Dane Swan of Collingwood looks on before the AFL 1st Preliminary Final match between Collingwood Magpies and the Geelong Cats at the MCG, Melbourne. Slattery Images
Bandied around with too little qualification criteria, the word “elite” is tossed around far too often by the AFL’s media. But do we really know what ‘elite’ means?
With limited vernacular to choose from at the discretion of commercial networks, the argument over Dane Swan’s position within AFL’s elite is mentioned every week with hesitation and is unjustified by our match callers or special comment guests.
After reading Liam Quinn’s article ‘Black Caviar Chasing More Glory’, I realised just how lackadaisically the Australian sports media oscillate superlatives.
Qualified as the out-and-out elite footballer in all aspects within and beyond the game, if we had to select one player to be AFL’s elite it is Chris Judd. His consistent on-field performance accompanied by his leadership, awards and social responsibilities distinguishes him as AFL’s elite.
Gary Ablett Junior is the next most publicised member of the elite club based on his career at Geelong where he would dominate games to the point Dean Laidley told his men not to bother tackling him.
“All you can do is limit his effectiveness. You can’t shut him down,” said Brad Scott.
It is with absolute disdain I listened to one Fox Sports commentator argue Ryan Griffin has become one of football’s elite last week to which his co-commentator agreed. Yes, I credit him for being one of the games more damaging midfielders, but to be in the game’s elite?
He’s not there yet and he won’t be.
There are still a group of players between Griffin and elite. Adam Goodes and Matthew Pavlich have been stalwarts over the last decade and a case can be argued they be inducted as footballs elite, alas they are not because they don’t influence games as often or in the same degree Judd and Ablett do.
Statistics play an analytical role in the game more than ever, but there is no numerical value for measuring influence because so much of it is done off the ball.
Dane Swan is a statistical player.
Amassing disposals, Swan has missed out on two Brownlow medals because umpires find more influential players alongside him. On Friday night, Leigh Matthews commented, “Gibbs looks like he’s trying to get to Pendlebury, the way I see it, Wellington is trying to get to Judd. Swan as usual runs around on his own.”
Andrew Carrazzo, Carlton’s preferred tagger in Dennis Armfield’s absence, spent the night alongside Dale Thomas. Teams usually only play two hard tags and in Collingwood’s case, they are often on Pendlebury and Alan Didak. Swan, therefore, runs around unabated as Leigh mentioned.
Swan picked up 14 of his 34 possessions on Friday night in the final quarter. When everyone else is fatiguing, Swan, who has spent the night without a direct opponent, swoops and leeches cheap touches when the game is already won. Too often this is how he blitzes the 30 possession mark with little influence on the result. He’s got a decent tank – I’ll give him that.
Thankfully, there is no statistic to measure influence ensuring debate of who is in footballs elite will probably go on forever.
Looking back a decade, the only player in footballs elite during the 1990’s was Wayne Carey. This was a time when Robert Harvey, James Hird and Tony Lockett were running amuck. That says something about the calibre of player it takes to be in AFL’s elite.
It is with absolute conviction we can say Chris Judd and Gary Ablett are a class above the rest and have the respect of the entire football community (except Mark Thompson). They consistently shake the game’s best taggers to inspire their teammates.
For others to be mentioned so callously by the football media as elite players is an insult to the achievements of Carey, Judd and to a lesser extent Ablett.
The prestige of being in footballs elite is diminishing every game as the media reproduce this word following a good game. There is an enormous difference between being one of the best players in the competition to being a great player.
Then there’s daylight to AFL’s elite.
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