Micro Noises 192: Gap fillers
Thanks Joey
St Kilda's Leigh 'Joey' Montagna racked up many fine achievements during his 16-season AFL career, but here at Micro Noises, we think perhaps his greatest was his decision to hang up the boots. Now before you get mad at us, Joey, we mean that in the nicest possible way. It's not that we were sick of seeing you on the footy field - far from it, in fact. No, we were pleased to see you retire because in doing so - at just the right time - you closed off one of footy's most significant gaps.
Until Montagna's retirement, the highest V/AFL game total on which no player had ended his career was 287, but he has now very generously filled that gap, for which us number-loving completists are very grateful. Joey's total now leaves 298 games as the lowest unrecorded mark, with 299 games the only other total under the 300 mark not achieved.
Perhaps we could try and convince Jordan Lewis (who has played 283 games) to turn out for either 15 or 16 games in 2018 and then hang up the boots to take us one step closer to completing the set. Like others before him, Lewis might be lured by the magical 300 mark but, we'd like to remind Jordan that if he pulls the pin at 298 or 299, he will forever be remembered as the first player to do so.
Ta-ta and 'ta' to Thompson, too!
As well as thanking Leigh Montagna, we'd also like to say 'ta' to Adelaide's Scott Thompson, who has filled in the lowest game total gap above 300. Thompson has called time on his career after 308 games, leaving seven gaps under the 320 mark: 319, 317, 316, 315, 314, 310 and 309.
Several other 300-gamers ended their careers, but all of them finished on games totals previously achieved: Nick Riewioldt 336 (the same games total as John Rantall); Drew Petrie 332 (Leigh Matthews, Justin Madden, Corey Enright); Sam Mitchell 329 (Gary Dempsey); James Kelly 313 (Terry Daniher, Roger Merrett, Tony Shaw); Bob Murphy 312 (Jack Dyer, Stephen Silvagni, Mark Ricciuto).
The lowdown on the other lows
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Montagna has filled the V/AFL games gap, but his retirement got us wondering about what the lowest totals not achieved at each club - so off course we did some digging!
Essendon is the only one of the 20 V/AFL clubs (including the defunct University and Fitzroy), to have had players end their days with a club total of over 100. That figure is 104 games, which would rise to 110 if Mark Baguley failed to add to his current tally. Of course, we wouldn't wish that on Mark. We'd be quite happy to end up on 250 or 301, for example. Neither of those games totals have been achieved at the Bombers.
Geelong's lowest total on which none of their players have finished their career is 98, while at the other end of the scale, GWS hasn't yet had a player to finish on a total of two games. Dawson Simpson and thhe man who should be a cricket captain, Will Setterfield, are both currently sitting on that mark.
Looking at the 'traditional' 12 VFL clubs, we were surprised to learn that Hawthorn hasn't yet had one player whose career has ended on 39 games, while no player has finished on a total of 49 at Carlton. The Bulldogs' lowest unattained figure is 52, with one of their higher gaps filled by Jake Stringer's move to Essendon. He has become the first Bulldog to finish on 89 club games.
West Coast, despite having played more than twice as many matches as University did, has a lower unrecorded games total than the Students, with no Eagle yet finishing up on eight matches. Five Eagles have finished on seven games and six have totalled nine, but eight remains untoched at West Coast.
Collingwood has four missing totals of 100 or less. No Magpie has totalled 80, 86, 90 or 100 games. Alex Fasolo is currently sitting on the 100 mark, but he will play on for the Pies in 2018.
Postcode of the week
And speaking of 2018, we've considered the upcoming new AFL season and decided after some hesitation that Essendon will get the jump on the rest of the competition in the early rounds. We have reached this conclusion after looking closely at the fixture, and also after realising that 2018 is the postcode of ROSEBERY AND EASTLAKES, which is an anagram of ER... YES, DONS STEAL A BREAK.
Ridiculous footy anagram of the week
Disappointing news for Hawthorn's Will Langford who ruptured a tendon at the Hawks' New Zealand training camp this week. While Langford no doubt understands that it would be inappropriate to liken pre-season footy training to the ravages of war, he may have been tempted, after sustaining the injury, to look down at his damaged digit and paraphrase William Tecumseh Sherman by saying, 'WAR IS HELL, OLD FINGER". And that would not have been entirely inappropriate, given that his quote would be an anagram of HERE IS WILL LANGFORD.
Micro Noises is Andrew Gigacz's regular, quirky look at all things footy. The name Micro Noises is an anagram of Enrico Misso, who played one game for St Kilda in 1985. He remains the only Enrico and the only Misso to have played footy at the highest level.
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