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Clarkson actively moved one of the GOAT forwards further up the ground for this sole reason.
The 100-goal forward - are they now extinct?
- Thread starter John Who
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Clarkson actively moved one of the GOAT forwards further up the ground for this sole reason.
You look back at the 80s and 90s and wonder what (if anything) coaches were thinking. I mean you’ve got one player kicking 8, 9, 10 goals... wouldn’t you just put two players on him? They never seemed to
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That is a fair point you made. The amount of work you need to put out as a forward to get 70 goals (around 3 and a half goals per game) would be of similar output to past forwards who kicked 100 goals, roughly speaking.
Maybe we should start a new trend and do the whole crowd invasion thing when someone gets to 70-75 goals before the season ends..?
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1993, Bombers won didn’t they?
Marc_Remillard
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Actually it happened quite a lot, but the key difference now is the extra interchange and the way it's used.
If Franklin could mark overhead, like actually leap 35 inches into the air and pluck the ball, he would have 100 goals on the board again.
Forwards today just aren't brilliant enough. Kennedy and Hawkins are good but far too slow to seriously hit the scoreboard consistently.
Cameron goes through's dry spells so still inconsistent.
Forwards today just aren't brilliant enough. Kennedy and Hawkins are good but far too slow to seriously hit the scoreboard consistently.
Cameron goes through's dry spells so still inconsistent.
Some stats on H&A season centenarians.
1998-2019 - 1 in 22 years (0.05 times per year)
1983-1998 - 18 in 16 years (1.1 times per year)
1974-1982 - 2 in 9 years (0.22 times per year)
1968-1973 - 10 in 6 years (1.7 times per year)
1939-1967 - 2 in 29 years (0.07 times per year)
1929-1938 - 9 in 10 years (0.9 times per year)
Pre 1929 - 0 in 33 years
Looks pretty cyclical to me.
It's been driven by rule changes too:
- In 1939 boundary throw ins are introduced replacing the last touch rule.
- In 1969 out of bounds on the full is introduced.
- In 1973 the centre square in introduced.
- In 1998 interchange increases from 3 to 4, key forwards lose their dominance.
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Yes, I can see the coaches gambling away four points on the hope of having a 100 goal a year key forward...
Because until recently, players and coaches had relatively limited information on which to design strategy. For example, it is only a very recent phenomenon that the bench has been used for rotations rather than as a way to punish players.
In other words, increased information and understanding of the game has led to more sophisticated strategy. Teams don't have 100 goal a year forwards because relying primarily on a single player would not be conducive to winning football games. Defensive strategies would simply render that strategy fruitless.
zepender
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How stiff was Jason Dunstall in 1993? Kicked 123 goals, which if it had happened in pretty much any other year, would have been the 9th highest total in Coleman Medal history. As it was he finished THIRD behind Modra (129) and Ablett Sr (124). Nobody has even kicked 123 goals since that season.
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Quite simply, the game was tactically primitive and kind of dumb for the majority of its existence, and seemingly shielded from/immune to a lot of ideas and concepts from outside and from other sports.
Players still had jobs outside footy as recently as the early '90s too, so there wasn't the same level of professionalism and preparation and planning that goes into it at all levels of a club now.
Exactly my view too. It also takes a lot of gut running to set up a zonal full-team defence in a game where the ball can be kicked 50m without holding up in the air - so it wasn't until we got full-time professionals that the cluster/zone became a real possibility.
I can't think of another sport that plays 1v1 defence. Certainly, if you look at soccer - the best example of a highly tactical sport which isn't dominated by set-plays and time-outs - focus is typically on keeping shape, and blocking off passing lanes as a defence.
Players like Charlie Dixon, Ben Brown and Tom Hawkins - big units who are extremely hard to deviate off the footy - would have absolutely killed it in the 90s. I've always thought that Hawkins was born twenty years too late as a footballer - the game style doesn't suit him so much any more, but he's made it work.
We've had over a decade of it - so IMO it's nothing to do with the quality of the footballer. The game is strategically unrecognisable from what it was, which is surely the more obvious reason.
Dunstall wasn't a brilliant overhead mark, he certainly couldn't leap. Still bagged centuries. Plugger - especially in his latter days - wasn't a great pack mark like Loewe (though he was good). Still kicked goals by the ton.
The sheer amount of space that old goalsquare forwards had to work in was just mind-boggling. Now, of course, nobody starts in the goalsquare - let alone has a cavern of space to operate in.
I found it reasonably instructive when Dangerfield was hobbled against Hawthorn, went to play out of the goalsquare, and carved up a succession of opponents on his way to 5.6 - and he's a midfielder. It worked once for the shock tactic until coaches wised up as to how to beat it - but it was also instructive as to how much easier it is to score when you have space to lead and just one opponent to beat.
They did - but often it was just two players *on* the player, or (thanks Sheeds) one standing on him, one ten metres in front. It was never enough to really block out a good forward.
Brasher
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I want to see a 100 goal season just to see how the AFL's new crowd security protocols will handle a pitch invasion. Should end well.
Sttew
Brownlow Medallist
But if your team had no chance of making finals, yet your full forward was on target to kick a ton, as frequently happened with St Kilda in the 90’s, that prospect kept you interested
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Another great Clarko moment denying Fev the tonne.
I’m crying tears of happiness as I type this
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There’s patterns and then there’s predictions. The patterns we see since a century you can predict this pattern is going to change with all this cluster mess on a footy field (as opposed to structured positions in the VFL era).
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I don't think they are extinct, the thing missing is the glaring inaccuracy we see from big name forwards missing from 30 or 40 out, when they start kicking them then someone might be able to kick a 100.
You may need to go back and watch some games.
Dunstall was one of the greatest contested marks of his era.
Brilliant body positioning. If we think Tom Hawkins is a terrific one-on-one mark, Dunstall was even better.
Lockett was also brilliant overhead. I think it's a shame today's supporter has very little knowledge of past champions. Guys like Dunstall and Lockett were one of a kind and we were blessed to have two of them playing at the same time as one another. Two of the all time best forwards in the history of the game.
I thought Dunstall was a fantastic overhead mark. He clamped them regularly, especially leading and taking them overhead. I think Franklin is very good overhead at Sydney, certainly something he improved when he left.
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Franklin has kicked 100, Kennedy has kicked 80 a couple of times, Jack Riewoldt has kicked 80.
There are players capable of kicking 100 in a season but the game style isn't really conducive to one players 100+ marks inside 50 for the season which is what it takes to kick 100 goals.
There are players capable of kicking 100 in a season but the game style isn't really conducive to one players 100+ marks inside 50 for the season which is what it takes to kick 100 goals.
Which tells you one thing in particular: John Coleman was just insane.
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Geelong averaged 139 points per game in 1992. That is just nuts. I remember them kicking the 239 against the Bears at Carrara and then kicking over 200 again the next week. 449 points in two games, that's just unreal. Over the first 8 they averaged 170. And Ablett wasn't even a stay at home FF then. Very different era. I remember listening on the radio as a kid when Dunstall was on 17 and chasing Fred Fanning's record. How do you kick 12 in a game 4 times in a year???
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