Micro Noises 36: Birthday boys
Brodie's birthday score
Congratulations to Collingwood's Brodie Grundy who made his debut in Collingwood's win over the Giants on Saturday. Brodie has a much-coveted "footy score" birthdate, where the abbreviated date matches the goals, behinds and total points of a football score. Grundy's birthday score is 15.4.94. He's one of seven currently AFL-listed players to be lucky enough to have one of those.
The others are:
Player | Club | Birthdate |
---|---|---|
Brent Reilly | Adelaide | 12.11.83 |
Daniel Merrett | Brisbane | 12.12.84 |
Cale Hooker | Essendon | 13.10.88 |
Shane Kersten | Geelong | 15.3.93 |
Sam Mitchell | Hawthorn | 12.10.82 |
Jack Redpath | Western Bulldogs | 13.12.90 |
Sam Mitchell is by far the leader on the list of current players, in terms of games played, having played 237, and only Darryl Wakelin (11.8.74, 261 games) lies ahead of him on the all-time VFL/AFL list¹.
Scoring on a date
Sadly, the VFL/AFL has never seen a footy score matching a date occur on the actual date itself. It almost occurred twice in the one match on 15.8.98. With a couple of minutes remaining, the Bulldogs led Sydney 15.8 to 15.7 but it was the Dogs who kicked the final behind of the match, not the Swans, both sides missing history by the narrowest of margins.
There is a half-time case of a score matching the game date. Collingwood were 1.6.12 at the long break in their match against Geelong on the 1st of June, 1912.
With Ross Lyon in the coaching ranks, we might have a chance next year. Micro Noises can see Freo holding a lesser side to 1.8.14 on a cold, wet Friday night.
First among unequals
Three of the nine round 18 matches saw final scores that have never before been seen in VFL/AFL history. Essendon's Friday night loss to Hawthorn was the first ever occurrence of the score 87 v 143, the Demons dismal performance against North was the first appearance of 28 v 150 and Geelong's thrashing of the Saints was the first time a score of 137 v 36 has ever come up.
Meanwhile Sydney has demonstrated a particular liking for winning matches 16.14 to 9.9 at the SCG in July under coach John Longmire. The Swans defeated Richmond 110 to 63 on Sunday and defeated Brisbane with exactly the same score at the same ground on July 7th last year.
More 4.4 than before
Melbourne's dismal final score of 4.4 (28) was not the first time we've seen that score this year. The Western Bulldogs could only manage it in their 52-point round 4 loss to Adelaide. With the Demons replicating that losing score on Saturday, it marks the first time since 1909 that 4.4 has been seen twice in the same season. In 1909 it was registered by Carlton in their loss to South Melbourne in round 2 and by Melbourne in a one-point win over University in round 15.
The Marginal Medal - Nine's doing fine
Port Adelaide's win over Brisbane was the sixth 9-point game of the year, making it the equal most common margin of 2013, alongside 28 points and 41 points.
1 versus 100
Two 100+ point margins in round 18 takes the season total six. There have been three 1-point games in 2013. Come on one-pointers! Lift your game!
Postcode of the week
Try as they might have through each of their four quarters against Hawthorn last Friday night, Essendon didn't get anywhere against the Hawthorn. And their progressive behinds tally at the end of each term - 3, 4, 6 and 9 - reflected that futility. 3469 is the postcode of Nowhere Creek.
Ridiculous footy anagram of the week
With the Essendon drug saga not likely to go away anytime soon, the Bombers' new CEO, PAUL LITTLE, is likely to be a busy man who almost certainly will be burning the midnight oil in the next few weeks. Appropriately, he's an anagram of UP TILL LATE.
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.
Footnotes
- For those wondering why Darryl's twin brother Shane, who played 252 games, isn't ahead of Sam, Shane was born after midnight, on the 12th August, 1974.
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