By Peter Blucher
What were you doing on Sunday, 10 July 2011? Very few people at the Gabba tomorrow (Saturday) for the Brisbane Lions 2nd v 4th showdown with the GWS Giants will have any idea, but a visiting player in jumper #25 will know exactly.
Lachie Keeffe, now a 34-year-old 204cm utility tall and part-time ruckman from Gympie, made his AFL debut for Collingwood against North Melbourne at the MCG.
It was an early strike for what is now an often-walked pathway to the AFL from other sports and the beginning of a football journey which, if it could talk, would keep you entertained for an eternity.
Tomorrow (Saturday), Keeffe will add another chapter to his story with his first AFL game of the 2024 season, and most likely his last at the Gabba.
He’ll play his 112th AFL game in place of injured GWS ruckman Kieren Briggs as the Lions look to avenge a nine-goal loss to the Giants in Canberra on Anzac Day in their worst performance of the year.
Unless the Giants are drawn to play a final at the Gabba next month, or he receives an unlikely contract extension for 2025, it will be his last outing at what could have been his ‘home’ ground.
A junior soccer player from age six growing up in Gympie – and a field player, not a goal-keeper – Keeffe was a boarder at Marist College, Ashgrove, in 2007 when he was invited to join the school’s Australian rules team.
It meant a break from organised study time so the then 17-year-old thought “why not?”.
Keeffe’s natural athleticism appealed to the Brisbane-based scouting team of Collingwood Recruiting Manager Derek Hine, who used what at the time was a little-known rule to sign him as an unregistered player shortly before Christmas 2007.
A late bid by the Lions to steal him from the Magpies’ clutches failed, and he moved to Melbourne to join a Collingwood development squad. After 12 months living with a host family and playing with Old Trinity in the Victorian amateur competition, he was officially listed by Collingwood with pick #69 in the rookie draft on 16 December 2008.
Among 132 first-time draftees that year, only six are still in the AFL – Collingwood #11 Steele Sidebottom (328 games), Western Bulldogs pick #32 Liam Jones (196), St Kilda/Geelong #47 Rhys Stanley (205), Fremantle #53 Michael Walters (238) and Hawthorn rookie #47 Luke Breust (295). And Keeffe.
Remarkably, seven players drafted before this sextet are also still playing – Collingwood 2005 draftee Scott Pendlebury (400), the 2006 trio of Port Adelaide’s Travis Boak (365), Essendon’s Todd Goldstein (329), and 359-game Geelong forward Tom Hawkins, who announced this week he will retire at the end of the season, and three more drafted in 2007 – Geelong captain Patrick Dangerfield (332), ex-Adelaide captain Taylor Walker (276), and GWS’ Callan Ward (310).
Pendlebury, who became the AFL’s sixth 400-gamer last weekend, played in Keeffe’s debut. It was his 116th game. So did Sidebottom in his 50th game and Goldstein, then with North, in his 15st game.
Keeffe is in very good company on what could be tagged the AFL’s 2024 ‘great survivors’ list, as he is in the list of ‘notable people’ on the Gympie Wikipedia page.
There he sits with included Australia’s fifth Prime Minister Andrew Fisher, who led the country in three stints from 1908-1915 and was the first man to lead the ALP to a win in the Federal Election, jockey Glen Boss, who rode ‘Makybe Diva’ to win the 2003-04-05 Melbourne Cup, paralympic cyclist Chris Scott OAM, who won 10 Olympic medals (six gold) at six consecutive Olympics from 1988-2008.
Like teammate Ward, Keeffe tomorrow will find himself in the extraordinary position of having been in the AFL longer than the club for which he will play. He was an unbeaten five-game AFL “veteran” at Collingwood before the Giants joined the AFL in 2012.
He’ll also be one half of an unofficial Marist College Ashgrove school reunion with Brisbane milestone man Charlie Cameron, another boarder at the school who will play his 150th game for the Lions.
But Keeffe is much more than a string of quirky facts. Like Brisbane’s Ryan Lester, who was dubbed “the ultimate selfless person” by coach Chris Fagan ahead of his 200th game last week, Keeffe is one of the players admired and respected most by those who know him best – his own clubmates.
Many will say he’s the #1 clubman at GWS, content to play whatever role is asked of him by coach Adam Kingsley. Like rucking in a game critical to the Giants against the Lions’ Oscar McInerney in the absence of Briggs and #2 ruckman Brayden Preuss, ruled out for the season with back problems.
With the fourth-placed Giants needing at least two wins from their last three games to secure a top four finish and the all-important double chance in September, Keeffe will play his first AFL game since last year’s preliminary final.
It’s a game he will remember well – the Giants lost by one point to eventual premiers Collingwood.
He has played four times at the Gabba – against three different oppositions.
In another line for the Keeffe Trivia Quiz, he’s 1-1 against Brisbane, having worn Collingwood’s black and white and GWS’ orange against the Lions at the Gabba, 0-1 against Melbourne and 0-1 against StKilda, having played consecutive games there with GWS during Covid in 2020.
And in case the quizmaster needs a couple more obscure statistics, Keeffe was the 135th Queenslander to play in the AFL in 2011. Lions’ youngster Shadeau Brain, who will play against him tomorrow, is the most recent with his debut in May – he was the 204th. He’s outlasted plenty.
And among those 204, Keeffe is one of 19 who made their AFL debut in a 100-point game – an astonishingly high 9.31%.
It’s astonishing because in 16,586 VFL/AFL games since 1897 only 316 have produced a 100-point margin. Or 1.91%.
But if outcome, location and crowd are the three key components in a fairytale debut to top all others then Keeffe can reasonably claim the best by a Queenslander.
Of the 19 Queensland debutants in a 100-point game 15 were on the losing side. So they are out.
Elliot Himmelberg, drafted from Redland, won his first game with Adelaide in 2018 by 104 points against Carlton at Marvel Stadium in front of an official crowd of 17,000. He was the most recent of the 19.
The first was Trevor Spencer, a Jindalee junior who played 44 games with Essendon, Melbourne and Geelong as a forward/ruck from 1985-91. He enjoyed a 104-win on debut for Essendon against North Melbourne at Windy Hill in 1985, when the crowd was 18,741.
Morningside ruckman Tony Smith, who played 17 games with Sydney from 1986-88, was the second. He debuted against Melbourne at the SCG in 1986 and enjoyed the biggest winning margin by a Queenslander on debut at 124 points. But the crowd was only 19,110.
So Keeffe’s marginally smaller 117-point win with Collingwood over North Melbourne in 2011 can reasonably claim #1 spot because it really was every young player’s dream – it was at the MCG in front of 53,601.
And for the historically minded, who are the 15 Quenslanders who were on the wrong end of a 100-point margin on debut?
Tony Lynn, a Beenleigh junior who played his local football with Morningside and Mt.Gravatt, played the first of six games with the Brisbane Bears in 1988 on a Friday night at the MCG and copped a 140-point hiding. Happily, 26 games at Carlton from 1994-96 at least went some way to erasing those memories.
Wests junior Simon Luhrs began his career with the Bears with a 101-point loss to Geelong at Kardinia Park in 1991, and Stephen Wearne, with local ties to Coorparoo and Morningside, lost the first of three games with Melbourne in 1992 to Footscray by 107 points at Whitten Oval.
Cairns twins David and Donald Cockatoo-Collins, brothers of ex-Essendon and Port Adelaide star Che Cockatoo-Collins, debuted together against Geelong at the MCG in Round 1 1996 only to confront a hot Gary Ablett Snr, who kicked nine goals in a 127-point Cats win. It was also Alastair Clarkson’s first game for Melbourne.
And the following week Mark West, also from Cairns, debuted in a 131-point loss with Footscray against North as Wayne Carey kicked six goals. It was his club’s last year as ‘Footscray’ before they adopted the name Western Bulldogs.
Gold Coaster Luke McGuane began his AFL career with a 118-point loss with Richmond against Sydney at Marvel Stadium in 2006, and in 2008 Morningside’s John Williams copped a 108-point loss on debut with Essendon against St.Kilda at Marvel.
Five Queenslanders were dealt a tough collective introduction to AFL football via a 119-point loss in the Gold Coast Suns’ first game against Carlton at the Gabba in 2011 – Charlie Dixon, Zac Smith, Karmichael Hunt, Alik Magin and Marc Lock.
And after Keeffe, Sunshine Coaster Jono Freeman was on the wrong end of a 105-point margin on debut with Brisbane against Adelaide in 2014, before Mabior Chol, then at Richmond, debuted with a 116-point loss to Sydney at the SCG in the last round of 2016, when Lance Franklin kicked seven goals. Himmelberg closed out the list.
