Nineteen years ago, three games into the 1996 AFL season, Michael Voss was a 20-year-old AFL superstar in the making. He’d played 58 AFL games for 1015 possessions, 51 goals, 23 wins, 19 Brownlow Medal votes, one losing final and a Brisbane Bears best & fairest.
Today, there’s another 58-game Queenslander who is looming as ‘the next Voss’. Or at least a player who in time will be compared to the captain of the Queensland Team of the Century, and the State’s #1 AFL product.
And while it is often folly to compare statistically players from different eras, in this instance it’s entirely valid. And it’s a comparison that paints the brightest of futures for Will Ashcroft, older son of ex-Lions 318-gamer Marcus Ashcroft.
At 21, Ashcroft’s first 58 games have delivered 1428 possessions, 26 goals, 43 wins and a draw, 21 Brownlow Medal votes, eight finals, seven finals wins, two premierships, two Norm Smith Medals and a Gary Ayres Medal. And one knee reconstruction.
They are mind-boggling numbers for the player judged best afield in the Lions’ stunning grand final win over Geelong at the MCG last Saturday.
So, too, is the statistical comparison with his 18-year-old brother Levi Ashcroft, who iced a stunning first season in the AFL with a grand final performance far beyond his years.
The first person in AFL history to play 27 games in his first season and the youngest Queensland player in history to win an AFL flag, Levi’s record 283 days beyond his 18th birthday is 19 wins and a draw, 517 possessions, 12 goals, four finals for three wins and a premiership.
At the same point in his career Voss, the 1996 Brownlow Medallist and later to skipper Brisbane to their 2001-02-03 premiership hat-trick, was three days beyond his 19th birthday and into his third season in 1994.
From 27 games Voss had nine wins, 438 possessions and 10 goals for one medal vote.
It seems incongruous, then, that neither of the Ashcroft boys won the AFL Rising Star. Will polled 39 votes in the final tally to finish second 15 votes behind North Melbourne’s Harry Sheezel in 2023, and this year Will polled 26 votes for third spot behind Fremantle’s Murphy Reid (48) and Adelaide’s Daniel Curtin (35).
But this week, as they celebrate the Lions’ fifth AFL premiership, it will be the furthest thing from their mind. Because it’s not about such awards, they’ll agree. It’s about premierships. And, still with the bulk of their career ahead of them, they are now part of the AFL’s new ‘power family’.
Indeed, the Ashcrofts have become the fourth father/son/son combination in history to win an AFL flag, breaking a Collingwood stranglehold on this football rarity as they join the Pannam family, the Twomey family and the Daicos family.
The Pannams won six premierships after Charlie Pannam Snr won in 1902-03 before Charlie Jnr won in 1917-19 and Alby won in 1935-36.
The Twomeys won five premierships, with Bill Twomey Snr saluting in 1919 before sons Bill Jnr, Pat and Mick played together in the 1953 premiership and Mick won again in 1958.
The Daicos clan have three flags after father Peter Daicos was a 1990 premiership player and Josh and Nick shared in the 2023 win over Brisbane.
It’s a brave man who says the Ashcrofts will not add to their six premierships – Marcus’ 2001-02-03 hat-trick, Will’s 2024-25 double and Levi’s first-season flag in 2025.
Indeed, had Will not missed the 2023 grand final, when Collingwood beat Brisbane by four points, it might already be the case, the Daicos family would have only one flag.
Still, the story goes on, with Will and Levi having become the second pair of Queensland footballing brothers to enjoy premiership success, and the first to do so in the same team.
They have followed the Keating brothers, who together have four flags after older brother Aaron won with Adelaide in 1997, and Clark grabbed three alongside Voss and Marcus Ashcroft with Brisbane in 2001-02-03.
The Ashcroft boys are also the second pair of brothers to play in a premiership with Brisbane, following Melbourne-born Chris and Brad Scott, who were members of the Brisbane 2001-02 sides before both missed the 2003 grand final due to injury.
It was nothing short of surreal on Saturday as Chris Scott, coach of the beaten Geelong side and still close friends with Marcus Ashcroft, went out of his way to find the Ashcroft boys amid the post-siren MCG pandemonium and offer his congratulations.
It was a crazy end to an extraordinary performance in which the Lions, with nine Queenslanders in the side, went from one point down 13 minutes into the third quarter of the grand final to 64 points up 20 minutes into the fourth after adding 11-6 to 1-1.
Astonishingly, Will was at the top (or at least equal top) of the Lions stats sheet in every key midfield statistic – 32 possessions, 12 contested possessions, 10 clearances, 10 score involvements, eight tackles a goal and three goal assists.
He polled 13 votes to win the Norm Smith Medal from co-captain Harris Andrews (6), Zac Bailey (5), Jaspa Fletcher (3), Dayne Zorko (2) and Hugh McCluggage (1).
So on a “state v state basis”, it was Queensland 24, other states six and Geelong nil.
This made Will Ashcroft the fifth player in history to win multiple Norm Smith Medals, and the third player to do so in consecutive years. He follows Richmond’s Dustin Martin (2017-19-20), Adelaide’s Andrew McLeod (1997-98) and Hawthorn’s Gary Ayres (1986-88) and Luke Hodge (2008-14).
Ironically, and appropriately, McLeod was chairman of the Norm Smith Medal voting panel on Saturday, and Hodge was on hand to announce and present the 2025 medal.
In the coaches votes for the Ayres Medal, in which grand final votes carried a 50% loading, it was Ashcroft (13.5) from Andrews (10.5), Bailey (7.5), McCluggage (4.5), Brisbane’s Darcy Gardiner (3) and yet another Queenslander, Charlie Cameron (1.5).
Final standings in the Ayres Medal were Ashcroft (26.5) from Andrews (22.5), Hawthorn’s Jai Newcombe (18), McCluggage (17.5) and Bailey (11.5).
But for all that the statistic that counts is the fact that four Lions players – Levi Ashcroft, Ty Gallop, Sam Marshall and Bruce Reville - have joined the Queensland AFL Premiership Club as Andrews, Zorko, Cameron, Fletcher and Will Ashcroft banked their second flag.
This took the membership of this elite group to 28.
Levi Ashcroft displaced Robert Copeland, a 2001-03 premiership teammate of his father, as the youngest Queensland premiership player, with Copeland having been 20 years 126 days when the Lions beat Essendon to claim their first flag in 2001.
Gallop (19 years 230 days) and Marshall (19 years 251 days) pushed Copeland down to fourth on a list in which 20-year-olds Will Ashcroft, Brent Renouf, Jaspa Fletcher and Dayne Beams complete the top 10 with 21-year-old Jamie Charman and 22-year-old Gavin Crosisca.
At 24 Reville sits equal 16th – at 24 years 217 days on Saturday he was exactly the same age as Brownlow Medallist Jason Akermanis when he won his first flag with the Lions in 2001.
At the other end of the age scale, Zorko, already Queensland’s oldest premiership player at 35 last year, pushed that mark out to 36 years 232 days on Saturday. He is now the second-oldest AFL premiership player in the national era since 1987, behind only Hawthorn’s Michael Tuck.
Gallup, a premiership player in just his sixth AFL game on Saturday, claimed #2 spot on the list of least experienced Queensland premiership players. Remarkably, he has played twice as many games as Aaron Keating when the Crows won in 1997.
Aaron Keating was 23 years 126 days in the ’97 grand final, having debuted in Round 1 that year against Brisbane and younger brother Clark before spending the next 24 weeks out of the side.
He was recalled to replace the injured David Pittman in the preliminary final, and held his spot despite Pittman’s return for the grand final after Coleman Medallist Tony Modra blew out his knee in the preliminary final.
Marshall, who played in the grand final on Saturday in his 11th game, is fourth on this list behind Hawthorn’s eight-game 2008 premiership ruckman Brent Renouf, and ahead of Copeland (17), Reville (25), Levi Ashcroft (27), Will Ashcroft (31), Jason Dunstall (38) and Fletcher (41).
Again, the Queensland player who waited longest to win an AFL flag is Zorko, who was in his 277th game last year. He waited nine games longer than Marcus Ashcroft.
For the history books, in the grand final, Andrews, the only player in the game to play 100% game time, had 18 possessions, a game-high 11 intercept possessions and nine marks. And he had a disposal efficiency of 88.9% - game high but for the 100% of Geelong’s Oisin Mullin (five possessions) and Jack Martin (one possessions).
Fletcher, so cool and composed and now 68 games into his career without missing a game, had 29 possessions at 82.8% efficiency, eight marks, three clearances and eight score involvements from the back half.
Zorko, such a spark through the second and third quarters, had 28 possessions at 85.7% for a team-high 716 metres gained and five score involvements, and Cameron kicked an equal game-high four goals from 10 possessions and seven score involvements.
In his 27th final and his fourth grand final, Cameron kicked his first goal seven minutes into the second quarter, and added three in a game-chasing burst either side of three-quarter time. He got two late in the third term and the first of the last after 46 seconds.
It was his first four-goal haul in 42 games since he booted five goals against Richmond at the Gabba in Round 10 last year.
Levi Ashcroft had 17 possessions and a beautiful long goal shortly before halftime, when he baulked Geelong’s Jye Clark on the mark at centre half and nailed it from the 50m arc.
Reville had 11 possessions, Gallop 10 possessions and Marshall four possessions before he was subbed out at halftime to make way for the introduction of co-captain Lachie Neale.
Jack Bowes, the sole Queenslander in the Geelong side, had 16 possessions (10 contested) and a goal to rank among his side’s better players in his first grand final.
Members of the Queensland AFL Premiership Club, who together have won 45 premierships, are:-
4 – Jason Dunstall (Hawthorn 1986-88-89-91).
3 – Michael Voss, Jason Akermanis, Clark Keating, Mal Michael, Marcus Ashcroft (Brisbane 2001-02-03), David Hale (Hawthorn 2013-14-15).
2 – Robert Copeland (Brisbane 2001-03), Harris Andrews, Dayne Zorko, Jaspa Fletcher, Charlie Cameron, Will Ashcroft (Brisbane 2023-24).
1 - Frank Dunell (Essendon 1984), Gavin Crosisca (Collingwood 1990), Stephen Lawrence (Hawthorn 1991), Brent Renouf, Michael Osborne (Hawthorn 2008), Dayne Beams (Collingwood 2010), Jamie Charman (Brisbane 2003), Levi Ashcroft, Ty Gallop, Sam Marshall, Bruce Reville (Brisbane 2025).
Saturday also saw Queensland umpire Andrew Stephens officiate in his first AFL grand final. It was his 259th AFL game overall after he officiated in the QAFL grand final in 2011-12-13.