the Cats mid-career (1924) and was the league’s leading goalkicker in 1925 when he also played in a premiership. His career started in 1917 and ended in 1929.
Alec Albiston was recruited to Hawthorn from Kew (although born in Warrnambool) and started his league career in 1936. He was a “solid” goal kicking rover and the first Hawk to kick ten goals in a game. He captain-coached the club from 1947 to 1949 and won the Best and Fairest in 1941 and 1946.
He left the club over a dispute regarding captaincy and finished his career with one unremarkable year (1950) at North Melbourne where he added seven games to his career.
Phillip Matera is a member of a famous footballing family, still represented today by his nephew, Brandon Matera at the West Coast Eagles, but formerly at Gold Coast. Matera played for the Eagles between 1996 and 2005 and won the club’s goalkicking five times and made an all-Australian selection in 2003.
Back to the Round 10 encounter and Tom Hawkins kicked three goals to take him past Travis Cloke (Collingwood and Western Bulldogs) and Garry Wilson (Fitzroy) on the AFL all-time top 100 list.
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