Perhaps a more accurate description of this page is Glenelg’s Best Performed Players, as it does not take into account player's careers at other clubs, or the standard of the competition at any given time.
In order to gauge who Glenelg's best ever players were over different eras of the club, I have compiled a list of the best 5 Glenelg players named in the Sunday Mail or Advertiser on a 5-4-3-2-1 vote basis in each SANFL match involving Glenelg.
Only SANFL matches are included in the analysis, so matches with West-Glenelg during WWII, other match credits due to WWII service, NFL matches, and any other pre-season or mid-season tournamant matches are excluded from both the media votes and the match tallies.
(last updated 30-June-2025 -- to expand from best 3 to best 5 players named in newspapers, and includes all Glenelg SANFL games)
Ranking Glenelg’s Greatest Players Across All Eras
Ranking Glenelg's best performed players across all eras and all career lengths is a difficult thing to do since player's careers are not linear.
In general, as juniors learning the game, players tend to have a slow start to their careers, and as age catches up with them they have a slow finish to their careers, not to mention the normal ebbs and flows during a long playing career.
So any measure of comparison between players needs to take this in to account, otherwise players who either joined Glenelg or left Glenelg whilst in their prime would have an unfair advantage over players who spent their entire careers at Glenelg which included these lower performance periods.
In order to compensate for this, I have decided to compare player performance based on an average of three measures
-- each player’s average votes/game in their best 2 seasons,
-- each player’s average votes/game in their best 5 seasons,
-- each player’s average votes/game over their entire career with Glenelg,
where the votes are allocated according to Glenelg's best 5 players named in the Sunday Mail/Advertiser each week on a 5-4-3-2-1 basis.
Combining these three measures is an attempt to strike a balance between their overall performance (career votes/game), their longevity (best 5 seasons) and their brilliant best (best 2 seasons), hopefully reduces the bias against long term players with slow starts or ends to their Glenelg playing careers.
TABLE 1 -- RAW VOTES PER GAME
Table 1 is a simple average of each player’s votes per game in -- their career, their best 5 seasons, and their best 2 seasons.
Their best season’s votes are divided by the number of games the club played during those seasons, and their career votes have been divided by the number of SANFL games the player played.
The qualification for Table 1 is a minimum of 100 matches played and a minimum of 40 votes received during their career.
This table does not take into account the quality of the Glenelg Team in which they played. Obviously good teams contain better players than poor teams, and it is harder to get votes in good teams because you have more competition for votes.
Table 1 combines data across all eras, but mainly Pre-Kerley era players are shown in Blue background, mainly Kerley to Crows era players are shown in Green background, mainly Post-Crows era players are shown in Yellow background, and Current Players are shown in White background.
Players italicized in Blue have been inducted into the Glenelg Hall of Fame and are linked to that page. Only 3 players have played less than 100 games and been inducted into the Glenelg Hall of Fame -- Neil Kerley, Marcus Boyall & Jack Hanley.
#Ave.Rating is an average of their votes per game in their career, their best 5 seasons, and their best 2 seasons.
&An aproximation of SANFL games played by that player by subtracting non-SANFL games such as games with West-Glenelg during WWII, WWII service match credits, NFL matches, and other pre-season or in-season tournaments from their total games played.
TABLE 2 -- WEIGHTED VOTES PER GAME
Table 2 is an attempt to include players who have played less than 100 games into the comparison, and to make adjustments to account for the varying standard of Glenelg teams over the years.
Players are ranked by an average of their weighted votes per game over their career, their best 5 seasons, and their best 2 seasons.
To place more emphasis on player performances in better performed teams, each player’s votes are reduced by 40% in matches lostby more than -60 points (to adjust for poor team performances on any given day) AND each player’s votes are weighted according to the finishing position of the team in each season (to adjust for lower quality sides in any given season) -- votes received in seasons where Glenelg won the premiership are given 100% weighting, seasons where they finished 2nd are given a 97% weighting. etc etc, down to votes received in wooden spoon seasons, where votes are given about a 65% weighting.
The qualification for Table 2 is a minimum of 40 votes received during a player’s career -- Top 120 Players.
Table 2 combines data across all eras, but mainly Pre-Kerley era players are shown in Blue background, mainly Kerley to Crows era players are shown in Green background, mainly Post-Crows era players are shown in Yellow background, and Current Players are shown in White background.
Players italicized in Blue have been inducted into the Glenelg Hall of Fame and are linked to that page. Only 3 players have played less than 100 games and been inducted into the Glenelg Hall of Fame -- Neil Kerley, Marcus Boyall & Jack Hanley.
#Ave.Rating is an average of their votes per game in their career, their best 5 seasons, and their best 2 seasons.
&An aproximation of SANFL games played by that player by subtracting non-SANFL games such as games with West-Glenelg during WWII, WWII service match credits, NFL matches, and other pre-season or in-season tournaments from their total games played.
TABLES 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
The qualification for each of these Tables is a minimum of 40 media votes received during a player’s career (whereby votes are awarded on a 5-4-3-2-1 basis for the best 5 players named in the weekend newspapers).
Tables 3, 4, 5 show the top 60 players with the best 3, 4 & 5 seasons in terms of raw votes per game.
Table 6 shows the top 60 players with the most raw votes per match.
Notice that a majority of players with the highest votes per match played less than 100 games -- evidence that the longer a career goes, the harder it is to maintain performance.
Table 7 shows the top 60 players with the highest percentage of games named in the best 5 players for Glenelg (according to the newspapers).
These Tables combine data across all eras, but mainly Pre-Kerley era players are shown in Blue background, mainly Kerley to Crows era players are shown in Green background, mainly Post-Crows era players are shown in Yellow background, and Current Players are shown in White background.