There are few players in the competition who are more consistent than Dane Swan.

On Monday night, he was named in the AFL’s All-Australian team for the fifth consecutive season.

Collingwoodfc.com.au has published his statistics across each of the past five seasons and analyses the key changes in his game across that period.

Average Disposals
2009 – 30.8
2010 – 31.5
2011 – 31.7
2012 – 34.5
2013 – 31.2

After averaging 24.6 disposals per game in 2008, Swan has clocked below the 30 touch mark in only 38 of his 119 games between 2009 and 2013. He has won 3791 disposals in this period at an average of 31.8 per game.

Average Marks
2009 – 6.4
2010 – 5.6
2011 – 5.4
2012 – 6.6
2013 – 5.7

Interestingly, Swan took a career-high 29 marks inside 50 this year. He also won 105 disposals in attack this year –11 more than what he won last season.

Average Tackles
2009 – 3.1
2010 – 4.7
2011 – 3.2
2012 – 3.4
2013 – 3.4

Swan has been a remarkably consistent tackler during his All-Australian years, peaking with an average of 4.7 in 2010 (with a high of 11 in the 2010 Grand Final Replay). He ranked fourth at the club in tackles that year and was ranked fifth in 2013.

Average Clearances
2009 – 4.0
2010 – 5.4
2011 – 6.1
2012 – 6.7
2013 – 5.0

Clearances was one area in which Swan wasn’t as strong as usual in 2013. He averaged 5.0 per game (a total of 114 for the season), his lowest since averaging 4.0 in 2009. He lifted when he came up against the premiership favourites, winning 10 clearances against Hawthorn in round three and eight when they met again in round 21.

For the record, Swan attended more centre bounces than any other Magpie in 2013 (501).

Average Goals
2009 – 0.7
2010 – 0.9
2011 – 1.3
2012 – 1.2
2013 – 0.9

The only thing stopping Swanny from becoming a goal kicking monster is his accuracy in front of the big sticks. While still kicking his share of goals (he has kicked more than 20 in each of his past four seasons), his accuracy has fluctuated between 58.2 in 2011 and 41.9 in 2009 during this period. In 2013, Swan kicked 21.21 including two bags of 3.3.

Time On Ground
2009 – 96min
2010 – 98min
2011 – 105min
2012 – 101min
2013 – 98min

In the first two years of the substitute, Swan spent more time on the ground (on average) than he had in any year since 2005. This year, he cut back on his time spent on the field by an average of only three minutes.

In total, Swan spent 2,271 minutes on the ground this year, ranking fourth at the club overall. He was interchanged out of the game on 217 occasions, which leaves him miles ahead of any other challenger at the club (Scott Pendlebury was second with 197 interchanges). Port Adelaide’s Ollie Wines led the competition with an incredible 266 interchanges.

As a comparison, Swan led the AFL for interchanges in 2009 with 210, while in 2003, the most interchanged player was Brisbane’s Jamie Charman with 81.

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Swan was ranked first at the club for metres gained in 2013, covering 12,421 metres with his 717 disposals. Scott Pendlebury finished second with 9,218 disposals from 688 disposals.

For Swan, it was an increase of 1,456 metres for the season (in comparison with his 10,965 last year) and 66 metres more than in his Brownlow year of 2011.

Interestingly, it was 94m short of his 12,515 in 2009, although he played two games extra that season.

Between 2009 and 2013, Swan lead the club in metres gained (62,511 – which equates to 360.08 runs up and down the MCG).

Dane Swan
2009: 25 games, 18 goals
2010: 26 games, 24 goals
2011: 24 games, 32 goals
2012: 21 games, 25 goals
2013: 23 games, 21 goals

Total: 119 games, 120 goals