The magnificent 20-goal performance of Longwarry’s Jason Wells against Poowong on Saturday got us thinking back to one of the most incredible fortnights of football in recent memory.
It was 2012, the middle of the season, when Cranbourne and Narre Warren were at the peak of the powers and battling for supremacy in the Casey Cardinia Football League.
As for Hampton Park, well that wasn’t quite the case.
The Redbacks played finals in 2011 – defeated by Pakenham in the elimination final – but were decimated in 2012 after a mass exodus of players left the club in crisis.
It left them exposed to predators and the Magpies and Eagles feasted on the Redbacks carcass in rounds 12 and 13 that year.
First up it was Narre Warren, who booted an incredible 51.18(324) to Hampton Park’s 1.2(8) at Kalora Park.
Kerem Baskaya, who played for Hampton Park in 2011, booted 21 goals against his former club and broke the league record at the time for most goals in a game.
Baskaya’s record, well it initially lasted just seven days.
Next up for Hampton Park was a round-13 trip to the main oval at Casey Fields, where they took on a rampaging Cranbourne outfit and its superstar full-forward Marc Holt.
Stung into action by Baskaya’s heroics just seven days earlier, Holt went to town, booting 22.4 for the afternoon in a 39.24(258) to 0.2(2) thumping of the Redbacks.
Holt needed six goals to crack the ton for the first time in his career and made short work of the task, booting eight first-quarter goals.
“I put the pressure on myself this week by telling everyone I was going to do it in the first quarter,” Holt said at the time with a laugh.
Holt then kicked three and four-goal second and third quarters to have him sitting on 15 goals at three quarter time.
It’s then that he started thinking about the record.
“As much as I’m mates with Bas (Baskaya) I wanted that record,” he said.
Holt kicked seven goals in the final term, the record-breaker coming after sweet-pass from his brother and midfielder Leigh.
A league investigation subsequently found that Baskaya had kicked 22 goals against Hampton Park, with an administration error the cause of the incorrect figure.
Cranbourne wasn’t happy, but a statutory declaration was provided to the league that was 100-per cent convinced the error was honest and re-wrote the record books for the third time in three weeks.
With the league now disbanded, Baskaya and Holt will forever jointly hold the record of 22 goals in a game.
