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AFL Record Editor Ash Browne | 300-game milestones for Blicavs and Neale (14.04.26)
14 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What milestone are Mark Blicavs and Lachie Neale achieving this weekend?
You can catch up with our chats with Matt Shervington, who is terrific on the current very bright state of Australian athletics on your podcast app and also Luke Hodge, the leadership portfolio, a little bit earlier. But this week is an unusual week. I'd love to know how many times this has happened where there's been two players each playing their 300th game in the same week.
And I'd imagine it happens occasionally, but it is special, not just because it's happening together, but because also these two players have are really icons of their two clubs. Mark Bustavs and Lachie Neal both reached the 300-game milestone this weekend. And joining us to discuss what it means for the AFL record is the AFL record editor, Ashley Brown. Ash, good to see you again. Hello, Tom.
Good to be with you. What does it mean for the footy record when you've got two guys that are achieving something so special on the same weekend?
Well, we have a long-standing tradition of putting 300-game players on the cover. It's been a tradition of ours probably for the last 25 years. It was a Tony Peake rule from back in the day when he was sort of the head media guru at the AFL, and the AFL record team was instructed accordingly.
We've actually got five covers this week, believe it or not, but obviously the national cover we've made, Mark Blitzaf, so that'll be the cover for several games. And how did you choose that? Well, on the basis that... One of the 300 game players spoke to the record and one chose not to. And I think Lockie Neal will give him some credit. It's been a pretty difficult time for him.
So I have no issues whatsoever if he is limiting the media around his milestone game. So I have no problem with that whatsoever. But we end up, a guy called Ben Guthrie, who is a brother of Cam and Zach at Geelong, a former really good AFL media journalist, Ben, and a family friend. The Blitzavs and the Guthries are family friends and I think Sunbury football royalty, as I understand it.
So we enlisted Benny to have a sort of a Q&A with his great mate, Mark Blitzhouse, who I've not noticed a lot of media over the years. He's been one of the more low profile 300 game players. How many times would you have done media with Mark Blitzhouse?
Not many. He's very balanced and polite when he does talk, but he's not putting himself out there and he's not exactly shirking it either. He just likes to play the game. We had a caller call up before and say he's just about the most underrated player of the modern era. Where would you rank him on that list? Oh, he'd be up there as underrated.
If he can be up there for underrated, I think he would be there. He just goes about his business with minimum fuss and you walk away from a game saying sometimes you didn't really notice him. Then you look at the stats and think, actually, no, he had a profound effect on the game and that can swing him around. He's the athletic ruckman, wingman, stick him down back.
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Chapter 2: How does the AFL Record Editor celebrate 300-game players?
Yeah. that's when he decided to take the footy seriously. And it changed the course of history for Geelong. You can argue they wouldn't have been as successful as they've been since then without Mark Blissar's being able to play wing, centre-half back, forward occasionally, in the ruck, and also in the midfield. A remarkable footballer and an amazing athlete.
And so how have you covered Lachie Neal then? Because... I'm not trying to trivialise what's happened recently with him off the field, but regardless of that, he has had one of the more interesting careers, from Freo, contracted to Brisbane, wanted to get back, stayed at the Lions, now he's out of contract.
I still feel like there's a few more chapters to write alongside his Brownlow medals and also premierships.
Yeah, well, the approach for that one was that Peter Blucher, who's our sort of Queensland correspondent, for lack of a better word, and regular on this show now, He, uh, he, uh, well, collecting the plan management world. So he's told the story of how the, the, the campaign, the Brisbane's campaign to recruit Lockie Neal started over a succulent Mexican meal at a restaurant in Darwin.
I think whichever was Neal's last year with a Fremantle, um, the, Freya was up there, had been up there to play in Melbourne in one of those Darwin games and would hang around the next day. So they went to a discreet little Mexican place somewhere in Darwin and the Brisbane gave their pitch. Didn't think much would come of it.
I thought he's pretty established and settled in, um, in Fremantle, but then the end of the year, the end of the season came and he said, I don't know, he's actually interested in pursuing this. So that's where the, and then it was a really complicated, as before the, after the 2018 season, that's right. And unbelievably complicated trade that you would be all across better than I would.
involving Chad Wingard and a bunch of players. Wingard from Port to Hawthorne involved in all this as well. Very complicated trade. But sometimes you just sit down over a meal, give them a pitch, and then three months later. Get the job done. Get it done.
And he wanted to leave Fremantle, my memory, is because he was frustrated at some of the professionalism of his teammates. And even when they offered him a contract extension and more money, Ross Lyon was the coach at the time. He said, no, no, I can't play alongside some of these guys. We're not on the same page.
Yeah, and he's a superstar of the game who's never sort of had a Victorian element to his game because he's from South Australia, went to Freo, and now applies to trade in Queensland. So he's a superstar who hasn't played for one of the Victorian clubs.
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