Darren Milburn (born 15 April 1977) is a former

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

er who played for the

Geelong Football Club The Geelong Football Club, nicknamed the Cats, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. The club competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's premier competition, and are the 2022 ...

in the

Australian Football League The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling the laws of the gam ...

(AFL). A defender, tall and weighing , Milburn was renowned for his competitiveness, decision-making and for both his physical and mental strength. Milburn was selected in the 2007 All-Australian Team, and was part of Geelong's AFL premiership-winning team in the same year, a feat which has seen him become the first premiership player to play 250 matches for Geelong. He had also represented the Victorian state team in the

AFL Hall of Fame Tribute Match The AFL Hall of Fame Tribute Match was a one-off all-star game between two representative sides organised by the Australian Football League to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Australian rules football. The match was intended to celebrate the ...

, as well as being selected to represent

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

International rules football International rules football ( ga, Peil na rialacha idirnáisiunta; also known as international rules in Australia and compromise rules or Aussie rules in Ireland) is a team sport consisting of a hybrid of football codes, which was develope ...

. Milburn was an assistant coach with the

Adelaide Football Club The Adelaide Crows (officially the Adelaide Football Club) are a professional Australian rules football team based in Adelaide, South Australia. Founded in 1990. The Crows has fielded a men's team in the Australian Football League (AFL) since ...

from 2012 to 2015.

Early life

Darren Milburn grew up in the country town of

Kilmore, Victoria Kilmore () is a town in the Australian state of Victoria. Located north of Melbourne, it is the oldest inland town in Victoria by the combination of age and physical occupation, and because it had unique agricultural attributes to drive that e ...

, where he attended school and played for the

Kilmore Football Club Kilmore Football Club, nicknamed the Blues, is an Australian rules football club affiliated with the Northern Football League. The club is located 60 km north of Melbourne in the town of Kilmore. Known for his sporting prowess, Nick Ferris, ...

. Milburn met his future wife, Tania, in his teenage years whilst still at school, and also was school friends with another future AFL footballer,

Barry Hall Barry Hall (born 8 February 1977) is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played for the St Kilda Football Club, Sydney Swans and Western Bulldogs in the Australian Football League (AFL). He is considered to be one of the be ...

, whom he met at a high school he attended in

Broadford, Victoria Broadford is a small town in central Victoria, Australia. At the 2021 census, Broadford had a population of 4,076. The town is the headquarters of the Shire of Mitchell local government area and is approximately north of the state capital, Melb ...

Career

Early in Milburn's career, he was involved in a controversial clash with Carlton's Stephen Silvgani in which he knocked him out with a high bump and was subsequently given a three week suspension. Milburn also sarcastically clapped to the vocal Carlton crowd as he came off the field after the incident, fanning further anger. He has previously stated that he does not regret the incident. In

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

, he received his first

All-Australian The All-Australian team is an all-star team of Australian rules football in Australia, Australian rules footballers, selected by a panel at the end of each season. It represents a complete team, including an interchange bench, of the best-perf ...

guernsey in the back pocket. Milburn played a pivotal role in Geelong's defense throughout the groundbreaking year, which ended with a premiership medallion for the veteran. In

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

, Milburn once again was a regular fixture in the young Geelong side. In Geelong's round 16 game against the

Western Bulldogs The Western Bulldogs are a professional Australian rules football team that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's premier competition. Founded in 1877 as the Footscray Football Club, and based in West Footscray in the o ...

at Skilled Stadium, he racked up 19 disposals in the first quarter, breaking the record for the highest number of disposals in any quarter of football. In an opening-round clash in

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

against St Kilda, Milburn kicked a goal in the dying seconds to put Geelong in front and win by one point; he was nearly 34 at the time, the oldest player in that game, and had come on after a

substitution Substitution may refer to: Arts and media *Chord substitution, in music, swapping one chord for a related one within a chord progression * Substitution (poetry), a variation in poetic scansion * "Substitution" (song), a 2009 song by Silversun Pi ...

. At the end of

, Milburn retired after playing 292 games and two premierships in

and

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

since his debut in 1997; Milburn was named as an emergency for the 2011 premiership. Milburn then went into coaching straight away and joined the Adelaide Crows for the

2012 AFL season The 2012 AFL season was the 116th season of the Australian Football League (AFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Australia, which was known as the Victorian Football League until 1989. The season featured eig ...

, joining then-new senior coach,

Brenton Sanderson Brenton James Sanderson (born 27 February 1974) is a former Australian rules football player and is the former senior coach of the Adelaide Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). Career Early career Originally from Adelaide, S ...

(a former teammate and assistant coach at Geelong). Darren Milburn quit the Adelaide Football Club at the end of 2015 to return home to Victoria.

Statistics

: , - , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 10 , , 5 , , 3 , , 79 , , 51 , , 130 , , 44 , , 20 , , 0.5 , , 0.3 , , 7.9 , , 5.1 , , 13.0 , , 4.4 , , 2.0 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 15 , , 5 , , 5 , , 118 , , 78 , , 196 , , 55 , , 35 , , 0.3 , , 0.3 , , 7.9 , , 5.2 , , 13.1 , , 3.7 , , 2.3 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 21 , , 15 , , 8 , , 240 , , 150 , , 390 , , 91 , , 50 , , 0.7 , , 0.4 , , 11.4 , , 7.1 , , 18.6 , , 4.3 , , 2.4 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 17 , , 13 , , 6 , , 179 , , 144 , , 323 , , 82 , , 44 , , 0.8 , , 0.4 , , 10.5 , , 8.5 , , 19.0 , , 4.8 , , 2.6 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 22 , , 5 , , 4 , , 227 , , 171 , , 398 , , 131 , , 24 , , 0.2 , , 0.2 , , 10.3 , , 7.8 , , 18.1 , , 6.0 , , 2.4 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 15 , , 1 , , 0 , , 106 , , 108 , , 214 , , 63 , , 31 , , 0.1 , , 0.0 , , 7.1 , , 7.2 , , 14.3 , , 4.2 , , 2.1 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 20 , , 5 , , 4 , , 144 , , 153 , , 297 , , 73 , , 40 , , 0.3 , , 0.2 , , 7.2 , , 7.7 , , 14.9 , , 3.7 , , 2.0 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 23 , , 3 , , 5 , , 233 , , 196 , , 429 , , 134 , , 66 , , 0.1 , , 0.2 , , 10.1 , , 8.5 , , 18.7 , , 5.8 , , 2.9 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 23 , , 15 , , 8 , , 284 , , 171 , , 455 , , 146 , , 76 , , 0.7 , , 0.3 , , 12.3 , , 7.4 , , 19.8 , , 6.3 , , 3.3 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 22 , , 8 , , 4 , , 242 , , 209 , , 451 , , 167 , , 49 , , 0.4 , , 0.2 , , 11.0 , , 9.5 , , 20.5 , , 7.6 , , 2.2 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center;" ,

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 25 , , 5 , , 8 , , 274 , , 288 , , 562 , , 179 , , 57 , , 0.2 , , 0.3 , , 11.0 , , 11.5 , , 22.5 , , 7.2 , , 2.3 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 22 , , 7 , , 1 , , 242 , , 200 , , 442 , , 155 , , 47 , , 0.3 , , 0.0 , , 11.0 , , 9.1 , , 20.1 , , 7.0 , , 2.1 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center;" ,

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 21 , , 3 , , 2 , , 273 , , 197 , , 470 , , 132 , , 33 , , 0.1 , , 0.1 , , 13.0 , , 9.4 , , 22.4 , , 6.3 , , 1.6 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 22 , , 1 , , 2 , , 271 , , 240 , , 511 , , 159 , , 49 , , 0.0 , , 0.1 , , 12.3 , , 10.9 , , 23.2 , , 7.2 , , 2.2 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

, style="text-align:center;", , 39 , , 14 , , 3 , , 0 , , 135 , , 120 , , 255 , , 76 , , 24 , , 0.2 , , 0.0 , , 9.6 , , 8.6 , , 18.2 , , 5.4 , , 1.7 , - class="sortbottom" ! colspan=3, Career ! 292 ! 94 ! 60 ! 3047 ! 2476 ! 5523 ! 1687 ! 674 ! 0.3 ! 0.2 ! 10.4 ! 8.5 ! 18.9 ! 5.8 ! 2.3

Honours and achievements

Team: *

AFL Premiership This page is a complete chronological listing of VFL/AFL premiers. The Australian Football League (AFL), known as the Victorian Football League (VFL) until 1990, is the elite national competition in men's Australian rules football. The inaugur ...

(Geelong): 2007, 2009 * AFL McClelland Trophy (Geelong): 2007, 2008 * AFL NAB Cup (Geelong): 2006, 2009 Individual: * AFL: **

: 2007 **

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal Au ...

representative honours in

international rules football International rules football ( ga, Peil na rialacha idirnáisiunta; also known as international rules in Australia and compromise rules or Aussie rules in Ireland) is a team sport consisting of a hybrid of football codes, which was develope ...

: 2005 **

nomination: 2008 **

AFL Rising Star The AFL Rising Star is an Australian rules football award presented annually to the player adjudged the best young player in the Australian Football League (AFL) for the year. It was first presented in the 1993 season, and was won by Nathan Buc ...

nomination: 1998 * Geelong Football Club: ** Member of the Geelong F.C. Hall of Fame ** Geelong F.C. "Best team and most constructive player" award: 2005 * TAC Cup: ** Team of the Year: 1995 Milestones: * AFL debut: Round 1, 1997 (vs. ) at the MCG (Geelong lost by 9 points) * Finals debut: Qualifying final, 1997 (vs. ) at the MCG (Geelong lost by 18 points) * 50th game: Round 4, 2000 (vs. ) at the

Telstra Dome Docklands Stadium, also currently known by naming rights sponsorship as Marvel Stadium, is a multi-purpose sports and entertainment stadium in the Docklands area of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Construction started in October 1997 and was ...

(Geelong lost by 5 points) * 100th game: Round 18, 2002 (vs. ) at Skilled Stadium (Geelong lost by 64 points) * 150th game: Round 8, 2005 (vs. ) at

(Geelong won by 70 points) * 200th game: Round 12, 2007 (vs. ) at Skilled Stadium (Geelong won by 50 points) * 250th game: Round 18, 2009 (vs. ) at Skilled Stadium (Geelong won by 2 points)

Tribunal history

Although he mostly kept out of trouble throughout his career, Milburn had two notable tribunal cases. *In 2001, he was suspended for three weeks for charging, after he knocked out 's

Stephen Silvagni Stephen Silvagni (born 31 May 1967) is a former Australian rules footballer who played for the Carlton Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). As the second member of three generations of Silvagnis to represent the Blues, he is ...

with a hip to the head late in Geelong's last match for the year; there was also discussion of charging Milburn for 'bringing the game into disrepute', when he provocatively clapped to the Carlton crowd as it booed him from the ground, but he did not have to formally face this charge. He was never forgiven by Carlton fans, who booed him for the rest of his career. *In 2008, Milburn was suspended for one week for rough conduct against Richmond's

Shane Edwards Shane Edwards (born 25 October 1988) is a former Australian rules football player who played for the Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). He is a three-time premiership player, an All-Australian and has three tim ...

. In the incident, Milburn pinned Edwards' arms in a tackle and slung him into the ground, causing Edwards' unprotected head hit the ground. Milburn was able to successfully—but controversially—argue the contact should be viewed as body contact rather than head-high contact because Milburn never contacted Edwards' head himself; this reduced his suspension from three matches to one. This case was the most prominent of four cases which led directly to the establishment of "dangerous tackle" as a tribunal charge distinct from "rough conduct" from the 2009 season onwards.

Personal life

Milburn is married to his teenage sweetheart, Tania, with whom he has had two children.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Milburn, Darren 1977 births Australian rules footballers from Victoria (Australia) Geelong Football Club players Geelong Football Club Premiership players Living people All-Australians (AFL) Calder Cannons players Australia international rules football team players Two-time VFL/AFL Premiership players People from Kilmore, Victoria