Behind

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Of the 15,983 games in V/AFL history, there have been just five where one team has finished with zero behinds. In all five cases, the team that didn’t register a behind lost. Clearly St Kilda had a rough time in the very early days of the VFL!

  • Geelong (14.12.96) defeated St Kilda (3.0.18) – Round 14, 1897
  • Collingwood (8.17.65) defeated St Kilda (1.0.6) – Round 13, 1898
  • Essendon (11.19.85) defeated St Kilda (1.0.6) – Round 9, 1899
  • Essendon (16.16.112) defeated Hawthorn (7.0.42) – Round 12, 1949
  • Footscray (10.6.66) defeated Fiztroy (1.0.6) – Round 5, 1953

Somewhat disappointingly, there is yet to be a game where both sides finish without registering a behind. The game in 1953 is the closest we have come to date. I guess there’s always next year.

On the flip side of things, there have been four games where the winning team registered only one minor score:

  • Essendon (8.1.49) defeated Sydney (6.9.45) – Round 13, 1879
  • Carlton (4.1.25) defeated Collingwood (0.9.9) – Round 6, 1900
  • St Kilda (12.1.73) defeated Port Adelaide (6.8.44) – Round 8, 2020
  • Fremantle (10.1.61) defeated Collingwood (7.7.49) – Round 9, 2020

I find it interesting that after going more than a hundred years without such an occurrence, it then happened in successive weeks in 2020. Is this the strangest, most unprecedented thing to come out of the COVID pandemic?

As always, I apologise to anyone who has already looked at these stats.