We Pulled Every Nick Daicos Game Into Our Database. These Are the Numbers Nobody's Talking About.

Nick Daicos runs out on Saturday for Anzac Day. It'll be his 101st AFL game. He's already got three Brownlow top-fives, a best-and-fairest, and (we just worked out) exactly 2,961 career disposals.

We pulled every one of those 100 games out of our database and found some stats that genuinely surprised us. None of these are "tips." They're just the weird, brilliant, and occasionally hilarious numbers hiding in a hundred games of football.

His 2026 is already the best of his career, and it's five games old

Here's the five-game slash line for 2026: 41 / 33 / 36 / 31 / 39. That's an average of 36.0 disposals a game.

For context, here's every previous season of his career:

• 2022: 25.8 disposals per game (debut year)
• 2023: 31.0 (Brownlow runner-up at age 20)
• 2024: 30.7
• 2025: 30.0
• 2026: 36.0

He's jumped six disposals a game on his previous career best. And he's 23. It's a small sample (five games), but for now, the best Nick Daicos season ever recorded is the one we're watching right now.

He has not gone under 30 disposals since last September

Every single game Nick Daicos has played in the 2026 season has been 31 disposals or more. Every one.

His last sub-30 game was Saturday 20 September 2025: a semi-final loss to Brisbane, 27 disposals. That's 213 days ago. Seven full months. Two off-seasons' worth of summer. He's played five games since. Every one of them, at least 31 touches.

He's played the biggest regular-season game on the AFL calendar every year of his career

Collingwood vs Essendon on Anzac Day at the MCG is the most-watched home-and-away fixture in Australian football. It's been the same matchup, at the same ground, on the same day, every year since 1995. 90,000 people, every time. A Sherrin dropped on the centre circle. The Last Post.

Since Nick Daicos debuted in 2022, he has played in every single one of them. Four Anzac Days. Four MCG sellouts. Never missed one through injury, suspension, or being rested. Saturday is number five.

His four previous slash lines, in order:

• 2022: 23 disposals, 0 goals (as an 18-year-old half-back in his fifth AFL game)
• 2023: 40 disposals, 2 goals (still his only 40+ on Anzac Day)
• 2024: 27 disposals, 1 goal
• 2025: 31 disposals, 1 goal

Anzac Day average: 30.25 disposals. Essentially identical to his career average of 29.6. The biggest day of the footy calendar, 90,000 fans, full national broadcast, and Nick Daicos just… plays his usual game. If anything, he's a fraction quieter than you'd assume for a player of his calibre on the biggest regular-season stage.

And yet, it was an Anzac Day that gave us the most memorable individual performance of his young career: the 40-disposal, two-goal masterclass in 2023, when he was still technically a half-back.

Forty-plus disposal games: he has ten. Everyone else combined has fewer than you'd think.

Daicos has hit 40 disposals in a single AFL game ten times. In 100 games. A 40-disposal game is a career-highlight performance for most midfielders, the kind you see once a season if you're lucky. He's doing it once every ten games.

The ten 40+ games:

• 43 vs Fremantle (R19 2025), his career high
• 42 vs Richmond, 3 goals (R20 2025), the famous one
• 42 vs Richmond (R20 2024)
• 42 vs St Kilda (R5 2023)
• 41 vs St Kilda (Opening Round 2026)
• 41 vs Adelaide (R10 2024)
• 41 vs GWS (R9 2023)
• 40, 3 goals vs Adelaide (2022), as a rookie
• 40, 2 goals vs Melbourne (R24 2024)
• 40, 2 goals vs Essendon (Anzac Day 2023)

Three of those were also multi-goal games. Midfielders don't do that. It's a cheat code.

He's kicked exactly three three-goal games, and the first one was in his second match

The rookie who ran out for game two of his AFL career kicked three goals and got 40 touches against Adelaide. He has kicked three-plus goals only twice in the 98 games since: 3 vs West Coast in 2023, and the iconic 42-and-3 against Richmond last year.

So if he kicks three on Anzac Day it'll be the fourth time ever. And somehow that still seems possible.

He plays worse at twilight than at any other time

This one we did not see coming. Broken down by time of day across his career:

• Day games: 64 games, 30.5 avg, 35 of 64 over 30
• Night games: 14 games, 29.3 avg
• Twilight games: 22 games, 27.2 avg

Three-plus disposals a game lower at twilight than at any other time. We have no idea why. Something about 5:10pm kick-offs apparently disagrees with him.

Anzac Day is a 3:15pm bounce. A day game. Statistically his best time slot.

He plays better at the MCG when he's the away team

Collingwood call the MCG home. Bizarrely, Daicos's best MCG performances come when someone else is listed as the home team, which is exactly what happens on Anzac Day (the fixture has Essendon at home).

• MCG, Collingwood as home team (since 2024): 30.6 avg, 20% over 35 disposals
• MCG, Collingwood as away team (since 2024): 32.1 avg, 50% over 35 disposals

It's the same ground. The same crowd ratio. The same wind. He just performs more than a disposal-and-a-half better when he wears the other end of the change rooms.

His floor is ridiculous

In 100 career AFL games, Nick Daicos has recorded fewer than 20 disposals exactly six times. One of those (R21 2023, 5 disposals vs Hawthorn) was a game he was subbed out of with a knee injury.

If you removed the injury game, he's been under 20 touches five times in 99 games. That's 5%. For context, the average AFL midfielder is under 20 touches roughly a third of the time.

The 2,961 club

The career totals, as of the end of Round 6, 2026:

• 2,961 career disposals (he'll almost certainly pass 3,000 on Anzac Day)
• 68 career goals
• 369 career marks
• 334 career tackles
• 50 games with a goal (exactly half his career)
• 48 games over 30 disposals (nearly half again)

A midfielder kicking a goal in half his games, at 0.68 goals per game, is statistically ludicrous. Most Brownlow-quality mids sit closer to 0.3. He's double.

One last weird one

He has played the Richmond Tigers four times. The slash line reads: 25 / 33 / 42 / 42. The first two were as a teenage half-back. The last two were both 42-disposal games, in back-to-back seasons, at the peak of his midfielder era.

In other words: the two times he's played Richmond as a fully-grown ball-winner, he has tied his own equal-career-best disposal tally. Both times. Someone should be looking into this.

Happy Anzac Day. Enjoy the game.

Want to run the numbers on any AFL player yourself? The Singles search is where all of these came from. Every stat, every split, every opponent. Same database, same tool.

Note on the data

All figures pulled from the StatChecker database on 21 April 2026, covering every regular-season and finals game from Daicos's 2022 debut through Round 6 of 2026. Time-of-day splits use the kickoff band recorded for each fixture (day = pre-4pm, twilight = 4–6pm, night = post-6pm).