Most Australian Football pundits figured we would never see another player kick 100 goals in a season, what with the way the game has evolved since the birth of the AFL in 1990 — more handballs, stronger defensive play, etc.
Lance “Buddy” Franklin put the lie to all that by kicking his 100th goal last night in Hawthorn’s final game of the regular season, the first player to do so since Jason Dunstall in 1996 and only the 28th player (and the youngest ever) to reach the century mark in 150 years of Australian Football. Naturally, that goal sparked a big fat 100-goal pitch invasion. It’s tradition down under.
We almost saw a second pitch invasion for Brendan Fevola, but thanks to some first-half accuracy issues, he finished the season just behind Franklin with 99 goals. Matthew Pavlich of Fremantle and Daniel Bradshaw of Brisbane tied for third with … wait for it … 67 goals. Yeah, Buddy and Fev are pretty good. Only Buddy, though, will move on to the Finals Series next weekend.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Tim H // Aug 30, 2008 at 8:36 pm
I think security did a better job when Tony Lockett kicked his 1300th career goal. They were a bit slow to get around Buddy on this occasion.
It’s an interesting”tradition” that can do your team some harm as it can stop momentum because the break in play can be long, especially with our big stadiums these days.
Remembering that back in the day when this started the game was played on what would be called suburban grounds with a capacity of 10 – 20 thousand.
Having said that I did run on the field when Plugger kicked his 1300th
2 Ryano // Aug 31, 2008 at 8:34 am
Pure unadulterated Buddy love!
3 It’s Buddy Mania! (The Lost Weekend) « Half Back Flanker - The AFL Blog // Aug 31, 2008 at 5:28 pm
[...] Round 22, 2008 brought up a few surprise results and some outstanding performances but it will always be remembered for being about Buddy…and not quite being about Fev! Lance Franklin kicked his 100th goal in the first quarter of Hawthorn’s crushing win against Carlton to send the capacity crowd into a fence-jumping frenzy! See it here… [...]