Another off-season week, another Mongrel star club for you guys.
Dusty has never pulled this one off. Nor has Christian Petracca, Marcus Bontempelli, or Lachie Neale. Only one current AFL player has ever made the 30 & 1 Club.
I don’t know about you guys, but growing up, if a player had 30 touches in a game, it was considered a spectacularly good effort. I used to marvel at the way Diesel Williams would find the footy – just in the right place at the right time. And then he’d run forward and slot a goal or two as well.
However, doing it consistently enough to average 30 touches and a goal… that was something else.
In a time before the internet, you’d have to scour books and mull over numbers to find players who had achieved this milestone. Amazingly, back then, there were not too many.
This is very much a stat that leans toward the modern player. Averaging 30 these days is not so amazing. Just last season, there were five players who finished with an average of 30+ disposals. It is not the only barometer (with all respect to Rhys Mathieson) as to whether an accumulator has done his job. Tom Green, Nick Daicos, Darcy Parish, Clayton Oliver, and Caleb Serong all had great numbers in 2023, but when we combine those disposal numbers with scoreboard impact, the closest any of them got was 0.86 goals per game.
That was Nick Daicos.
Quite a distance from the feats of the Father of the 30 & 1 club – Bob Skilton.
In the first season official stats were kept for recording disposals in the game, Skilton did something incredible. Not only did he notch 32 disposals per game, he became the only man in history to do that and average two goals per game.
Skilton’s 32.00 and 2.00 goals per game puts him in the loneliest club in the game – he is the only member of the 30 & 2 club. It is worth noting that for the nine years before he hit that mark, Skilton averaged over a goal per game, as well, and in one season, notched an average of 3.75 goals per game. That’d now see him walk in the Coleman Medal.
Incredible stuff, and you’d think that, had disposal stats been recorded for a few of those years, he’d have multiple 30 &1 seasons under his belt.
It would be six years until Skilts got some company in the 30 & 1 club, with Collingwood’s Wayne Richardson putting together a remarkable 1971 season, comprising 32.83 disposals and 1.61 goals across 23 games.
Richardson is often left out of the conversation when people discuss great mids, but the ability to hit the scoreboard was an underrated aspect of being a potent midfielder, and he had nine seasons where he averaged over a goal per game, including his first year in the league, where he avgeraged a career-high 2.31.
19 seasons would pass before a third member joined the club, with the ball magnet, Greg Williams averaging a career-high 31.73 disposals and 1.55 goals per game in 1990. That must have been a Brownlow year, right?
Wrong.
Diesel was limited to just 11 games (I used ten games as the cut off for this stat) in that season, but his influence on a struggling Sydney team when he did play was huge.
The very next season, Williams’ Sydney teammate, and father of Collingwood star Tom, Barry Mitchell joined the club. When you think of accumulators, Mitchell was a freak at Sydney. He had five-straight seasons of 27 disposals or above, and was the Robin to Williams’ Batman (I don’t know what that makes Gerard Healy. Maybe… Alfred?) in that Sydney midfield.
His 1991 season saw him amass 31.32 and 1.36 in an effort that his Borwnlow-winning son has not been able to match. Something to aim for, Tom?
And then the drought set in. 30 disposals in a season suddenly became a little harder to come by, with several years in the 90s seeing no one hit that mark, let alone add a goal per game to their figures. The 2000s came and went with no one putting up numbers good enough to join these four mean.
And then, The Little Master hit his straps.
By this stage, you can see how seldom this feat was achieved. Running forward and kicking goals whilst winning the footy all over the ground simply did not occur that often… but if there was one man to kick the door in on the 30 & 1 club, Gary Ablett Junior was the man to do it.
From 2009 until 2014, Gaz had five seasons where he not only joined the club, but took over as the undoubted leader. In 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014, Gary Ablett made this stat his calling card. He dominated firstly for the Cats, and then for the Suns as his superior work ethic and incredible goal sense made him the ultimate weapon both in the middle and running forward.
For him to notch five 30 & 1 seasons whilst every other player in the history of the league had managed just four before his first, is absolutely incredible.
However, the 2010s saw others join the party as well.
Dane Swan had two seasons back-to-back, where he received his membership. His 2011 and 2012 seasons are criminally underrated in terms of his effectiveness. With 31.67 and 1.33 in 2011, followed by a huge 34.52 and 1.19 in 2012, Swan became the heartbeat of the Collingwood midfield.
Another Magpie joined him in 2012 – quite unexpectedly, actually. Dayne Beams notched 30.88 disposals and 1.17 goals per game in a brilliant season of footy.
The last man to join the club was Patrick Dangerfield, in his Brownlow Medal-winning season of 2016. He averaged 31.75 disposals and 1.00 goals per game, sneaking in with the goals by one straight kick.
2024 is the eighth season since Danger made the grade and joined one of the more exclusive clubs in footy. Christian Petracca went perilously close in 2021, averaging 29.20 and 1.16 and would be my two picks to be the next to join the club. Daicos, with his 31 disposals and 0.86 goals per game, is the other obvious choice. Perhaps Bont could join him, but it would take career highs from both in terms of disposals and goals to do so.
Could Clayton Oliver add to his already impressive list of accomplishments by increasing his scoring impact? Or will it be someone from left field?
With just eight players and 13 instances of their brilliance populating the 30 & 1 club, it remains one of the rarest achievements in the league.
And of course, as we mentioned earlier, the 30 & 2 club is something else all together. Hats off to Bobby Skilton – I never had the opportunity of seeing him play. He must’ve been something special.
| YEAR | AVE. DISPOSALS | AVE. GOALS | |
| Bob Skilton | 1965 | 32.00 | 2.00 |
| Wayne Richardson | 1971 | 32.83 | 1.61 |
| Greg Wllliams | 1990 | 31.73 | 1.55 |
| Barry Mitchell | 1991 | 31.32 | 1.36 |
| Gary Ablett Jr | 2009 | 33.82 | 1.23 |
| Gary Ablett Jr | 2010 | 31.50 | 1.83 |
| Dane Swan | 2011 | 31.67 | 1..33 |
| Dane Swan | 2012 | 34.52 | 1.19 |
| Gary Ablett Jr | 2012 | 33.75 | 1.30 |
| Dayne Beams | 2012 | 30.88 | 1.17 |
| Gary Ablett Jr | 2013 | 31.19 | 1.33 |
| Gary Ablett Jr | 2014 | 32.07 | 1.60 |
| Patrick Dangerfield | 2016 | 31.75 | 1.00 |
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