Fletcher set to reach unique milestone

If you take a stroll out the door of Essendon Football Club you will soon hit Fletcher Street. The boulevard has adorned the suburb since the turn of last century. Its apt then that the Fletcher name would carry much significance for the famous footy club located a torpedo punt down the road.

This week Dustin Fletcher, the AFL’s best full back over the last decade, will play his 236th senior game, a statistic quite unremarkable in itself. When coupled with his father Ken’s 264 matches in the red and black however it becomes a monumental milestone.

Only one other father-son pair, the Silvagni’s of Carlton, have achieved the 500 game mark. It is an amazing achievement when you consider that the Bombers have themselves only participated in 2155 matches of VFL/AFL footy, meaning that nearly a quarter of Essendon fixtures have included either Ken or Dustin.

Ken’s involvement with the club has been long one. Starting at the club in 1967, he captained the side through out the 1970’s before hanging up the boots in 1980. After that Ken spent many years on the board of the Bombers and is known more contemporarily as coach of power house football school Penleigh and Essendon Grammar.

It’s at the school that Ken tutored Dustin on the finer points of the game. Famously in his debut season of 1993, Dustin – still studying his VCE, elected to play for his school ahead of his club. It caused a furore and the school’s match at Ivanhoe Grammar was transformed into a media circus.

After those heady days of a premiership in his first season, Fletcher junior has gone on to be one of the finest full backs in the game. His deceiving strength and cunning have seen him cut down the mightiest of forwards. His crowning achievement came in 2000 when he claimed the Crichton Medal for Essendon’s best and fairest in a year when the Dons dominated the game and Fletcher enjoyed his second premiership.

Ken picked up a Crichton of his own back in 1978 in the middle of his three year stint as Captain. It is fair to say that Dustin’s reserved nature will ensure that he doesn’t follow his dad into the Essendon captaincy, but it hasn’t stopped him growing into one of the sides most respected and reliable leaders.

While Fletcher Street wasn’t named for or after either of these red headed sons of Essendon, it’s doubtful that after 500 games stretching over a quarter of a century that any of the red and black locals would mind if it was.

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