Richmond’s 2017 premiership side contained more ‘small’ players than any other AFL flag-winning team throughout the past decade.

The triumphant Tigers team included nine players who were 182cm or under (that’s below six foot in the old imperial measurement) – Butler, Castagna, Edwards, B. Ellis, Graham, Houli, Lambert, Prestia and Rioli.

Only Hawthorn in 2008 had more small members of its premiership line-up, with a total of 10.

If you go all the way back to when the competition became the Australian Football League in 1990, there has been just one other premiership side consisting of more than nine small players, and that was the ‘Baby Bombers’ outfit of 1993, also with 10.

The back-to-back Adelaide premiership teams of 1997-98 both comprised nine players 182cm or under, as did North Melbourne the following year and Port Adelaide in 2004.

Here’s how the AFL premiership teams since 1990 have stacked up in terms of small players . . .

1990: Collingwood – six
1991: Hawthorn – four
1992: West Coast – seven
1993: Essendon – 10
1994: West Coast – eight
1995: Carlton – seven
1996: North Melbourne – eight
1997: Adelaide – nine
1998: Adelaide – nine
1999: North Melbourne – nine
2000: Essendon – seven
2001: Brisbane – seven
2002: Brisbane – seven
2003: Brisbane – five
2004: Port Adelaide: nine
2005: Sydney: seven
2006: West Coast – six
2007: Geelong – five
2008: Hawthorn – 10
2009: Geelong – five
2010: Collingwood – one
2011: Geelong – five
2012: Sydney – seven
2013: Hawthorn – seven
2014: Hawthorn – five
2015: Hawthorn – five
2016: Western Bulldogs: five
2017: Richmond – nine