Joe Daniher is part of arguably the AFL’s greatest family. And at the Gabba on Saturday night, when his current club faces a season-defining game against his former club, he’ll play his 200th game to add another line to an extraordinary family record.
It’s a family that boasts six AFL players. In age order, it’s Terry, who turned 67 last week, from Neale (63), Anthony (61), Chris (58), Darcy (34) and Joe (30).
Terry, Neale, Anathony and Chris are brothers, and Darcy and Joe are the sons of Anthony.
It’s been no easy task for the very private youngest member of the family, who is best known by a lot of Lions these days for living at Byron Bay while playing in Brisbane and not having a television at home.
Joe will be the third Daniher 200-gamer. Or the fourth if you include Neale’s double-century as coach at Melbourne.
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When Brisbane put the starting point for their upcoming finals campaign on the line against Essendon it will take the Daniher family tally for games played and coached to an astonishing 1181. That’s immediate family members only. Fathers, sons, grandfathers and grandsons.
The all-family AFL games leaderboard is:-
- Daniher (1180)
- Shaw (1152)
- Kennedy (1107)
The remarkable Daniher family story has largely gone untold in Queensland, and had Joe not made his way to Brisbane in 2021 it probably would have stayed that way. Not now.
Lions fans have taken to heart the exciting if sometimes unpredictable key forward/ruckman, who has played 91 games and kicked 195 goals for the club.
But even he would admit he’s #2 in his family to most Queenslanders behind everyone’s favourite Australian, Uncle Neale, the face of the fight against Motor Neurone Disease and the ‘Big Freeze’.
For each goal Joe has kicked for the Lions Neale and his team have raised more than $500,000 for MDN research and care. Or more than $100million in 10 years.
So famous are the Daniher’s that in the tiny Victorian country town of Ungarie in regional Victoria, where it all began, there is a ‘Big Footy’, just like Queensland’s ‘Big Pineapple’ to celebrate their contribution to the game.
And that’s more about Joe’s grandparents than their assorted off-spring.
On Anzac Day this year, when Joe’s grandmother Edna celebrated her 90th birthday, a small family gathering in nearby Wagga numbered 78. Joe couldn’t be there – he was playing with the Lions in Canberra. But most Daniher’s were, and Edna’s late husband Jim, who founded the Ungarie Magpies and was a three-time League medallist and five-time premiership player, was there in spirit.
It closed a big week for the family after they’d been inducted into the NSW Hall of Fame.
The Daniher AFL journey began in 1976 when Terry debuted with South Melbourne, now the Sydney Swans, because the Riverina was in the Swans recruiting zone. But from 1978-92 he played at Essendon.
Neale debuted in 1979 with Essendon after a legal battle between the clubs. The Bombers secured Daniher #2 because, when Sydney traded Daniher #1 to Essendon in 1977, the lawyers ensured they relinquished their hold on Daniher #2.
Anthony Daniher played with Sydney from 1981-87 and Essendon from 1987-94, and Chris, Daniher played 87 games with Essendon from 1987-97. Darcy played six games for the Bombers and Joe 108.
On the all-time Essendon playing list they are players #851, #860, #924, #934, #1075 and #1108. And they are the only Daniher’s among 13,172 AFL players all-time.
Terry, a member of the Essendon Team of the Century and an AFL Hall of Famer, played 313 games, was an 1984-85 best & fairest winner, a dual premiership player, a three-time All-Australian and a six-year Essendon captain.
Anthony played 233 games, was All-Australian and runner-in the Sydney best & fairest. Chris was a 1993 premiership player. And Neale was a football tragedy.
He won the Essendon best & fairest at 20 in 1981 and was appointed captain for 1982 after just 66 games. But a knee injury meant he never captained the club. He was sidelined from 1982-84 and from 1986-88 and, after 11 games in 1989-90, he retired.
But not before two very special family moments. On 22 May 1990, when all four brothers played in a NSW side that beat Victoria, and on 1 September 1990, when they played together for Essendon against St.Kilda at Moorabbin in the last round of the home-and-away season.
It was a piece of mastery from coach Kevin Sheedy, always a lover of football history and a football romantic if ever there was one. The Bombers were safe on top of the ladder so his side included #5 Terry, #6 Anthony, #7 Chris and #36 Neale.
Neale, a Melbourne Hall of Famer, had played his early days in #6 but when he was injured Anthony left the Swans for the Bombers he passed it on, and picked up #36 in his last two seasons.
It was Neale’s last game, and the only time in AFL history four brothers have played in the same side.
But he wasn’t finished with football. After assistant-coaching stints at Essendon and Fremantle he coached Melbourne from 1998-2007. He also coached the Allies State of Origin side and was head of football at West Coast before he was diagnosed with MND in 2013.
Darcy Daniher went father/son to Essendon via pick #39 in the 2007 National Draft before Fremantle took future 200-gamer Chris Mayne at #40, Brisbane took James Polkinghorne at #41, St.Kilda nabbed three-time B&F Jack Steven at #42 and the Bulldogs chose 2016 premiership captain Easton Wood at #43.
Daniher could seriously play, but injury didn’t give him a chance. Having accepted jumper #28 because #6 was the property of established senior player Angus Monfries, he played three games in 2009 and three more in 2009. And was done.
At least when Joe went to Essendon father/son via pick #10 in the 2012 National Draft Monfries had moved to Port Adelaide so he could follow his uncle and his father into #6.
In his eight years at Essendon, which included two losing finals, Joe was four times the club’s leading goal-kicker and in a stellar 2017 he won the Anzac Day Medal against Collingwood after his uncle had prevailed over Big Freeze #5, and the Tom Wills Medal in the inaugural Country Game between Essendon v Geelong – another Sheedy idea. Plus, he won Mark of the Year, was club champion and All-Australian.
But he was never totally comfortable in the AFL spotlight.
After injury kept him to 11 games in 2018-19 he requested a trade to Sydney, but the Swans were unable to meet the Essendon trade demands. A payback, perhaps, for the Neale Daniher stand-off of 20 years earlier. Probably not.
He played on but again injury intervened. And after four games in the shortened Covid season of 2020 he exercised free agency rights to join Brisbane.
Even before he’d played a game he’d added to the family legacy. With Hugh McCluggage entrenched in jumper #6 he chose the #3 worn previously by Michael Voss. It was the family’s ninth different number. They’ve worn 2-3-5-6-7-19-28-36-40.
The move to the Lions took the Daniher family back to 1981 and the first AFL game for premiership points at the Gabba. Terry and Neale had played in an Essendon side that beat Leigh Matthews’ Hawthorn 22-19 (151) to 20-13 (133).
It has given Daniher #6 a new lease of life. After playing just 15 of a possible 62 games in his last three years at the Bombers for 18 goals he’s played 91 of a possible 97 with the Lions, missing five with a shoulder in 2022 and the semi-final the same year due to the birth of his first child. And he’s kicked 195 goals.
Despite providing valuable ruck support to Oscar McInerney, which takes him away from the forward 50m zone, he’s been among the most potent forwards in the game and formed a venomous combination with Charlie Cameron and Eric Hipwood.
Only five players have kicked more goals than Daniher in the last four years – Geelong’s Jeremy Cameron (206), Carlton’s Charlie Curnow (204), teammate Charlie Cameron (202), Adelaide’s Taylor Walker (198) and North’s Nick Larkey (197). He’s covered Melbourne’s Bayley Fritsch (193), GWS’ Toby Greene (187), Carlton’s Harry McKay (178), Western Bulldogs’ Aaron Naughton (172) and GWS’ 2024 Coleman Medallist Jesse Hogan (171).
But still uncle Terry has him covered with 313 games and 469 goals. Even when he plays his 100th Brisbane game next year qualify for the AFL’s ‘double 100’ club it won’t be a family first. Father Anthony played 118 for Essendon and 115 for Sydney.
Terry is a two-time premiership player and Chris a one-time flag winner so a Brisbane premiership won’t give him any special family bragging rights. Similarly, while a second All-Australian blazer would put him one ahead of his father he’d still be one behind Terry.
When he polled 12 votes in the Brownlow Medal last year, second for the Lions behind Lachie Neale (31), he took his career tally to 36. Having already covered Chris (7), he went past Neale Daniher (21) and Anthony Daniher (23). But Terry Daniher (69) is still ahead of him.
Freakishly, Joe won’t even be the first Daniher to celebrate his 200th game at the Gabba. Neale marked his double-century as Melbourne coach there with a come-from-behind eight-point win over the Lions in 2006 despite eight goals from Daniel Bradshaw.
That was after Terry enjoyed a 79-point win over Richmond at Waverley in 1976 in his 200th, when Paul Salmon kicked 11 goals, and Anthony copped a 17-point loss to Richmond at Windy Hill in 1991.
So what can he do to have something really special for bragging rights at the family Christmas lunch this year? Lions fans hope he can put deliver a blinder against the Bombers on Saturday, and repeat the dose through September.
