Switching Teams
Diving into the history of playing for and against the same team in a single season.
The baseball world was atwitter earlier this week when Major League catcher Danny Jansen made MLB history by becoming the first player to play for both teams in the same game.
Jansen, who started the season playing for the Toronto Blue Jays, featured in the June 26 game between the Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox.
The game was stopped in the second inning due to bad weather and set to be completed on August 26.
Jansen was traded to the Red Sox for three minor league players on July 27.
This unique combination of a weather delay and an in-season trade opened the door for Jansen to make history when the suspended game resumed.
“It was a very cool moment,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said following the game.
“I don’t know if it’s going to happen again. It has to be kind of like the perfect storm for that to happen… I’m glad that everybody enjoyed it.”
Jansen also becomes the first player to simultaneously win and lose the same game – the Blue Jays won 4-1.
Lights out at Waverley
The suspended game Jansen played in brings back memories of the night the lights went out at Waverley Park.
While there have been delays in AFL games before, including the recent round 24 clash between Melbourne and Collingwood where play was halted for 36 minutes due to lightning strikes, the Waverley game in 1996 remains the only game in V/AFL history that started on one day and finished on another.
Essendon held a 20-point lead over St Kilda with about five minutes to play in the third quarter when the floodlights went out.
Play was unable to be resumed, and this went down like a lead balloon with the 40,000 odd supporters in the stands. Bonfires were lit on the field, and a point post was ripped out of the ground and carried around.
After much deliberation the league decided that the game would be finished on the following Tuesday, with teams playing two 12-minute halves – and they were allowed to change their lineups from the original fixture.
This decision meant St Kilda used 25 players for the match, while Essendon used 26 (including James Hird, who was not playing when the game started on Saturday due to a fractured finger).
The Bombers ended up winning the game by 22 points, with Hird collecting 10 disposals in just over 20 minutes of football.
Rohan Connolly made an excellent point about Hird’s performance when he reflected on that infamous night earlier this year:
“Hird, perhaps fortunately for the AFL, didn’t poll a Brownlow Medal vote from his 24-minute cameo on the Tuesday evening. Fortunately, because he’d end up sharing the medal that year with Brisbane’s Michael Voss. Think of the resultant controversy had he won outright with votes from that game.”
Switching teams, AFL style
Jansen’s story prompted a reader to ask me whether there had been any players in V/AFL history who had changed teams during the course of a season.
The answer is yes, as the V/AFL allowed mid-season trades in the 1970s and early 1980s as well as featuring a mid-season draft between 1990 and 1993.
But there were players switching teams prior to the 1970s – the first instance of a player playing for two different teams in the same season happened in 1898, the second year of the VFL.
Jimmy Aitken, who was elected as the captain of Carlton at the beginning of the season, was dropped after the Blues’ first two games against South Melbourne and Melbourne.
After being dropped, Aitken sought and received permission to play for Melbourne, and ran out wearing the red and blue for the first time five weeks later in round 7.
The Demons played Carlton again in round 9, but Aitken was unable to complete his revenge against his former team – the match finished as a draw.
Since Aitken’s switch, a further 245 players have played for two different clubs during the course of a season.
Some famous footballing names appear on this list of players, including Rex Hunt (Richmond and Geelong, 1974), Mick Malthouse (St Kilda and Richmond, 1976), Robert Walls (Carlton and Fitzroy, 1978), and Rene Kink (Collingwood and Essendon, 1983).
The two most recent players to do it were David Johnston and Ian McMullin in 1992, who both started the season playing for Essendon but transferred to Fitzroy and Collingwood respectively.
However, of these 246 players, only 39 of them played for and against the same two clubs in the same year.
McMullin was the last to achieve this feat, playing for the Bombers against the Pies in round 4 and then switching teams for the round 19 encounter. Collingwood won both of those matches.
Aitken holds the record for the shortest amount of time between playing for and against the same club over the course of the season – there were just 49 days between him playing for Carlton against Melbourne and then running out for Melbourne against Carlton in the return match.
This record is jointly held by Aitkens and Mick Pleass, who played for South Melbourne and Essendon in 1904.
Of the 39 players, just nine (23.1%) won both games they featured in. This puts Charlie Norris, Horrie Edmonds, Frank Munro, Ron Stockman, Brian Wicks, Gareth Andrews, Ray Smith, John Scarlett, and Leigh Carlson in a pretty exclusive club.
This is slightly more common than losing both games you appeared in, which has happened to seven players in history, including Rex Hunt.
While playing for Richmond in round 6, Hunt lost to Geelong by 10 points. After switching teams during the season, he suited up for the Cats in round 17 and lost to his old team, the Tigers, by 36 points.
It’s possible we will see more players added to this somewhat exclusive club, and the Aitken-Pleass record broken next year, if the AFL brings back mid-season trades in 2025.
The timeframe of this stat is limited based on what data are freely/easily available and/or accessible. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you spot any errors in what I have presented.