To have a player average a ton for a season is a huge asset in fantasy – even more so in a draft league. Having exclusive rights to a player scoring a ton every week in a set and forget role is a luxury that can go a long way to determining a deep finals run/a chance at a hard to come by premiership.
While finals are won in August, not enough credit is given to the guys who can get your team off to a flying start, and score tons right from the start of the year to help bank the early wins that can make the difference between a first round of finals bye, and a cutthroat elimination game.
With this in mind, I decided to trace our league history to find the player that has gone the furthest each year into the season, tonning up each week from round 1 onwards, without missing a game through injury or suspension. Multiple times a player has been ruled out of the race with a score in the high 90’s, but near enough is not good enough here.
The medal has been named in honour of Zach Merrett and his consistency – averaging a ton every year of our league history, and on the verge of averaging a 100 for 10 straight seasons – which would be an all-time AFL record. (Spoiler alert, he has won the medal once in league history, though the year he did it might not be when you would expect).
2016
In a year where most matches were competitive, before teams started the cycle of rebuilding/resetting or going all in for glory, having a player that could score tons right from the start was a huge bonus. The medal’s namesake was one of the shocks of this cycle, being one of 4 players to get a 100 in each of the first 4 rounds, but alas, he wasn’t to win the inaugural medal. This honour was left for Sam Mitchell and coach Nathan with Such is Fyfe getting the dream run to start the season. It was fortunate timing, as Sam missed the ton round 6, so snuck this one under the wire. Aaron Hall and David Zaharakis were both also unlucky to not go beyond round 4, although it’s hardly unlucky when you consider round 5 is the equal fastest this medal has been decided, alongside our current season.
2017
Our second season saw Paul have a monster home and away season, going 15-2 over the 17 head to head matches, with Tom Mitchell leading the way to be joint Dangergawn medal winner with Dustin Martin. But just how dominant was Paul’s first round pick from the inaugural draft? Well, 17 tons in a row to start the year might just be the greatest run we will ever see (though others have come close – more on those later), and being at an average of 130, it’s no surprise Paul was as dominant as he was, with a player with this average doing it every week. First overall pick Tom Rockliff can consider himself a little unlucky going 8 straight for the Sparkles, given that would have won many seasons, but there was no denying Tom Mitchell in 2017.
2018
This was the first year in which a tiebreaker method was required. We had 2 players score over 100 for the first 6 rounds, but then they both missed in round 7. Was I to award joint winners? Use a countback system? Total points scored? Or just write off that round and start again the following round? The joy of making up your own award means you can make these decisions with no repercussions, so I got to make a call that would influence literally 0 people, and so I decided it would continue until one scored a ton when the other didn’t. Fortunately, the very next week Stephen Coniglio got 111, denying Scott Pendlebury his best chance to win another medal. This gave Paul and the Defenestrators 2 Merrett Medals in a row, though I doubt that would make him feel better about not getting a premiership in this timeframe.
2019
Another year, another Merrett Medal to the Defenestrators. This one is sort of an outlier, as it went to the player with the lowest average of the top 10 players in medal contention in Matt Crouch. While he wasn’t putting up the 130+ scores (only one across his 7 tons) like those below him, his floor stayed in triple figures longer than anyone, and so to the delight of all Crows fans (or at least it made me smile a bit), the Crows have a winner. Jake Lloyd gets a special shoutout here for 5 straight scores over 120.
2020
There was no medal awarded in 2020 as with the shorter quarters it was too hard to maintain.
That was a bad year for footy, so let’s move on.
2021
Time for a new winner. After the mess that was 2020, plenty of players wanted to start 2021 with a bang. 3 players went past round 6 still in the race, before Josh Dunkley couldn’t keep up any more and left it to Merrett and Macrae to fight it out. Jack Macrae couldn’t help but win this one, as having won 3 premierships (and 1 Franklin Medal), winning was just natural for him at this point in league history. While he never won a Dangergawn medal (I’m sure Adam can fact check this – but I believe most points in league history to not have won the medal), this can be some small consolation. This run is the joint 2nd longest run in league history of tons to start a season with 14 in a row.
2022
In a big statement playing for his new club after a post draft trade, Josh Dunkley decided to show off and lead the Soldiers to their first medal in league history, clinching the Merrett medal after a tiebreaker with Jack Steele. Both players missed the ton in round 8 after getting the first 7 rounds done with bog scores, but then Dunkley was straight back into it in round 9, going 2 further just in case there was any doubt. The fact he was a forward this year was a huge boost to the Soldiers early season with a set and forget ton sitting in that line to begin their first premiership campaign.
2023
I’m going to get to the winner of this run in a moment, but a huge mention to Harry Sheezel. This was his rookie year, and he went 4 straight tons to start his career. I haven’t researched this in depth, but I don’t think it would be a poor guess to say this has probably never been done before. Now on to the main event. 4 players still in the running after 6 rounds made this one of the more exciting counts, and then it was a battle of the former Chief Vs the current Chief – Oliver Vs Taranto. They went blow for blow up to round 10, before Clarrie finally dropped below the required 3 figures, giving Tim Taranto the win. The streak ended at 14, tying Macrae for the second longest streak.
2024
He finally wins his own medal!!! Zach Merrett was not to be denied by the young upstart Harry Sheezel, and after battling him for 7 rounds, he alone stood atop the mountain after round 8. It’s a good thing his competition faded away by then, given Merrett did miss out in round 9. Not the best average of any winner, but as we’ve seen from Zerrett over the last 9.5 years, his consistency cannot be questioned. Imagine if he played for a competent AFL team – how much better could his actual career have been, not just the fantasy one?
2025
And now here we are, the current season which has been one of the more even seasons in history. No one dominating the Dangergawn count. All but 1 team capable of beating any other team, such is the league and player parity that this year has been. It was so even, that only 2 players were competing for the Merrett Medal after 4 rounds, and it was decided in round 5 with Josh Dunkley getting a 98 – so close, but yet so far. This left the most unexpected winner so far – George Hewett! Max with all his Carlton players certainly wouldn’t have been expecting Hewett to be his leading Blue, but he’ll certainly take it. The streak is ongoing as well, so it will be interesting to see how long Hewett can maintain this.
