Shane Mumford is now officially the GIANTS' lucky charm. Except with the big fella they call Mummy, there’s no luck involved. He just makes a big difference to the team’s fortunes.

This was confirmed unquestionably on Sunday when Mumford played a key role in the breakthrough victory over Carlton at Spotless Stadium which gave the GIANTS back-to-back wins for the first time.

In his first season with the club, Mumford has now played eight games for four wins.

He was a key contributor when they started the season win-loss-win against Sydney, St Kilda and Melbourne, and after one game against Richmond to settle back into things he’s be similarly influential in a string of four good GIANTS performances in a row against Hawthorn, Essendon, Brisbane and Carlton.

So, his career win/loss ratio with the AFL’s youngest team is 50 per cent - better than any of the other 63 players to have worn GIANTS colors.

Not surprisingly, players who didn’t endure the tough years of 2012-13, when the GIANTS won only three of 44 games, are most prominent on the win/loss ratio leaderboard.

Josh Hunt (44 per cent) is second, ahead of Dylan Addison (40 per cent), Tom Boyd, Josh Kelly and Heath Shaw (33 per cent), Sam Frost (29 per cent), Jon Patton (22 per cent) and Kristian Jaksch (20 per cent).

Boyd, in his third game, and Jaksch, in his sixth game, enjoyed their first AFL victory against Carlton.

There were two other players in the side which blitzed the Blues on Sunday who can claim 2014 lucky charm status – Phil Davis and Nathan Wilson. Both are unbeaten this year.

Davis, who has done such a stunning job to overcome a career-threatening kidney injury suffered in Round 1, has three wins from three games in 2014 (Rounds 1-13-14) after three wins from 35 GIANTS games in 2012-13. 

And Wilson, who had a 2-11 win/loss ratio to the end of 2013, has enjoyed back-to-back wins in Rounds 13-14 after being forced to watch the first 11 games of the 2014 season.

Whichever way you look at it, Mumford was a huge standout against Carlton. 

He had 18 possessions, an equal career best for GWS and well up on his AFL career average of 11.1 possessions per game, plus nine tackles, 11 contested possessions, three clearances and five marks. 

To put these numbers into context, only Dylan Shiel (10) had more tackles and only Callan Ward (14), Stephen Coniglio (12), Rhys Palmer (12) and Adam Treloar (12) had more contested possessions. All midfielders.

But the big statistic for which Mumford’s effort has gone largely unheralded was his 55 hit-outs.

It wasn’t a season-high – he had a stunning 60 hit-outs against Melbourne in Round 3. But it was enough for Mumford to lead the competition this year for hit outs per game.

Now with a total of 345 hit-outs in eight games, he averages 43.1 to lead Aaron Sandilands (41.0), Will Minson (38.0), Mark Jamar (34.5) and Robbie Warnock (34.1).

Despite missing five of a possible 13 games through injury Mumford is the only player in the competition to have had two games in which he’s topped the hit-out half-century. 

All the ruckmen at the other 17 clubs combined have only had four hit-out half centuries – Sandilands’ 58 against Gold Coast, Warnock’s 57 against Brisbane, Minson’s 55 against Richmond, and Jamar’s 53 against the Bulldogs.

It was no surprise, then, that Mumford figured prominently in voting in the GIANTS-Blues game for the AFL Coach’s Association Player of the Year. He received five votes in total from GIANTS coach Leon Cameron and Carlton counterpart Mick Malthouse, who together awarded the winning side 24 of their 30 votes.

Coniglio  topped the list with nine votes overall - five votes from one coach and four from the other.

Carlton’s Mitch Robinson (6) was the only visiting player to figure, while Ward (6), Mumford (5), Shaw (2) and Shiel (2) also figured on the combined voting sheet.

Sunday’s 15.10 (100) to 13.8 (86) win over Carlton was the smallest of the GIANTS’ seven wins. But it was a huge occasion for GWS and completed a watershed weekend for the AFL’s expansion policy. 

Within 24 hours the Gold Coast Suns beat a top four opponent for the first time when they streamrolled Geelong at Metricon Stadium and the GIANTS claimed back-to-back wins for the first time by triumphing over another traditional club in Carlton.

Other GIANTS statistical oddities to emerge from Round 14 were:

• Callan Ward, with 29 possessions, equalled Toby Greene’s GWS record of 41 20-possession games to confirm his standing as the club’s No.1 ball-winner. Ward also has 13 30-possession games to Greene’s 11 and the club’s only 40-possession game.

• Lachie Whitfield, with 20 possessions in his 27th game, became the 17th GIANTS player to reach 500 possessions. And the seventh quickest. Only Toby Greene (18 games), Callan Ward (21), Adam Treloar and Stephen Coniglio (24), and Tom Scully and Taylor Adams (26) reached this milestone in fewer games.
  
  
• With Tom Scully sidelined by a Friday hamstring injury there are now only five GIANTS to have played in each of the club’s seven wins - Tomas Bugg, Stephen Coniglio, Devon Smith, Adam Treloar and Callan Ward.
  
  
• Heath Shaw had a club record nine running bounces against the Blues, surpassing Adam Treloar’s eight against Melbourne last year. This jumped Shaw’s bounce tally this season to 39 and saw the 2014 boom recruit topple Curtly Hampton’s single-season club record of 33 in 2013. Astonishingly, in 12 games Shaw has jumped to fifth on the GIANTS all-time bounce list and averages 3.3 bounces per game. Treloar, who averages 1.5 bounces per game, leads this category on aggregate with 78 from Hampton (65), Devon Smith (51) and Tom Scully (49). Smith reached the half-century with five bounces against Carlton.
  
  
• Dylan Shiel had a career-best 10 tackles as he became the Giants player to 150 tackles all-time. Callan Ward (278) and Tom Scully (224) lead the way from Devon Smith (218), Adam Treloar (192) and Stephen Coniglio (159).

• Jonathon Patton had a career-best four marks inside-50. It was a season-high in this critical statistics for the GIANTS this year.

• GWS' half-time score of 10.2 (62) was the highest in their 57 games and their fourth-highest score for any half overall.
  
  
• The GIANTS’ second quarter score of 5.1 (31) and their 21-point win in the second quarter each ranked No.2 for second quarter performances by the club.
  
  
• When the GIANTS held the Blues to 1.4 (10) in the second quarter it was 10th time in 228 quarters that the club had held an opponent to 10 points or less. Significantly, six of them have been this year.

• Carlton’s 21 scoring shots against GWS was the third lowest match tally recorded against the AFL’s 18th club, higher only than Brisbane’s 20 scoring shots at the Gabba a week earlier, and St Kilda’s 20 scoring shots at Etihad Stadium in Round 2 this year.