According to African legend, “Amartey” is a word that means ‘problem solver’. And so it’s been through the AFL journey of Joel Amartey, who will play his 50^th game for the Swans when Sydney takes on the Adelaide Crows at the SCG on Saturday night.

The athletic 197cm marking forward and back-up ruckman will become the 344^th Swans player to a half-century, which puts him in the top 23.7 per cent of players all-time.

Enjoying a career-best season, with 37 goals to rank second behind Will Hayward (38) at the Swans and 18^th in the League, Amartey will reach 50 games 124 years after ruckman Mick Pleass was the first Swans player to this mark in Round 1, 1900.

Pleass, regarded as the premier ruckman in the early years of the then VFL competition, was a member of the very first South Melbourne side in 1897 and played 50 games without a miss, including the 1989 grand final loss. He went on to 110 games for South before four games at Essendon in 1904 after a mid-season change of clubs.

Amartey, whose nine goals against Adelaide in Round 14 is the most by any player in the AFL this year, hasn’t been so fortunate.

He’s been in and out of the side 10 times after his debut in the second-last game of the shortened Covid season of 2020 – a fixture that will never be repeated. It was against Brisbane in Cairns.

Born in Melbourne to a father who emigrated from Ghana, Amartey’s surname is traditionally given to the first male child of a family in Ghana.

Claimed by the Swans with pick #28 in the 2018 AFL Rookie Draft from the Sandringham Dragons, Amartey is part of a long and proud AFL production line from one of the powerhouse clubs of the Victorian Under-18 competition.

Simon Garlick, a 44-game Swan from 1994-97 and now Fremantle Dockers CEO, was the first Dragons product to wear red and white and has been followed by Brett O’Farrell, Josh Kennedy, David Spriggs, Ted and Xavier Richards, Simon Phillips and Amartey’s former junior teammate and schoolmate Ollie Florent.

They are part of a Mentone Grammar alumni which also includes the legendary Shane Warne, 265-game St Kilda captain Gary Colling, 195-game Hawthorn dual premiership player Peter Russo, and 55-game St Kilda player turned AFL umpire Leigh Fisher.

The Amartey/Florent journey goes all the way back to Beaumaris Junior Football Club in suburban Melbourne, where Fisher, three-time Hawthorn premiership player Jack Gunston, 275-game St Kilda goalsneak Stephen Milne, Melbourne/Hawthorn 234-gamer turned Brisbane assistant-coach Cameron Bruce and St Kilda 219-game defender Jason Blake also played. Plus, ex-St Kilda player turned AFL umpire Leigh Fisher, and current opponents Calsher Dear and Jack Scrimshaw (Hawthorn), and Mitch Owens and Marcus Windhager (St Kilda).

Appropriately, Florent, on a run of 115 games without a miss, which is fourth-highest in the League, has played every one of Amartey’s AFL games.

Amartey will play his 49^th game in jumper #36 on Saturday night after his 2020 debut in #46 –a number famous at the Swans for an unlikely and often forgotten reason. It was the first number of Greg Smith, who played 96 games from 1980-84, and Silvio Foschini, who kicked three goals on debut at 17 before he turned AFL rules upside down in seeking a transfer to St Kilda in 1983.

Lockett, famous for his #14 jumper at St Kilda and #4 at Sydney, played three games in #46 in a brief comeback in 2002.

And for the trivia buffs, what was Lockett’s first jumper number? He played his first 12 games at St Kilda in 1983 in #37.