Australian Football

AustralianFootball.com Celebrating the history of the great Australian game

 

Key Facts

Full name
Edward James Whitten Jnr

Known as
Ted Whitten

Born
15 March 1957 (age 67)

Age at first & last AFL game
First game: 17y 43d
Last game: 25y 138d

Height and weight
Height: 178 cm
Weight: 76 kg

Senior clubs
Footscray

Jumper numbers
Footscray: 22

Family links
Ted Whitten Snr (Father)Don Whitten (Uncle)

Ted Whitten

ClubLeagueCareer spanGamesGoalsAvgWin %AKIAHBAMKBV
FootscrayV/AFL1974-19821441330.9232%12.354.542.063
Total1974-19821441330.9232%12.354.542.063

AFL: 8,655th player to appear, 1,426th most games played, 771st most goals kickedFootscray: 633rd player to appear, 68th most games played, 42nd most goals kicked

Few footballers have been blessed with such exorbitant amounts of talent as Ted Whitten senior and, unsurprisingly, his son, also named Ted, was not one of them. What he was though was a perfectly capable footballer who might have achieved much more during his career had not the curtain come down on it, owing to injury, so prematurely.

Whitten junior made his senior VFL debut in 1974 when aged just seventeen. Between 1974 and 1982 he played 144 VFL games and kicked 133 goals and was good enough to earn selection for Victoria twice. His enforced retirement came after a botched knee operation when he was just twenty-five.

In later years Whitten junior helped set up the EJ Whitten Legends Game, a charity football match which raises funds for prostate cancer research, the disease which claimed his father.

Author - John Devaney

Sources

Encyclopedia of AFL Footballers by Russell Holesby & Jim Main; Wikipedia article

Footnotes

* Behinds calculated from the 1965 season on.
+ Score at the end of extra time.