A history of match aggregate scores in the VFL

The author of Rogers Results, when I contacted him about the unusual fact that North Melbourne scored a century at Victoria Park before Richmond did, said that I should do a project on the history of the highest VFL match aggregate score since 1897.

I had known for years the progression since that match where Collingwood and North Melbourne scored a total of 286 points (forty-two goals), but before 1933 the progression of the record match aggregate score remained a mystery. However, a quick check of Every Game Ever Played, a guide to V/AFL results up to 1997 unmatched in any other competition, provides adequate details to work out the highest match aggregate scores before then.

In the early years of the VFL, however, aggregate scores were almost always dominated by whatever the highest score a single team could make. Two teams even slightly less unbalanced were never even in the driest conditions capable of kicking as much as a top team could against St. Kilda or Carlton. Only after those teams emerged in 1903, thus, did record of combined match scores become of any value at all. Consequently, my survey begins in 1905 and continues up to the present longstanding record set in 1978. (A notable fact is that two of the five highest match aggregate scores have occured on the same day; viz. May 6 of 1978 and 1989.)

Year	Round
1905	3	St. Kilda	1.2	2.6	4.7	10.10 (70)	188
		Collingwood	3.3	6.7	13.10	18.10 (118)
1909	13	Carlton	6.4	8.6	13.11	19.16 (130)	200
		Geelong	3.1	4.6	7.8	10.10 (70)
The first match to break the 200 point barrier, in probably the gloomiest and wettest winter known in Victoria.
1911	16	St. Kilda	1.2	2.7	3.7	5.8 (38)	201
		Essendon	8.4	12.7	20.14	24.19 (163)
1919	12	South Melbourne	2.5	6.7	12.11	29.15 (189)	207
		St. Kilda	0.0	2.2	2.6	2.6 (18)
1920	18	Fitzroy	9.6	11.10	15.17	22.17 (149)	218
		St. Kilda	3.1	4.1	6.2	11.3 (69)
Last quarter aggregate of 12.1 beaten for accuracy only by Hawthorn against Footscray in 1962.
1923	18	Melbourne	4.6	7.8	9.14	11.21 (87)	225
		Collingwood	5.2	10.5	15.9	21.12 (138)
1924	5	Collingwood	3.4	9.9	15.13	19.17 (131)	238
		Carlton	3.3	8.4	11.8	16.11 (107)
Key forwards Gordon Coventry and Horrie Clover each kicked seven goals. Aggregate score unbeaten in a home-and-away game between the sides until 1987
1926	8	Collingwood	8.8	12.10	21.14	28.16 (184)	242
		Footscray	2.3	4.6	6.6	8.10 (58)
Gordon Coventry kicked eleven goals in the first 100-point win since 1919.
1930	12	Collingwood	5.5	9.8	16.14	25.17 (167)	261
		Fitzroy	2.5	6.11	9.13	13.16 (94)
Gordon Coventry kicked a VFL record seventeen goals in the first match to break the 250 point barrier.
1931	17	St. Kilda	6.3	9.8	14.11	21.16 (142)	270
		Collingwood	5.3	8.6	15.6	20.8 (128)
Coventry kicked eleven goals and became the first man to kick double figures for a losing side. Bill Mohr kicked eleven for the Saints – still an equal record against Collingwood
1933	17	Collingwood	5.3	10.8	18.11	25.15 (165)	286
		North Melbourne	2.1	6.5	13.10	17.19 (121)
Coventry kicked another nine. This was the first of 35 successive losses by North, though eight were by less than a goal! Tom Fitzmaurice kicked six for them.
1934	8	Essendon	6.4	14.12	19.14	29.16 (190)	293
		North Melbourne	3.3	6.5	9.11	15.13 (103)
Freyer and Forbes kicked fifteen between them for Essendon. North’s losing margin was the highest by a team scoring a century until Round 6, 1977. Against St. Kilda the following week, Essendon’s score fell by 132 points, a record until 1983.
1937	16	Collingwood	8.4	13.8	19.14	21.16 (142)	295
		Melbourne	4.6	9.13	13.15	22.21 (153)
An epic match between two of the finest attacking sides in history, to be compared with Hawthorn’s games with Geelong in 1989. Lou Reiffel kicked eight for the Demons and Norm Smith five. Remains Collingwood’s highest losing score.
1940	10	Melbourne	9.6	13.11	17.17	22.19 (151)	305
		Geelong	7.2	15.4	19.9	24.10 (154)
Melbourne’s record for the highest losing score unbroken until 1976. Barassi senior nearly won with a free on the bell.
1942	2	Melbourne	4.3	6.4	16.8	18.9 (117)	313
		Richmond	4.2	14.8	18.8	30.16 (196)
On a rare dry (but windy) day in Melbourne’s wettest May on record, played at Punt Road because the MCG was used by the Army. Harris kicked seven, Titus six and Dyer four for the Tigers as they kicked the highest score for any quarter since 1919 in the last term.
1972	Grand Final	Richmond	5.4	10.9	15.15	22.18 (150)	327
		Carlton	8.4	18.6	25.9	28.9 (177)
A major upset win, planned by captain-coach John Nicholls who made mass positional changes beforehand against a Tiger team unbeaten in twelve games. Nicholls, Alex Jesaulenko and Robert Walls shared nineteen goals. Given that Richmond conceded three of the four highest scores of that year amongst five losses, the game was less of an aberration for them than Carlton, who have not exceeded 295 points aggregate in a home-and-away game.
1978	6	Melbourne	6.2	8.5	15.8	21.15 (141)	345
		St. Kilda	8.7	19.12	23.13	31.18 (204)
On a very warm 25˚C day, St. Kilda kicked its highest score in any grade of footy, with Russell Greene (five goals) dominating on the ball and wingmen O’Keefe and Tweeddale (three goals each) outpointing Demon champion Robert Flower. Melbourne coach Dennis Jones described the game as a “freak”.

Since 1978, there have been two 337-point aggregates, in the first of which Russell Greene, the hero of the present-record-holding game, played for a Hawthorn side that succumbed to Richmond for the last time for a decade. Michael Byrne, who had played for Melbourne in that game, also played for Hawthorn and kicked three of their twenty-one goals.

In the other 337-point game, Geelong achieved a 119-point win over St. Kilda with the fifth-highest score in history. In the process its fans saw 102 goals scored in two consecutive games. Only Sydney, in its 1987 demolitions of Essendon and Richmond, has otherwise played two consecutive games with over 300 points, but these totalled only 93 goals. In 1985, Richmond had two 300-point aggregates in three games, viz:

1. 309 points against St. Kilda in Round Three
2. 337 points against Hawthorn in Round Five

(Their intermediate game in Round Four against Fitzroy totalled only 199 points, but given the very heavy conditions, that was by no means a low-scoring game)

Too late to make the masses fight the car and fossil fuel industries?

In WA Today, there is it seems a final, laboratory-tested scientific proof that man-made global warming has actually occurred. According to research that has been done at the University of Melbourne, a common species called the Brown Butterfly (which I am not myself familiar with) shows beyond doubt that global warming has occurred since the 1940s, and that natural cycles cannot possibly be the cause of these changes.

The problem is that these scientific studies have been done far too late. The time to start with them should have been in the middle 1970s when unprecedented rainfall occurred over almost all of the interior of the continent. At the time though, there were near parallels in terms of Alice Springs’ 1879 rainfall – enough upon my first reading of this issue to be very sceptical that man-made global warming would inevitably lead to large increases in rainfall over the bulk of Australia. However, once year after year between 1997 and 2001 brought record rainfall after record rainfall to the northwest quarter of Australia and the Nullarbor (it should really be called “Nullaqua” since it literally has no surface water due to the immense age of its soils) it was clear to me that man-made global warming was bringing rainfalls without parallel for thousands of years. The pity was that the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology have become so politically gagged that they cannot – as they should – educate people about the urgent need to address global warming via reduction in CO₂ concentrations. Nor do the less politically passive universities, who are totally out of touch with the ultraconservative politics of suburban Australia.

The task of Melbourne University in addressing the urgent need for a zero-emissions economy is far from easy. The notion that the majority of people are capable of changing the world via protests and rallies is a novelty owing to the extremely comfortable life and low living costs in suburban Australia. However, even if governments and private sectors in other countries where car, mineral, car component and fossil fuel corporations cannot gain much power due to the paucity of mineral deposits are able to do something to reduce carbon footprints, Australia's governments and businesses simply cannot. A surfeit of resources means it is always cheapest to use the most carbon-intensive means of production, so that mass power and knowledge becomes the only answer.

The question is whether past experience has told the masses of Australia that the neede protest is futile and of no use. If it has, we are in for a disastrous time as one ecosystem after another is lost.

Trivialism beyond the wildest belief

In recent days my brother has become really angry at claims of inedia by the likes of Thèrése Neumann, Marthe Robin, Louise Lateau and Nicholas of Flüe. So deep is his hatred of talking about it and belief that science would show that he will not even reply to one e-mail about whether Marthe Robin's supposed fifty-three years eating and drinking nothing except the Eucharist is a legitimate record.

• In case you do not know, Guinness World Records (as it is now called) has stopped publishing fasting records
• My brother says this is because it sees it as dangerous and possibly unethical to encourage people to break these records, and definitely not because they have been hounded to accept claims of inedia.

However, the problem with the kind of criticism of claims of inedia like those I have been witness to in the past few weeks has been that they have been accompanied by absurd claims like:

• “if inedia were true, then famine could simply be solved by Holy Communion”!

The reason saying inedia would allow the curing of famine stands as such a trivialisation is that every known inedic, as documented by Michael Freze, has suffered very severe illnesses, and that people without the capacity to suffer as severely as a stigmatist (and Freze and all other theologians who study these phenomena) are not likely to suffer illnesses which would cause them to be unable to eat or drink in the normal manner. More than that, in a culture which as Benjamin Wiker eloquently points out, fashionable people cannot understand that there could possibly or potentially be purpose behind suffering, it is simply impossible to imagine the extremely deep feelings that undoubtedly are necessarily part of the psychological make-up of stigmatics.

“If Epicurus and Lucretius are right and this is our only life and bodily existence is our only existence, then to try and bear unbearable suffering is unintelligible”

The consequence is that people who do not even try to understand how the other side of the culture wars makes decisions about what is right and wrong simply do not grasp how a feeling type feels laws as natural and not to be tampered with by man. These are utterly contrary to the view of the dominant thinking-oriented culture of our academia, but are in accordance with what Michael Freze and Alfred Vogl say about God being able to do deeds like giving people sustenance only on wafers for decades. They also are in accordance with the theory of intelligent design, which allows for phenomena like inedia and stigmata to occur without being “explained in terms of blind natural causes” (Moral Darwinism, p. 12).

In the absence of a militant atheist being willing to try and examine a supposed inedic day and night for decades (which nobody would consider a worthy task given the length of time involved), we are left with the problem that people like my brother trivialise inedia in the most ridiculous manner. Not only does he make the absurd claim outlined above, he also claims that every part of the story of Marthe Robin must be wrong to the point of claiming she cannot have been paralysed and bedridden. Given that everybody (no doubt) who met Marthe knew she was bedridden in a dark room, such a claim is simply implausible!

The 11 Worst Concept Albums

Today, I found a list of the eleven worst concept albums, published by Aux Weekly.

In my musical history, I have rarely encountered obvious concept albums and rarely come to admire them, with the exception of

• Parliament's Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome and Mothership Connection (about a fantasy war for the survival of funk)
• Buffy Sainte-Marie's Illuminations (first eight songs) and Kate Bush's Hounds of Love (about spiritual quests for liberation)
• Patti Smith's Easter (about sin and redemption - tribute to the Decadents)
• Renaissance's Ashes Are Burning (about the birth and death of the earth) and Turn of the Cards (two side, one romantic and light, the other extremely dark protest songs)

The actual list of worse concept albums was:

1. Garth Brooks: Garth Brooks in…
2. Neil Young: Trans
3. Lou Reed: Metal Machine Music
4. KISS: Music from The Elder
5. Pete Townshend: Psychoderelict
6. Styx: Kilroy Was Here
7. Tori Amos: American Doll Posse
8. Green Day: 21st Century Breakdown
9. Michael Jackson: Ben
10. Madonna: I'm Breathless
11. The Fiery Furnaces: Rehearsing My Choir

On the whole, this list is flawed because too many albums are either soundtracks or rock operas rather than proper concept albums. On the other hand, the lyrics given for "Rehearsing My Choir" do sound really silly as a viewpoint on a religious upbringing as the siblings who make up Fiery Furnaces had. Tori's American Doll Posse is a rather silly way of having five figures in Greek mythology viz:

1. Artemis
2. Persephone
3. Athena
4. Aphrodite
5. Demeter and Dionysos (whom Tori herself represents)

Green Day's album makes sense: I have never been impressed by the silly lyrics of "Minority" which can loosely be seen as the basis for the subsequent rock-opera forays of the band.

The worst lyrics - maybe Desree deserves it?

Today, I have found a very short list of lyrics which have been called the "worst". According the the site involved, music can be poetry for the masses, but by and large this is not true. Truly poetic lyrics like those of "Paper Mountain Man" or "Wide Awake" almost never have any mass appeal whatsoever and go unnoticed for long periods.

However, the choice of Des'ree for "Life" (and what about "What's Your Sign") I can agree with (even as someone who finds astrology to be the most amusing garbage known to man). As a child, I did listen a bit to Des'ree and by no means hated her first two hit singles "Feel So High" and "You Gotta Be". Both songs' lyrics really are so silly that I could never even grasp them when they were played on the radio late in the 1990s.

Strange choice of inductees for the 2009/2010 inductees

Only today have I recognised that the 2009/2010 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees will be inducted on Monday 15 March.

More than that, I have noticed that the inductors ("presenters") for the 2009/2010 inductees will be a rather surprising group:

• ABBA: Barry and Robyn Gibb
• Genesis: Trey Anastasio (of Phish)
• The Hollies: Steven van Zandt
• Jimmy Cliff: Wyclef Jean
• The Stooges: Billie Joe Armstrong (of Green Day)

In none of the cases would the inductee be one I would have remotely expected. Phish, for one thing, are seen as closer to such jam bands as the Grateful Dead than to progressive rock - and the distinction is very definite. Had it been Yes instead of Genesis, I have imagined Hetfield and Ulrich doing the induction as they did with Black Sabbath - Rick Wakeman did play on some of Sabbath's albums showing how metal has had links with progressive rock as long as it's existed.

In the case of ABBA, I would more have imagined someone like Madonna doing it, whilst Billie Joe Armstrong really is an odd presenter for the Stooges. Given their influence on such genres as goth, hardcore and ultimately the slow-burn of grunge, one would more imagine someone like Chris Cornell (of Soundgarden) or one of the the surviving members of the Sex Pistols, or even David Bowie (who produced some of Iggy's solo albums).

A very sensible view of the problem of subsidising education

Probably all through my life, I have inwardly been very wary of the need for subsidised public education. Most of what I know today I have learned from reading myself and from becoming curious about it - not through being taught in under the genuine pressure of classrooms.

Then there is the point that so much of what I have learned becomes an unhealthy obsession, especially when it becomes known so well to me that it loses all sense of excitement. In general, when i learn I always prefer the unfamiliar and the surprising to the mundane, which creates a major problem for me: that I am not able to use the vast amount I have learned in any kind of productive manner since I have never spent any time learning how I can work. Even though I am planning on a major creative fantasy project in my very own language, I know that I will have to change my habits a great deal to get a single thing done!

Today in Time, I found an extremely good article criticising the whole issue of subsidised education. Even for someone who feels the government must do a great deal on environmental issues (if more than anything because of Australia's unique fragility) spending on education is something I feel much less certain about. My mother and brother tell me a national curriculum is highly desirable and should have been in place a long time ago, but I have my doubts (though these are greatly less marked for Australia than for almost any other country due to - as I with kind intentions point out to them - Australia's very strong "natural unity" from the lack of powerful geographic barriers)