Thanks to Carlton’s defensive display at Optus Stadium, the Eagles are the first team since the Spanish Flu to go scoreless in the 1st and 4th Quarters of a game.

0.0 in the 1st Quarter, 7.3-45 in the 2nd Quarter, 1.2-8 in the 3rd Quarter, and 0.0 in the 4th Quarter, as the Blues won by 63 points thanks to kicking the last 8 goals of the game.

If you want a history lesson, that game in Round 12 of 1919 between St Kilda and South Melbourne is noteworthy for many reasons.

1) Thanks to the Saints only having 15 fit players in the 4th Quarter, plus many players flat out giving up, South Melbourne scored 17.4-106 in the last quarter, which remains the greatest score in any quarter in league history, and is the only instance of a team scoring 100 points in a quarter.

2) The final margin of 171 points stood as the record for the greatest winning margin in league history until Round 4 of 1979, when Collingwood defeated St Kilda by 178 points, which was then surpassed 3 months later by Fitzroy’s 190 point defeat of Melbourne – 171 points is now 4th on the greatest margins list.

A few more wild facts: Prior to the 2022 seasons, the West Coast Eagles had only been held scoreless in a Quarter in Perth once in 35 previous seasons – The 4th Quarter of Round 12, 2016 against Adelaide.

This year, they’ve now had 4 scoreless quarters in Perth: The 2nd Quarter of Round 3 vs Fremantle, the 1st Quarter of Round 5 vs Sydney, and the 1st and 4th Quarters vs Carlton this afternoon.

And, the only previous instance of the Eagles going scoreless in two quarters of a game, out of a pool of 833 games?

Round 23 of 1992 against Footscray at a rain-drenched Western Oval, when the Eagles went scoreless in the 1st and 3rd Quarters, and were held goalless (0.2) up to 3/4 Time.

4 games later, the Eagles won their maiden premiership.