We often hear about a player being the "oldest living premiership player" or other similar "last player alive". But I've often thought about the opposite: what is the oldest game (or team, or grand final winning team) that is still complete - all 20/21/22 players are still alive - or even tougher, all 40/42/44 from both teams in the game are still alive.
In regards to Test cricket, with the recent/young deaths of Rod Marsh, Brian Taber, Tony Mann, and Bruce Yardley, I think the oldest Australian Test Team with 11 living members is from Aus v Eng at MCG on 29 Dec 1979. Bob Willis & Mike Hendrick played for England, so only our XI is still complete, not sure what it would be with both full XIs still alive.
I can't find a way to automate my search yet (I can't use R or SQL or anything fancier than excel), so trying to find it without brute force/trial and error checks is tricky. (Cricinfo stats guru & the wicketkeeper tag got me the Test team one, but still manual checking of each player in selected matches)
For Freo, due to the deaths of Dhurrkay and Leach, we couldn't have a full reunion of any team until the 2nd last round of our 2nd year (a 1 pt loss to the Bears at the Gabba, so you wouldn't want to have a reunion, but that's not the point! Used the yearly Game by Game AFL Tables stats to work that out, eyeballing when neither Leach nor Dhurrkay played)
Anyone think they could find/work out the:
In regards to Test cricket, with the recent/young deaths of Rod Marsh, Brian Taber, Tony Mann, and Bruce Yardley, I think the oldest Australian Test Team with 11 living members is from Aus v Eng at MCG on 29 Dec 1979. Bob Willis & Mike Hendrick played for England, so only our XI is still complete, not sure what it would be with both full XIs still alive.
I can't find a way to automate my search yet (I can't use R or SQL or anything fancier than excel), so trying to find it without brute force/trial and error checks is tricky. (Cricinfo stats guru & the wicketkeeper tag got me the Test team one, but still manual checking of each player in selected matches)
For Freo, due to the deaths of Dhurrkay and Leach, we couldn't have a full reunion of any team until the 2nd last round of our 2nd year (a 1 pt loss to the Bears at the Gabba, so you wouldn't want to have a reunion, but that's not the point! Used the yearly Game by Game AFL Tables stats to work that out, eyeballing when neither Leach nor Dhurrkay played)
Anyone think they could find/work out the:
- Oldest complete VFL team from a game?
- Oldest complete VFL game (both teams)?
- Oldest complete VFL premiership winning team?
- Oldest complete VFL grand final (both teams)?
