WAFL Stats

[emuboy]

One interesting but forgotten stat about the WAFL is that in the decade from 1973 to 1982, all of the eight WAFL teams won premierships.

In 1973, Subiaco won its first flag since 1924 by beating West Perth, then the following year East Fremantle defeated Perth. West Perth swamped South Fremantle by over 100 points in the 1975 Grand Final, then Perth claimed the next two premierships, defeating East Perth in 1976 and demolishing East Fremantle in a high scoring game in 1977. Perth looked set to emulate their 1966, 1967 & 1968 premiership teams by winning three flags in a row, but a determined East Perth and teeming rain stood in their way, and the Demons lost the 1978 Grand Final by 4 points. East Fremantle beat South Fremantle in a memorable 1979 Grand Final; but South Fremantle bounced back the following year, thrashing Swan Districts in a very one-sided 1980 Grand Final. South Fremantle's hopes of winning two in a row were dashed by emerging power Claremont, the Bulldogs gallant but in the end overwhelmed by the Tigers in 1981. The following year, Swan Districts claimed the first of three flags in a row with their victory over Claremont.

No period as even as this can be found in the AFL/VFL, SANFL or VFA/VFL, with sides going flagless for decades, some droughts continuing to this day. It has never been repeated in the WAFL either; Perth's 1978 Grand Final is the last time the Demons made the GF, and they have appeared in just 3 finals series since then, the most recent of which was 1997. West Perth and East Perth also experienced long droughts after these flags, with West Perth waiting 20 years until they won the 1995 GF, and East Perth 22 years until they broke through in 2000. South Fremantle lost quite a few Grand Finals after 1980, before winning the 1997 premiership; while more recently Swan Districts experienced a 20 year flag drought; and powerful teams Claremont and East Fremantle have not won premierships since 1996 & 1998 respectively. New team Peel Thunder has been uncompetetive since entering the WAFL for the 1997 season, and have never come close to making the finals.

 

[worbod]

Result from Round 5, 1984:

South Fremantle 15.29 (119) defeated Perth 18.8 (116)

South Freo thus won despite kicking three fewer goals. This has happened once in VFL/AFL history. Has it happened more than once in the WAFL?

 

[UpForGrabs]

Will have to check that out. Am part of the way through entering all match data in a new database setup that I've got going.

Will check through tonight when I get home.

 

[UpForGrabs]

Can't see any other instances at the moment, but until I figure out a way to do the searches for me, it's just a case of skimming through the results at the moment.

Here's what I did find though, just a few Close calls:

1982 - Round 1

Swan Districts 20.28 (148) lost to East Fremantle 23.17 (155)

1986 - Round 13

Claremont 13.26 (104) lost to West Perth 16.13 (109)

2008 - Round 4

Peel Thunder 18.7 (115) beat East Fremantle 15.24 (114)

Will keep hunting around though.

 

[UpForGrabs]

Top 10 WAFL Scores by a Home Team:

1) 41.30 (276) East Perth vs South Fremantle 3.2 (20) - Round 1 1944*
2) 40.18 (258) South Fremantle vs West Perth 12.6 (78) - Round 21, 1981
3) 39.20 (254) Claremont vs Perth 12.9 (81) - Round 17, 1981
4) 40.11 (251) Swan Districts vs Subiaco 20.7 (127) - Round 19, 1979
5) 37.19 (241) Claremont vs Subiaco 11.9 (75) - Round 18, 1983
6) 38.12 (240) Claremont vs Peel Thunder 7.4 (46) - Round 10, 2010
7) 37.17 (239) West Perth vs East Fremantle 9.7 (61) - Round 10, 1981
8) 37.17 (239) West Perth vs South Fremantle 4.5 (29) - Round 10, 1987
9) 35.18 (228) South Fremantle vs Subiaco 5.6 (36) - Round 16, 1953
10) 35.13 (223) South Fremantle vs East Fremantle 9.12 (66) - Round 10, 2006

Top 10 WAFL Scores by an Away Team:

1) 38.21 (249) Swan Districts vs Perth 13.9 (87) - Round 2, 1981
2) 33.28 (226) Claremont vs East Perth 8.9 (57) - Round 20, 1987
3) 35.15 (225) Claremont vs West Perth 12.9 (81) - Round 19, 1981
4) 33.23 (221) South Fremantle vs East Perth 9.9 (63) - Round 4, 1984
5) 32.18 (210) Claremont vs Perth 19.15 (129) - Round 12, 1982
6) 33.9 (207) Subiaco vs South Fremantle 21.18 (144) - Round 23, 2010
7) 31.17 (203) Claremont vs Perth 21.17 (143) - Round 21, 1982
8) 31.14 (200) Subiaco vs East Perth 12.10 (82) - Round 20, 1985
9) 31.10 (196) East Perth vs East Fremantle 13.15 (93) - Round 18, 1979**
10) 30.15 (195) Subiaco vs Peel Thunder 8.7 (55) - Round 23, 2003

*Underage only competition due to World War II
** East Fremantle would beat East Perth in the 1st Semi Final four weeks later before going on to win the 1979 Premiership

 

[worbod]

The annual West Australian Football Register used to publish kicks, marks and handball stats for WAFL players between 1984 and 1987 (not sure why they chose to quit this practice). Thought it may be interesting to compare the Sandover Medallists for those years with the Brownlow winners, even though, obviously, not each Sandover winner played in the same position as his Brownlow counterpart. All stats relate to home and away matches only. Note there was a three way tie in the Sandover in 1984.


1984 . . . . . . .Club . . Games Kicks Marks Handballs
Steve Malaxos . . Claremont .21 .443 . 110 . 235
Michael Mitchell .Claremont .21 .310 . .65 . 191
Peter Spencer . . East Perth 19 .401 . 114 . 252
Peter Moore . . . Melbourne .22 .324 . 162 . 157
1985
Murray Wrensted . East Freo .20 .356 . .82 . 230
Brad Hardie . . . Footscray .22 .313 . 101 . .85
1986
Mark Bairstow . . South Freo 21 .423 . 125 . 203
R. DiPierdomenico Hawthorn . 22 .327 . .94 . 189
Greg Williams . . Sydney . . 22 .289 . .79 . 348

For 1987, Frees for and against are now available for the VFL players.

1987 . . . . .Club . .Games Kicks Mark H'ball For Agt Goal/Beh
Mark Watson . Perth . . 21 .324 . .68 . 212 . .32 33 . 20.18
Derek Kickett Claremont 18 .224 . .96 . 193 . .33 45 . 33.20
Tony Lockett .St. Kilda 22 .226 . 164 . .49 . .11 65 .117.52
John Platten .Hawthorn .22 .353 . .59 . 202 . .56 43 . 30.26

I have included Derek Kickett for the WAFL as he polled the most Sandover votes but was ineligible to win.

 

[worbod]

Father and son who won best and fairests with the same club
East Perth: Jim Spencer (1953), Peter Spencer (1975, 1976, 1983)
Swan Districts: Wally Sidebottom (1954), Gary Sidebottom (1976)

Players who won best and fairests with different clubs
Frank Sparrow (East Perth 1952; Swan Districts 1953)
Charlie Tyson (South Fremantle 1954; Subiaco 1956)
Graham Farmer (East Perth 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1961; West Perth 1969)

 

[worbod]

As printed in the West Australian Football Register 1986:

Most kicks by a player in a quarter
15 Leon Baker, Swan Districts vs East Perth, May 28, 1983. He finished the game with 28 kicks.

Most kicks by a player in a game
39 Peter Featherby, Subiaco vs Perth, June 2, 1984. His quarter by quarter tallies were 8, 11, 13 and 7.

Most marks by a player in a game
19 Warren Ralph, Claremont vs Subiaco, July 30, 1983. He also had 23 kicks and booted 16.2.

Most handballs by a palyer in a game
28 Dwayne Lamb, Subiaco vs East Perth, August 17, 1985. He also had 14 kicks and 12 marks.

Most hit outs by a player in a game
49 Phil Scott, Subiaco vs South Fremantle, June 22, 1985.


Not sure whether these are still records, or when the WAFL began keeping these particular stats.

 

[UpForGrabs]

As printed in the West Australian Football Register 1986:

Most kicks by a player in a quarter
15 Leon Baker, Swan Districts vs East Perth, May 28, 1983. He finished the game with 28 kicks.

Most kicks by a player in a game
39 Peter Featherby, Subiaco vs Perth, June 2, 1984. His quarter by quarter tallies were 8, 11, 13 and 7.

Most marks by a player in a game
19 Warren Ralph, Claremont vs Subiaco, July 30, 1983. He also had 23 kicks and booted 16.2.

Most handballs by a palyer in a game
28 Dwayne Lamb, Subiaco vs East Perth, August 17, 1985. He also had 14 kicks and 12 marks.

Most hit outs by a player in a game
49 Phil Scott, Subiaco vs South Fremantle, June 22, 1985.


Not sure whether these are still records, or when the WAFL began keeping these particular stats.

Pretty sure those Stats were from the Sunday Times, which started printing them in 1983. Not sure when they stopped printing them!

 

[UpForGrabs]

In what has to be a record, South Fremantle's Bernie Naylor kicked 48.12 in his three matches against Subiaco in 1953.

He started off with 18.2 in round 2, followed it up with 7.4 in round 9, before rounding it off with 23.6 in round 17 versus the Lions.

That's an average of 16.4 over the three games.

 

[UpForGrabs]

I've been on a crusade for the past number of months to start logging WAFL match scores, goalscorers etc. It's a damn long process and I've still got an eternity to go, but I'm almost at the end of the 1930's. I'm going to wait until I get to the end of 1941 and take a bit of a breather because it's then when I can evaluate and compare two of the greats of WA footy... George Doig and Ted Tyson.

Like Lockett and Dunstall in the 80s and 90s, these two men towered over the goalkicking landscape at the same time. Doig kicked 1111 goals in his career, while Tyson slotted a then-record 1203. Doig played from 1933 to 1941 (and briefly in 1945), while Tyson played from 1930 to 1941.

It's amazing going through the scores of the day (thanks to the awesome Newspaper archive at the NLA) and noting how many times these guys kicked bags of goals in a time when scores weren't high... how many times these guys had their names first on the score sheet.

Will present some stats on these two goalsneaks as soon as I'm done, but one of the thing which boggles my mind so much is that the two of them were short. Not just small, these guys were tiny.

There's a photo taken at the WAFL Hall of Fame from the early 2000s, shortly before Doig's death where he's standing next to Barry Cable, and he's no taller than Cable (whose playing height was listed as 168cm). Coupled that with a photo which I'm trying to find, where it's a pic of Doig and Tyson shaking each others hands and there's no height difference between them. Which means that over 2300 goals were scored by two men who would be among the shortest in today's AFL. Amazing.

 

[UpForGrabs]

Just a quick stat for the day:

In 1937, five players kicked 100 goals or more for the WAFL season:

1) George Doig (EF) - 144.99
2) Ted Tyson (WP) - 124.62
3) Frank Hopkins (Claremont) - 120.61
4) Ted Holdsworth (SD) - 109.62 (Holdsworth began the season with bags of 7, 9, 6, 9, 10, 8, 6, 8, 8, 8, 6)
5) Albert Gook (Perth) - 107.87

 

[worbod]

One thing the WAFL seem to have been good at doing for many decades is recording behinds kicked by individual players. Do you happen to have the stats which would allow you to do a WAFL leading goalkickers list which would include the players' behinds tallies? Or even to list the seasonal achievements of players such as Doig, Tyson and Naylor where their behinds are included, such as is listed in the annual AFL record for all the goalkickers who have kicked 400 goals in a career?
Hope my wording of this makes sense.

 

[UpForGrabs]

One thing the WAFL seem to have been good at doing for many decades is recording behinds kicked by individual players. Do you happen to have the stats which would allow you to do a WAFL leading goalkickers list which would include the players' behinds tallies? Or even to list the seasonal achievements of players such as Doig, Tyson and Naylor where their behinds are included, such as is listed in the annual AFL record for all the goalkickers who have kicked 400 goals in a career?
Hope my wording of this makes sense.

Don't worry, makes perfect sense!

It might be possible up to a point.

My research for any of the early stuff (pre-1955) is from the archives of The West Australian and The Sunday Times courtesy of the NLA.

Very few of the games prior to say 1936, actually made note of the behinds kicked by players. It wasn't until about Round 10 of 1936 where the West would note the behinds kicked in even half the games of each round.

So for Ted Tyson's first 5 or so seasons, we'd probably be out of luck, and the same goes for Doig's first three and a half seasons, save for the odd game where the details were reported.

Some things I have been able to gather though.

In Round 2 of 1937, George Doig kicked 13.12. He also kicked 8.11 in round 8 of the same season.

Amazing that he kicked 99 behinds for the season. Add it to his 144 goals, that's 243 shots on goal (not including out of bounds). Remarkable.

 

[worbod]

Doig's scoring shots for 1937 are interesting in terms of comparing it to the VFL/AFL record, which would appear to belong to Bob Pratt from 1934, with 244 scoring shots (150 goals, 94 behinds). Same era, with Pratt having one extra scoring shot. Pratt played 21 games in 1934, how many did Doig play in 1937?

 

[UpForGrabs]

Doig played 24 in 1937 (incl. 3 finals).

A comparable season would have been Doig's second season (also 1934) where he booted 152 goals in 22 games, however behind tallies are missing for all but five matches.

 

[UpForGrabs]

There were 47 hauls of 10 goals or more in the 1930s, kicked by 13 players. Here's the hauls of 13 or more:

1) 19.3 - George Doig (EF v C - Rd 19, 1934)
2) 17.5 - Ted Tyson (WP v SD - Rd 20, 1938)*
3) 16.6 - Albert Gook (P v WP - Rd 2, 1939)
4) 15 - Ted Tyson (WP v C - Rd 17, 1934)
5) 14 - Frank Hopkins (WP v P - Rd 21, 1930)*
6) 13.12 - George Doig (EF v SF - Rd 2, 1937)
7) 13.7 - Bert Chandler (SF v C - Rd 3, 1938)
8) 13 - Ted Tyson (WP v P - Rd 3, 1933)
9) 13 - Ted Tyson (WP v SD - Rd 6, 1934)
10) 13 - Ted Tyson (WP v SF - Rd 21, 1934)
11) 13 - George Doig (EF v P - Rd 20, 1934)
12) 13 - Jack Jennings (S v P - Rd 4, 1935)

*West Perth lost both of these matches

Also...

Ted Tyson kicked 126 goals in 1938, all in a team which only won 3 games for the season.

His best six hauls all came in losses:

17.5 (Rd 20)
10.3 (Rd 11)
9.6 (Rd 15)
9.1 (Rd 16)
8.3 (Rd 5)
7.4 (Rd 6)

1939 was even worse for West Perth, winning only one game for the year. That game was the one where Tyson kicked his 1000th goal, and he bagged 9.5 on the day.

He did, however, have bags of 11.3, 8.4, 8.3, 8 (behinds not known) and two bags of 7 in losses.

Even more remarkably, West Perth would win the flag only two seasons later.

 

[UpForGrabs]

One thing I noticed yesterday when going through some Ted Tyson figures.

From Round 7, 1938 until Round 19, 1939... Ted Tyson kicked 18 bags of 5 goals or more.

Each of these came in a loss.

 

[UpForGrabs]

In 1944, Alan Watts of East Perth kicked 101 goals for the season. East Perth didn't lose a game en route to the Premiership in this final season of the WWII underage competition.

In 1944, South Fremantle (the team) kicked 100 goals for the season en route to a winless season.

 

[worbod]

MOST INTERSTATE GAMES FOR WESTERN AUSTRALIA


Player . . . . Games WAFL games
Polly Farmer . . .31 255
Thomas Outridge . 27 217
Norman Rogers . . 27 240
John Leonard . . .26 158
Jack Clarke . . . 25 206
Jack McDiarmid . .25 210
Merv McIntosh . . 24 217
Graham Moss . . . 23 253
Raymond Schofield 23 277
Derek Chadwick . .22 269
Brian Foley . . . 22 202
Brian Peake . . . 22 277
Jack Sheedy . . . 22 322
Jackie Guhl . . . 21 234
Steve Marsh . . . 21 265
Keith Slater . . .21 219
Bill Walker . . . 21 305
Alby Western . . .21 158
Barry Cable . . . 20 268
John Gerovich . . 20 221

 

[worbod]

MOST INTERSTATE GOALS FOR WESTERN AUSTRALIA


Player . . . . . Goals Games Avge
Bonny Campbell . 94 . . 17 . 5.52
George Doig . . .62 . . 14 . 4.42
John Gerovich . .56 . . 20 . 2.80
Bernie Naylor . .44 . . 16 . 2.75
Austin Robertson 44 . . 10 . 4.40
Barry Cable . . .35 . . 20 . 1.75
Frank Hopkins . .32 . . 11 . 2.90
Sam McClements . 32 . . 16 . 2.00
Ronald Tucker . .32 . . 16 . 2.00
Graham Moss . . .30 . . 23 . 1.30
Thomas Outridge .30 . . 27 . 1.11
Jack Sheedy . . .30 . . 22 . 1.36
Brian Foley . . .29 . . 22 . 1.31
Bill Walker . . .29 . . 21 . 1.38
George Moloney . 28 . . 11 . 2.54
Barry White . . .28 . . 16 . 1.75

 

[UpForGrabs]

In 1946, Subiaco made the Preliminary Final, only to be beaten by West Perth.

Their leading goalkickers for the season each kicked 22 goals.

 

[UpForGrabs]

Am hoping eventually to turn this thread into a counterpoint for a lot of the questions asked in the stickied topic.

Have been working my way through goalkickers and have entered in 1930-47, 1968, 1972 and from 1974-84 and have 1948-54, 1966-67, 1969-70, 1985-90 and 1994-Present data ready to go, but it's a bit slow going sometimes. I work quickly, but the amount of info is overwhelming sometimes.

Needless to say, the thread's a perennial work in progress.

One thing I will add though.

Austin Robertson Jnr scored 162 goals in 1968. Subiaco's next highest goalscorer bagged 29 for the season, a difference of 133 goals for the year.

 

[maxer81]

G'day Guys,

Love your work.

I was hoping you could help me with a couple of questions I have seeing that use are stats enthusiasts like I myself.

I was wondering who the WAFL employees to gather their live match stats and how many statisticians they require at each game?

Any info would be great!

 

[kayliesharks]

Hey maxer81,

I have a friend that does stats for East Fremantle. They are all volunteers, but according to him it is a lot of fun. If you need any more information feel free to contact me.