Gary Moorcroft (born 16 April 1976) 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 ...

player for

Essendon Essendon may refer to: Australia *Electoral district of Essendon *Electoral district of Essendon and Flemington *Essendon, Victoria **Essendon railway station **Essendon Airport *Essendon Football Club in the Australian Football League United King ...

and

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

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). Moorcroft caught the attention of talent scouts by winning the

Morrish Medal The Morrish Medal is an Australian rules football award. Formerly awarded to the best and fairest player in the VFL Under-19 competition (known as the Thirds prior to 1959), since 1992 the award has been given to the best player in the Victori ...

in 1994 whilst playing for the

Northern Knights The Northern Knights is an Australian rules football club playing in the NAB League, the top statewide under-18 competition in Victoria, Australia. They are based in Preston, representing the northern suburban area of Melbourne. The Knights a ...

. As a football player, Moorcroft was a short, stocky and explosive

goalsneak A goalsneak is an Australian rules football player whose job is to kick goals in a game, especially as a crumber A crumber (also called a table crumber) is a tool designed to remove crumbs from a tablecloth, used especially in fine dining sit ...

who participated in the 2000 premiership with Essendon and a runner-up

Grand Final Primarily in Australian sports, a grand final (sometimes colloquially abbreviated to "grannie") is a game that decides a sports league's premiership (or championship) winning team, i.e. the conclusive game of a finals (or play-off) series. Sy ...

side against the

Brisbane Lions The Brisbane Lions is a professional Australian rules football club based in Brisbane, Queensland, that plays in the Australian Football League (AFL). The club was formed in late 1996 via a merger of the Melbourne-based 1883 foundation VFL c ...

in 2001. He was delisted by Essendon in

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 ...

after playing 95 games and struggling to retain his spot in a very talented side. It was the Demons—who Essendon beat in the 2000 grand final in which Moorcroft was an outstanding player—who picked him up in the 2002 AFL draft. Moorcroft played in three losing games with the Demons and suffered a severe season-ending knee

injury An injury is any physiological damage to living tissue caused by immediate physical stress. An injury can occur intentionally or unintentionally and may be caused by blunt trauma, penetrating trauma, burning, toxic exposure, asphyxiation, o ...

after a lacklustre team debut. This effectively brought an end to his chances of working his way back into the side, and he was almost immediately delisted. The then-27-year-old's 98-game, nine-year AFL career ended there. Moorcroft is best known for winning the 2001

Mark of the Year The annual Australian Football League Mark of the Year competition (currently also known as the Four'N Twenty AFL Mark of the Year) is a sporting award that celebrates each season's best mark. A mark is the action of a player cleanly catchin ...

while playing with Essendon, taking a spectacular high-flying mark in Round 14, 2001, over

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 ...

' forward Brad Johnson; it is considered to be the greatest mark of all time by many, including in a 2021 AFL-run poll of more than 30,000 fans, where Moorcroft won with 25% of the vote, with the runner-up being

Jack Riewoldt Jack Riewoldt ( ; born 31 October 1988) is a professional Australian rules footballer who plays for the Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). He is a three-time premiership player, a three-time Coleman Medallist, a ...

's 2021 mark against

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

with 15%. The mark was particularly notable in that Moorcroft first jumped onto Johnson's back and then leapt even higher into the air by leveraging himself off Johnson; this is very rare, as players will usually jump onto their opponent's back and then merely hang at the same height while taking the mark (hence the colloquial term ''hanger'' for such a mark). For a similar reason, Johnson is often referred to as the ''springboard'' for this mark, while the term ''stepladder'' is used for the player underneath a hanger. Moorcroft also managed to kick six goals before half-time in the same game, including five goals in the second quarter; for reference, Moorcroft had kicked just three goals from the past nine games. His dominance in the first half was so profound that at one stage he had two players playing on him at the same time, including opposition captain Chris Grant, just to negate his impact. In fact, he had five different opponents within the first half. Moorcroft found out eight months later that he had fractured his hip in the process of his famous mark, severely limiting his career prospects. Moorcroft spent a season at

Bendigo Bombers The Bendigo Gold Football Club was an Australian rules football club based in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia. The club played in the Victorian Football League (VFL) from 1998 until 2014, under the nicknames Diggers, Bombers and Gold at different ti ...

in the VFL before retiring from AFL/VFL and moving into the local leagues. In 2005, Moorcroft joined the Silvan F.C. in the

Yarra Valley Mountain Football League The AFL Yarra Ranges was an Australian rules football and netball organisation based in the Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges within Victoria. The organisation operated the Yarra Ranges Senior Football league and the Yarra Ranges Junior Footb ...

. During his time at Silvan, Moorcroft won four club best-and-fairest awards and broke the 100-goal mark twice, including topping the goalkicking tables of all leagues, with 163 goals in 2008 alone. In fact, this season was so dominant for Moorcroft that he had registered his 100th goal during Round 11. Of his three grand finals at Silvan, two of these were back-to-back premierships in 2007/08. In 2009/10, Moorcroft was playing for the Romsey Redbacks in the

Riddell District Football League The Riddell District Football Netball League (RDFNL) is an Australian rules football and netball league in Victoria, Australia. The RDFNL covers towns in the Macedon Ranges and an area from Rockbank in the south to Broadford in the north. T ...

(RDFL). In 2011, Moorcroft joined Bundoora in the

Northern Football League The Northern League is a men's football league in north east England. Having been founded in 1889, it is the second-oldest football league in the world still in existence after the English Football League. It contains two divisions; Division ...

(NFL) and has played in three premierships with the Bulls (2011, 2013 & 2017). As a 41-year-old, he kicked the winning goal in the 2017 Grand Final. At the completion of the 2019 season, while still playing at a high level at Bundoora, and at 43 years old, Moorcroft announced his retirement from senior footy, seemingly for good. However, in December 2022, Moorcroft announced his intent to join South Morang FC for their 2023 season.

Playing statistics

:Gary Moorcroft's player profile at AFL Tables
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1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is O. J. Simpson murder case, acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the 1994, year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The ...

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1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...

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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;", , 46 , , 11 , , 7 , , 5 , , 102 , , 53 , , 155 , , 36 , , 27 , , 0.6 , , 0.5 , , 9.3 , , 4.8 , , 14.1 , , 3.3 , , 2.5 , - ! 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;", , 29 , , 17 , , 14 , , 9 , , 114 , , 53 , , 167 , , 53 , , 28 , , 0.8 , , 0.5 , , 6.7 , , 3.1 , , 9.8 , , 3.1 , , 1.6 , - style="background:#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;", , 29 , , 17 , , 30 , , 19 , , 157 , , 68 , , 225 , , 55 , , 32 , , 1.8 , , 1.1 , , 9.2 , , 4.0 , , 13.2 , , 3.2 , , 1.9 , - ! 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;", , 29 , , 18 , , 23 , , 9 , , 144 , , 54 , , 198 , , 54 , , 20 , , 1.3 , , 0.5 , , 8.0 , , 3.0 , , 11.0 , , 3.0 , , 1.1 , - style="background:#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;", , 29 , , 16 , , 15 , , 9 , , 117 , , 50 , , 167 , , 59 , , 15 , , 0.9 , , 0.6 , , 7.3 , , 3.1 , , 10.4 , , 3.7 , , 0.9 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

, style="text-align:center;", , 29 , , 15 , , 13 , , 10 , , 113 , , 47 , , 160 , , 54 , , 13 , , 0.9 , , 0.7 , , 7.5 , , 3.1 , , 10.7 , , 3.6 , , 0.9 , - style="background:#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;", , 7 , , 3 , , 2 , , 0 , , 21 , , 10 , , 31 , , 8 , , 7 , , 0.7 , , 0.0 , , 7.0 , , 3.3 , , 10.3 , , 2.7 , , 2.3 , - class="sortbottom" ! colspan=3, Career ! 98 ! 104 ! 62 ! 771 ! 337 ! 1108 ! 320 ! 144 ! 1.1 ! 0.6 ! 7.9 ! 3.4 ! 11.3 ! 3.3 ! 1.5

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Moorcroft, Gary 1976 births Living people Essendon Football Club players Essendon Football Club Premiership players Melbourne Football Club players Australian rules footballers from Victoria (Australia) Northern Knights players Bundoora Football Club players One-time VFL/AFL Premiership players