Sam Collins and Ben King will write themselves into the AFL record books at Darwin\u2019s Marrara Oval when the SUNS play St Kilda there on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Collins will play his 11th game at Marrara to go one clear of the record he now shares with ex-Port Adelaide tagger Kane Cornes and ex-Port Adelaide\/Fremantle utility Danyle Pearce.<\/p>\n
And with one goal against the Saints, King will take the outright Marrara goals record, which he currently shares with ex-Western Bulldogs champion Brad Johnson at 17, two more than ex-SUN Jack Lukosius.<\/p>\n
Also, SUNS captain Noah Anderson will \u201cdefend\u201d the all-time record for most possessions in a game at Marrara, having had 42 against Geelong in 2024.<\/p>\n
And Bailey Humphrey will take on the Saints as one of seven players \u2013 including SUNS assistant coach Brad Miller \u2013 who share the record for most goals in a game at Marrara with five.<\/p>\n
Lukosius kicked five goals at Marrara three times, while Miller did so playing for Melbourne against Port Adelaide in 2010. It was a career-best.<\/p>\n
Humphrey bagged five in the same 2024 game against Geelong as Anderson had his 42 possessions, to sit alongside Lukosius, Johnson, West Coast\u2019s Jack Darling (now at North Melbourne), Port Adelaide\u2019s Paul Stewart and Carlton\u2019s Brendon Fevola atop the list.<\/p>\n
The SUNS, with an 8\u20132 record from 10 games at Marrara, will play their 11th match there this week to join the Western Bulldogs with the most games played at the venue, which has hosted 30 games since 2004.<\/p>\n
Having played two games a year in Darwin every year since 2022, after single games in 2012 and 2020, the SUNS have also posted the most wins in the NT capital \u2013 one more than the Bulldogs\u2019 7\u20134 return.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s after they lost their first two games in Darwin \u2013 to the Western Bulldogs in 2012 and Carlton in 2020. Since then they\u2019ve beaten the Bulldogs, North Melbourne and Hawthorn twice, and Adelaide and Geelong once, without a blemish.<\/p>\n
Matt Rowell, already ruled unfit this week, has an extraordinary record at Marrara. He\u2019s polled 14 Brownlow Medal votes from eight games which have produced an 8\u20130 record.<\/p>\n
Touk Miller has polled 10 Brownlow votes at Marrara in a 6\u20131 win-loss split, and Anderson six votes in an 8\u20131 split. Lachie Weller has two votes from a 2\u20132 return, while John Noble, unbeaten in two visits to Darwin with the SUNS last year, has two votes and a career-best 36 possessions against Hawthorn.<\/p>\n
Fittingly, Joel Jeffrey, born and raised in Darwin, shares Rowell\u2019s club-best 8\u20130 record in the NT capital, while fellow Territorian Ben Long is 6\u20130 along with Alex Davies and Humphrey.<\/p>\n
SUNS players set for their first game at Marrara this week are Oscar Adams, Ethan Read, Lachie\u00a0Gulbin, Leo Lombard and Zeke Uwland (if selected).<\/p>\n
Sitting fifth on the AFL ladder with a 5\u20133 record and a percentage of 116.0, the SUNS will face a Saints line-up that is ninth at 4\u20134 with a percentage of 114.9.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve gone LLWLWLWW, beating GWS (14th), Port Adelaide (13th), West Coast (15th) and Carlton (16th), and losing to Collingwood (8th), Melbourne (7th), Brisbane (4th) and Adelaide (11th). Their percentage is boosted by a 101-point win over West Coast at Marvel Stadium in Round 7 \u2013 the club\u2019s biggest win in 12 years.<\/p>\n
Jack Sinclair, averaging 30.0 possessions per game, is the Saints\u2019 leading ball-winner this year ahead of Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera (26.75), Callum Wilkie (25.75), Flanders (23.50), Brad Hill (23.1), Hugo Garcia (20.9) and Darcy Wilson (20.1).<\/p>\n
Jack Higgins\u2019 16 goals tops the Saints goalkicking list ahead of Mitch Owens (14), Cooper Sharman (11), Liam Ryan (11), Max Hall (9) and Wanganeen-Milera (7).<\/p>\n
Wilkie, who is sharing the St Kilda captaincy this year with Sinclair following the departure of Jack Steele, heads his club\u2019s vote tally in the AFL Coaches Association Champion Player of the Year Award.<\/p>\n
He has 32 votes to sit 10th overall and leads Wanganeen-Milera (22), Sinclair (19), Hall (10) and Rowan Marshall (10) among the Saints.<\/p>\n
St Kilda coach Ross Lyon has a 9\u20135 overall record against Gold Coast and is 3\u20132 against Gold Coast while coaching St Kilda. He is 1\u20132 in Darwin but has never coached St Kilda there against Gold Coast and hasn\u2019t coached in the NT capital since 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Collins and Ben King will write themselves into the AFL record books at Darwin\u2019s Marrara Oval when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[395,603],"class_list":{"0":"post-7046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-adelaide","8":"tag-adelaide","9":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}