If you offered every player in the AFL 26 possessions (18 contested), one goal, six tackles and seven clearances this week how many would say ‘no thanks …. I’ll back myself to do better’.
Not many … if any. And even if you could do such a left-field thing even fewer would actually deliver on their own lofty expectations.
And yet for Isaac Heeney, the QBE Sydney Swans Academy graduate now in his 10th season, these were his numbers in a comparatively quiet game against the GWS Giants at the SCG last Saturday. Or more specifically, his ‘worst’ game of 2024.
Heeney was so ‘quiet’ that he only polled one vote in the AFL Coaches Association player of the year and was only rated the Swans’ fifth-best player.
It will all mean nothing to the blonde #5. He will be much more interested in an alternative statistic that has gone completely under the radar …. that the Swans, sitting on top of the 2024 ladder with a 7-1 win/loss record, have made their best start to a season since 1936.
Yes, the last time the club started 8-0 Jack Bissett was captain-coach, Herbie Matthews was club champion and Bob Pratt was the leading goal-kicker. Teams comprised 18 players on the field, with one substitute, known as the 19th man, who could only be used once. And Bob Skilton was minus two … he was born 8 November 1938.
But such has been Heeney’s form that he’s the hottest of mid-season Brownlow Medal favorites in years. Footy pundits say it’s a three-way tussle between Heeney, Essendon captain Zach Merrett and Carlton captain Patrick Cripps.
Which brings us back to the numbers.
Heeney, enjoying a lot more midfield time this year, has averaged 26.9 possessions (12.9 contested), 1.6 goals, 4.9 tackles, 6.3 clearances and 1.0 goal assists through eight games.
He is ranked 13th in the League for possessions, but not one of the 12 players ahead of him have kicked even half as many goals. And it’s the same across all the key indicators.
For the sake of this exercise, the 12 players ahead of Heeney on the total possession list are Fremantle’s Caleb Serong (33 possessions per game), North’s Harry Sheezel (31.4), Western Bulldogs’ Adam Treloar (31.4), Essendon’s Nic Martin (31.3) and Zach Merrett (30.4), GWS’ Lachie Whitfield (30.0), Collingwood’s Nick Daicos (29.8), Gold Coast’s Sam Flanders (29.5) and Noah Anderson (28.6), Port’s Zac Butters (28.5), Fremantle’s Andrew Brayshaw (28.0) and GWS’ Tom Green (27.3).
So Heeney is averaging 2.4 possessions a game less than the average of the other dozen.
But in each of the other key statistics he is clearly ahead – up 1.6 goals per game, 4.9 tackles, 6.3 clearances, 12.9 contested possessions and 1.0 goal assists.
He’s had career-best this season in clearances (13), contested possessions (18) and goal assists (four), and ranks 6th outright in the League for contested possessions, 10th outright for clearances and equal 15th for goal assists. In his ‘quiet’ categories, he is equal 25th for goals and equal 32nd for tackles among 560 players who have played in the League this year and
Heeney is the only player in the League to have polled in every round in the AFLCA player of the year award. He leads overall with 55 votes from Merrett (47), Serong (40), Melbourne’s Max Gawn (36), Swans teammate Errol Gulden (33), Geelong’s Jeremy Cameron (32), Tom Green (31), Butters (30) and Nick Daicos (30).
And that’s after Merrett has polled three perfect 10’s in the last three games.
He has almost twice as many votes as every player in the League except nine.
Heeney’s vote count in the prestigious award judged by the people who should know best has gone 9-10-9-4-9-6-7-1 out of a maximum 10 votes in each game.
His vote tally after eight games is second-best all-time in the coveted award behind only Nat Fyfe’s 68 votes for Fremantle in 2015, when he won the first of two Brownlow Medals.
Heeney has polled 44 per cent of the entire Swans vote this year – despite the fact that Gulden (33) is fifth overall. Other Swans to poll have been Warner (23), Blakey (19), Grundy (18), Rampe (7), Papley (7), Ollie Florent (7), James Rowbottom (5), Hayward (5), Justin McInerney (1) and Logan McDonald (1).
In 163 games in which Brownlow Medal votes were awarded prior to this season (excluding finals) Heeney has polled 46 votes – but never more than eight in a season (in 2021).
It will be a major surprise to all if he doesn’t blow that number out of the water this year.
