THERE have only been three Ararat players to have kicked 100 goals in a season at senior level.<\/p>\n
And Bill Smeaton was the first.<\/p>\n
It is not difficult to see why selectors at the Melbourne Football Club thought they had found the next Jon Coleman when they recruited the Ararat full-forward, who kicked nine goals in a practice match for the Demons ahead of the 1951 VFL season.<\/p>\n
After a break-out 1949 campaign, where he finished second in the Wimmera goalkicking with 83 goals, Smeaton wasted little time making history the following season.<\/p>\n
A 12-goal haul against Horsham in the first round of 1950 set the then 21-year-old on his way to become Ararat\u2019s inaugural centurion.<\/p>\n
Other memorable feats included a career high 16 goals against Rupanyup in round six and a bag of 11 against Dimboola.<\/p>\n
He reached the century with his first goal against Minyip in round 16, before going on to add another 20 by the end of the season, including six in a losing Grand Final against Stawell.<\/p>\n
While a premiership that season eluded him, a goalkicking winner\u2019s medal and a VFL call up did not.<\/p>\n
After 33 goals in 17 games for Melbourne, Smeaton returned to the Rats in 1954 where he won his third league goalkicking award, before launching into his greatest season yet.<\/p>\n
Coming into 1955 the season with 296 career goals for the Rats, Smeaton smashed past the 300 milestone by kicking 25 goals in the first two rounds of the season (kicking 15 and 10 respectively).<\/p>\n
Two more 14 goal hauls followed, with Smeaton setting a club record for goals kicked at the end of the home-and-away season with 122.<\/p>\n
His five goals in the Grand Final over Horsham helped the Rats towards their 11th<\/sup> premiership and the first of a historic four-peat.<\/p>\n With 516 goals in 113 games (an average of 4.6 a match), Smeaton sits second on the Rats\u2019 all-time leading goalkickers list.<\/p>\n Bill Smeaton <\/strong><\/p>\n Games: 113<\/strong><\/p>\n Goals: 516<\/strong><\/p>\n League Goalkicking Awards: Four (1950, 1954-6)<\/strong><\/p>\n Premierships: Four (1949, 1951, 1955-56)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THERE have only been three Ararat players to have kicked 100 goals in a season at senior level. And Bill Smeaton was the first. It is not difficult to see why selectors at the Melbourne Football Club thought they had found the next Jon Coleman when they recruited the Ararat full-forward, who kicked nine goals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"coauthors":[38],"class_list":["post-1388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/bill-smeaton-jpg.jpg?fit=1024%2C681&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-mo","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1388"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}