One of the pages in the AFL Record Season Guide (the closest thing that the Australian game has to a Wisden) lists the number of ‘bags’ that the league’s leading goalscorers have kicked. The leading players are, largely, who you’d expect – Jason Dunstall, Doug Wade, Peter McKenna.
We here at The Flag like stats like that. But we also like to come up with our own spin on things, rewarding stats that might be unnoticed otherwise.
So, inspired by the behind-scoring leaderboards section of our weekly Goalpost Padding post, we decided to tally up bags of behinds.
Firstly, we had to decide on a definition of ‘bag’. The Season Guide considers seven a bag of goals, but we went with six for a behind-bag. This works, because it’s both a) a reasonably rare feat and b) enough that a player has scored a goal worth of behinds, a pleasing symmetry.
Using AFL Tables as our source, we looked at every player since 1965 (the earliest year they have behind data) and saw how many times they’d kicked 6+ behinds in a game. We found that exactly 50 players have done the feat three or more times,1 23 had done it five or more, and just 9 have achieved it 10 times.
Most behind-bags in a VFL/AFL career
- Gary Ablett Sr (HAW/GEEL), 26
- Lance Franklin (HAW/SYD), 16
- Peter McKenna (COLL/CARL), 31
- Leigh Matthews (HAW), 12
- Peter Hudson (HAW), 11
- Tony Lockett (ST K/SYD), 112
- Allen Jakovich (MELB/FOOT), 10
- Kevin Bartlett (RICH), 10
- Alan Noonan (ESS/RICH), 10
- Jason Dunstall (HAW), 8
The nine players who’ve reached double figures are, for the most part, all time greats. Seven of them are in the top 20 for all time goalscoring, including Ablett, Lockett and Dunstall being three of the game’s 1,000-goalers. So it really doesn’t come as a surprise they’re high on this tally.
Unsurprisingly, these players also scored a lot of behinds. Based on what data we have, Kevin Bartlett has scored more behinds than any player in VFL/AFL history. Him and the next three – Matthews, Ablett, and Franklin – have all scored more than 10 behind-bags.
As impressive as Ablett and Bartlett’s figures are, we actually think that Lance Franklin’s achievement is one of the best, especially considering when his career was compared to the others.
The nine players who’ve scored 10 behind-bags can have their careers split, pretty easily, into three eras. Five of them were mostly active in the 1970s (McKenna, Matthews, Hudson, Bartlett and Noonan). Three of them peaked in the late 80s and early 90s (Ablett, Lockett, and Jakovich). And Franklin serves as the exception, with his career starting in 2005 and still being ongoing.
This is even more impressive when you consider how few bags we’re seeing nowadays. From 1965 to 1995, nearly every year had 10 or more behind-bags.3 Since 1996, no year has. It got to a point where 2013 was the first season recorded where no player kicked 6 behinds in a game.
And on top of this, all the other players had other champions going throughout their career – for example, Ablett could compete with Lockett and Dunstall. But Franklin’s tally of 16 behind-bags is more than every other current player. Josh Kennedy and Lindsay Thomas are the only other players with multiple goals, and nine players have scored one. That all still sums up to just 13, three short of Franklin.
Current players by number of behind-bags
| Player | # | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | |
| Lance Franklin (HAW/SYD) | 16 | 10 | 5 | 1 | ||||
| Josh Kennedy (WCE) | 2 | 2 | ||||||
| Lindsay Thomas (NM/PT A) | 2 | 2 | ||||||
| Jarrad Waite (CARL/NM) | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Charlie Dixon (GCS/PT A) | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Eddie Betts (CARL/ADEL) | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Gary Ablett (GEEL/GCS) | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Jeremy Cameron (GWS) | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Joe Daniher (ESS) | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Mark LeCras (WCE) | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Patrick Dangerfield (ADEL/GEEL) | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Stewart Crameri (ESS/WB/GEEL) | 1 | 1 |
And here we have it. More proof, as if it was needed, that whenever we see Lance Franklin, we’re seeing someone who’ll go down as an all-time champion.
1More nice round figures. Everything’s coming up Milhouse.
2In case you’re wondering, the tiebreaker was a player’s single highest behind tally.
3The exceptions are 1980, 1983, and 1984.
The Flag 