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Much of the success that the Hawks have achieved over the past few years can be attributed to the quality of the club’s leading goal kickers.
Despite the retirement of Cyril Rioli during the season, Hawthorn is still blessed with three of the club’s 11 greatest goal scorers of all time.
Jarryd Roughead, behind Lance Franklin and Jack Riewoldt and tied with Eddie Betts amongst the contemporary forwards, sits just outside the top 40 AFL goal kickers of all time.
At number six on the Hawks greatest goal scorers list. Luke Bruest and Jack Gunston sit at number 10 and number 11 respectively, both having past the great Michael Tuck this season.
In addition, Paul Puopolo (33rd), Isaac Smith (39th), Shaun Burgoyne (57th) and Liam Shiels (89th) have all been regular and valuable contributors and should continue to be in 2018.
Melbourne, for the second year in a row, traded the top current goal kicker on their list (Jack Watts in 2017, Jesse Hogan in 2018) and will rely on recently transformed back man Tom McDonald to continue the heavy lifting into 2019.
(Photo by Michael Dodge/AFL Media/Getty Images)
McDonald rose meteorically through the ranks of Demons’ goal scorers rising from nowhere to equal 88th on the club’s all-time top 100 goal scorers with 53 for the season.
Although still third amongst the club’s current goal kicking list behind Nathan Jones (57th with the late Jim Stynes) and Jeff Garlett (59th), McDonald will be looking to the ‘up-and-comers’ at the club for his main support in the goal kicking department.
North Melbourne also lost one of their main goal scorers with the retirement of top 50 forward Jarrad Waite, but the core remains competitive with a goal scoring ability headed by ‘gun’ forward Ben Brown.
Brown who turns 26 this month already holds down 25th position on the Kangaroos top 100 goal kickers and a repeat of his 60-plus next year would see him rise to 16th place.
He will be ably supported by captain Jack Ziebell, evergreen Shaun Higgins, Mason Wood, ruckman Todd Goldstein and Shaun Atley with cameos from Ben Cunnington, 20-year-old Jy Simpkin and Majik Daw.
Port Adelaide only joined the AFL in 1997 and in the Power’s 22 years in the competition the club has only used 179 players which consequently means the bar to make the goal kicking top 100 is very low.
Even after the departure of top ten goal kicker Chad Wingard the club still has 19 current players within the all time top 100 goal kickers at the club.
However, the main interest is near the top of the tree where Robbie Gray and Justin Westoff are separated by only three goals in the battle for second place on Port Adelaide’s all-time top 100 goal kicking list.
Whilst it appears unlikely that either will ever topple the numero uno at the club in Warren Tredrea, they both should continue to provide good service and pass the 300 goal mark in the first half of the season.
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