The data behind Lance 'Buddy' Franklin's 1,000 AFL goals for Sydney and Hawthorn

When Lance «Buddy» Franklin kicked his 1,000th goal, he became only the sixth player in more than a century of the AFL and its predecessor, the VFL, to achieve the feat.

That puts the Sydney Swans key forward in the top 0.05 per cent of players, joining all-time greats Tony Lockett, Gordon Coventry, Jason Dunstall, Doug Wade and Gary Ablett Sr.

To put into context just how rare Lance Franklin's 1,000th goal is, it helps to look at how he compares to the thousands of other male football players who've taken to the field since the league's inception in 1897.

Just 12 players (0.09 per cent) have managed to kick 800 goals or more, and with the exception of Franklin, none of them started their careers after the year 2000.

Nick and his cousin Jack Riewoldt, with more than 700 goals apiece, are the closest modern-day players who started playing AFL after 2000. But only Jack is still playing.

"[Franklin] is well in advance of anyone else we've seen from a goal-kicking perspective in this generation," football data analyst Daniel Hoevenaars said.

Even if we look back at all the players who've kicked more than 100 goals, that's still only 8 per cent of the entire playing pool. In 2008, Franklin kicked 100 goals in a single season, making him the last player to achieve the feat.

In fact, the majority of players kicked fewer than 10 goals throughout their entire playing careers.

And many of them have not even kicked a single goal.

Granted, quite a few of that group may have only played one or two games. Others, like Collingwood defender Ted Potter, managed a lengthy career spanning 182 VFL games for Collingwood in the '60s and early '70s without registering a single major.

AFL legend Kevin Bartlett, who kicked 778 goals for Richmond in his