If September football is the measure of overall success then Jaspa Fletcher has just completed the best first 50 games by Queenslander in AFL history.
The 21-year-old Brisbane Lions wingman turned defender, who played his 50th game in Sunday’s draw with North Melbourne in Hobart, has a CV that includes seven finals, six finals wins, two grand finals and a premiership.
It’s something that none of the other 81 Queenslanders to play 50 AFL games can match.
Fletcher’s seven finals is equal with Jason Dunstall’s seven at Hawthorn, while his six finals wins is one more than Brisbane’s Robert Copeland, and his two grand finals matches that of Dunstall and Collingwood’s Dayne Beams.
And he is one of six Queenlanders to win a flag inside 50 games – the others are Dunstall, Beams, Copeland, Brisbane’s Jamie Charman and Hawthorn’s Brent Renouf.
Also, having not missed a game since his debut at 19 against Sydney at the Gabba in Round 13 2023, Fletcher is closing in on the Queensland record for most consecutive games from debut.
That is held by ex-Brisbane captain Dayne Zorko at 59 games after his debut at 23 in 2012.
It’s a most significant thing given that the average across 205 Queenslanders who have played at the AFL level is 4.83 games.
And only eight have topped 20 games – Zorko (59), Fletcher (50), Geelong’s Stephen Handley (29), Collingwood’s Josh Smith (29), Brisbane’s Eric Hipwood (27) and Robert Copeland (24), North Melbourne’s Gavin Urquhart (20) and Gold Coast’s Sam Closehy (20).
Fletcher, with 36 wins and two draws in his first 50 games for a 75.00% win rate, sits behind only Dunstall and Copeland (78.00%), Fremantle’s Lee Spurr (77.55%) and Dayne Beams (77.08%), and is just ahead of Essendon’s Frank Dunell (74.00%), Brisbane’s Jamie Charman (73.47%, Carlton’s Warren Jones (71.43%), Hawthorn’s Stephen Lawrence (70.00%) and Brisbane’s Keidean Coleman (58.00%).
Aged 21 years 76 days, Fletcher is the eighth-youngest Queenslander to 50 AFL games behind Brisbane’s Michael Voss (20/30), Jason Akermanis (20/159), Harris Andrews (20/203) and Marcus Ashcroft (20/214), St.Kilda’s Nick Riewoldt (20/317), Fitzroy’s Scott McIvor (20/322) and Brisbane teammate Eric Hipwood (21.76), Dayne Beams (21/106) and North Melbourne’s Dean McRae (21/161) complete the top 10.
Beams has had most possessions at 50 games among Queenslanders with 976 from McIvor (957), Brisbane’s Cheynee Stiller (951), Voss (910), Collingwood’s Josh Thomas (903), Zorko (892), Brisbane’s Troy Clarke (888), Marcus Ashcroft (878), Richmond’s Andrew Raines (872) and Brisbane’s Josh Drummond (871).
Will Ashcroft is poised to obliterate the Beams mark – he has 936 possessions from 40 games.
Dunstall heads the 50-game goal tally with 165 – almost double that of second-placed Kurt Tippett, who had 83 goals in 50 games at Adelaide. Then follows Hipwood (77), Essendon’s Che Cockatoo-Collins (71), Richmond/Gold Coast’s Mabior Chol (67), Adelaide’s Charlie Cameron (60), Akermanis (57), Gold Coast’s Charlie Dixon and Melbourne’s Ricky Petterd (55) and Riewoldt (53).
And most Brownlow Medal votes at 50 games by a Queenslander?
Excluding finals for comparison purposes, Dunstall tops the list at 0.372 votes per game from Riewoldt (0.360), Hawthorn’s Stephen Lawrence (0.255), Zorko (0.220), Voss and Warren Jones (0.200), Troy Clarke (0.180), Hipwood (0.160), Dayne Beams (0.159), Tippett (0.159) and St.Kilda’s David Armitage (0.149).
Completing the 50-game finals list, it’s Dunstall and Fletcher (7) from Beams, Handley, Western Bulldogs’ Jarrod Harbrow (6), Coleman, Copeland (6) and Brisbane’s Jack Payne (6). And in finals wins it’s Fletcher (6) from Copeland (5), Dunstall (4), Handley (4), Charman (4), Beams, Coleman, Payne, Spurr and Renouf (3).
Fletcher’s 50th game came over a weekend in which the nine AFL games produced the League’s lowest average winning margin in 55 years. It was 10.33 points, with the Brisbane-North draw and margins of 2-4-5-8-14-15 points blown out only by Hawthorn’s 35-point win over Melbourne.
It was the lowest since Round 10 1970, when there were only six games. Margins were 2-7-7-10-13-17 as Richmond legend Kevin Bartlett played his 100th game and Collingwood great Peter McKenna kicked his 300th goal.
In other Round 9 highlights:-
Dayne Zorko had 39 possessions in the Lions’ draw – the second-highest possession count in his 286-game career behind only his 40 touches against Gold Coast at the Gabba in Round 8 last year.
Eric Hipwood continued his good run of form with three goals and a menacing display in the Lions draw, while Jack Payne’s 13 possessions were overshadowed by his magnificent lunging spoil on North spearhead Nick Larkey 29 secondS from full-time to deny him a possible match-winning shot on goal.
Bodhi Uwland (18 possessions) and Will Graham (11 possessions, two goals) pulled off similarly herculean efforts in the dying seconds of the Suns’ 10-point win over the Western Bulldogs in Darwin, while Sam Closehy made an eye-catching return with 17 possessions and a goal.
And Corey Wagner, coming off a club record 16 tackles IN Round 8, was the central figure of a Fremantle tag on Collingwood match-winner Nick Daicos which kept him to 18 possessions and a goal in the Magpies’ 14-point win in Perth.
In the AFL Coaches Association Player of the Year Award, Zorko (8) and Payne (3) were the only Queenlanders to poll, with North ruckman Tristan picking up the maximum 10 votes in the draw as North’s Charlie Comben (5), Luke Davies-Uniacke (2) and Brisbane’s Josh Dunkley (2) also caught the coach’s eye.
And in Darwin, despite winning the game against the Bulldogs, the Suns polled only 11 of the 30 votes on offer.
Bulldogs Tom Liberatore (10) and Ed Richards (6) headed the list from Gold Coast’s Touk Miller (4) and Bailey Humphrey (3), the Bulldogs’ James O’Donnell (3), and Gold Coasters Noah Anderson (2), John Noble (1) and Ben King (1).
Submitted by Peter Blucher