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Opinion
The first week of the finals continued the excitement of the 23 weeks of football and – although we were down to only eight clubs playing in the finals with four games spread over three days – the excitement continued and a surprising number of both traditional and historical milestones were reached.
In Thursday night’s thriller where the lead changed 17 times over a pulsating 100 minutes and the margin was never more than six points at the end of the quarter, the three traditional milestone achievers had mixed fortunes: Oscar McInereny, who played both his 100th league game and his 100th game for the Brisbane Lions, was concussed early in the first quarter, so will have little knowledge of the milestone.
For Darcy Wilmot however, his first AFL game was a winning final in which he kicked his first AFL goal. Joe Daniher played his 150th AFL game and his 42 game for the Brisbane Lions and kicked three goals, including the sealer with less than two minutes to play.
Before the game, Daniher was the 27th greatest goal kicker for both Essendon and Brisbane, but his three goals took him to 26th position on the Lion’s Top 100 goal kickers, surpassing Justin Sherman.
Others to kick three goals in the game were Charlie Cameron (Brisbane), Eric Hipwood (Brisbane), Jack Riewoldt (Richmond) and Tom Lynch (Richmond) who continues his climb up the Tiger’s goal kicking list, this game passing legendary half forward flanker John “Swoop” Northey who played in the 1960’s and after his retirement coached Sydney, Melbourne, Richmond, Brisbane Bears and Brisbane Lions for a total of 315 games, winning more than half of them.
Exciting Tiger small forwards Daniel Rioli and Shai Bolton started the game on 98 goals and whilst Bolton became a centurion with two goals, Rioli scored only one to finish the 2022 season on 99 goals. Bolton became the 74th Tiger to score 100 goals or more.
Friday night’s game started the same way, but in the end Sydney ran out winners by 22 points. It was a disappointing result for Christian Petracca, who played his 150th game and fought on gamely with an injury. Petracca, who started at the Demon in 2016, became the 63rd Melbourne player to reach the landmark and joined a notable trio of past players whose careers ended on that total: the late John Phillip “Sean” Wight (15 March 1964 – 30 June 2011) was an Irish-Australian, the first of the Irish Experiment commenced by Ron Barassi in 1982, Matthew Whelan (2000-2009) and Jarad Rivers who played another three seasons at Geelong after leaving the Demon in 2012.
Another exciting game follows on the Saturday when Collingwood and Geelong went head-to-head in a great game marred only by “safe” umpiring by Rosebury, Gavine and Hosking who are all in the mix for the Grand Final.
Brody Mihocek played his 100th game but scored only one goal, whereas Jeremy Cameron for Geelong stepped up to the plate to pass the 100 goal mark and also overtake Brian “BT” Taylor on the AFL all time Top 100 goal scorers list.
The final game of the round saw a remarkable comeback from the Dockers who had no major individual milestones to celebrate.
Aaron Naughtin played his 100th club and AFL game bur remained goal less, whilst The Bulldogs most senior game player, Jack Macrae chalked up enough disposals to make him only the 79th player since records started to be kept in 1965 to pass the 6,000 disposals mark.
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