Anyone who is cherry picking such stats needs a good lie down and an Bex, so I really don't want to make your life any more difficult. Besides, if this is the best you can come up with to reinforce your argument then your argument must be extremely weak indeed.
Firstly, I couldn't give a Rat's how many spoils a player gets because it is a pretty low-grade stat. If you have to point to how many spoils you've made then you haven't got a lot to brag about. Secondly how convoluted are you trying to be by referencing whether something is below some 'average'. Is that a personal, positional or team average? Don't bother answering because I don't actually care, I'm just making a point about the stat.
Last week Gardner had 4 measly possessions, 3 uncontested, and at least one of his disposals was a howlingly bad turnover under zero pressure. He also gave away a free kick. At some stage I may go back and review the other three, but I don't think any of them were amazingly productively offensive in their outcome. So not exactly scintillating form, and not a great game by anyone's standards. It's also worth noting that Gardner's only other game was quite poor, with some poor defensive mistakes helping rather than hindering GWS's late charge against us the previous week. He has still yet to take a contested match at AFL level this year. .
Keath on the other hand had, 9 disposals last match, not exactly awesome but he still got his hands on the footy more than double the occasions that Ryan did. He also had more tackles (2) and clearances (1), than Ryan's 0 and 0.
You might point out that Alex had a costly turnover, which would be true, but it came when he was kicking hurriedly under strong pressure following Ryan's aforementioned unpressured mistake that he was vainly trying to clean up! Sometimes context really does matter.
The fact that the only stat Gardner fans can seemingly keep pointing to after his many years in the AFL system is his number of spoils is I believe a testament to how much the guy has struggled at the highest level. Nobody talks about how many spoils Steven May or Liam Jones have made. That's not because they don't make some great spoils occasionally, they certainly do, but more importantly they take contested marks and actually turn defence into offense.
I'm not saying that spoils are all bad, some times they are vitally important but so many spoils just end up going to the opposition anyway, so the team didn't necessarily gain from the act. As occurred for some of Ryan's spoils last week for example. Which is why I don't rate it as an important stat.
Contrary to appearances I don't actually dislike Ryan Gardner. I wish him the best this weekend as I do whenever he plays for us. The problem I have, which is associated with the poor bloke rather than being his fault, is how he keeps getting selected in front of better performed team mates, when they are still fit and available for selection.
Gardner is averaging a higher kicking/disposal efficiency, fewer clangers, fewer turnovers and more score involvements than Keath. Keath may be intercepting more but it isn't necessarily being turned into scoring opportunities. Their one-on-one numbers are pretty similar as well (less than 10% difference). As for contested marks you mention that Gardner has taken 0 in his 2 games, well Keath ain't doing much better averaging 0.5 per game and has had just 1 in the past 2 weeks.
The big difference between Gardner and Keath though is fitness, Gardner is averaging 95% time on ground to Keath's 81% which is extremely low for a key position player. Ideally KPPs especially defenders should be well over 90%.