Who is the best in the AFL's land?

Just who is the best player in the land? If you love the game it’s a very important question.

Not so long ago there wasn’t really a discussion to be had – Wayne Carey saw to that – and yeah Gary Ablett Jnr chipped in for awhile – but at the minute the resolution to the inquiry, well, it ain’t so easily defined.

The modern player and game have taken on different propensities and dimensions, and sure the game evolves with time, as does the player, but the qualities and essence we measure champions with stick hard and fast, and the prerequisite of the aficionado to distinguish the real ones holds true.

What I’m saying is – we gotta lock horns over this stuff!

There are a number of players in the conversation. It’s all best determined with a cold beer in hand.

Down to business. A couple of absentees to start.

Gary Ablett was the clear choice for years, he won two Brownlow’s, had a third arguably stolen from him. But injuries have chipped away at the champ and nobody is as excited by 36 half-metre handballs as they used to be.

The move to Gold Coast both help and hindered him. The discernment of even the casual punter now calls for a boatload of contested possessions and if not contested, then a man must carry that ball and gain and hopefully goal.

I think we’d all love to see him play four quarters up forward just once Rocket, the apple obviously doesn’t fall far from the tree with this guy, and his old man played the single greatest ever game of AFL/VFL football, I mean it isn’t brain surgery.

Rant aside, we must never commit the sin of doubting the best and their ability for resurrection, just ask George Foreman – but Gazza ain’t the guy at the moment, not to say he won’t of course one day be again.

Nat Fyfe lost the Brownlow in 2014 by way of terrible luck, which he compounded later in the year with thuggery, whacking Jordan Lewis in an act that seemed to subconsciously nix the accidental headclash that cost him weeks earlier in the year, as if he was saying “Now I couldn’t have won it anyway”.

He had Priddis dead to rights, everybody knows this, but it’s the ‘Fairest and Best’ kids, and Priddis outlasted and outworked them all in the end.

Fyfe could have gone back to back and his 2015 seemed aware of this. He started with a set of performances the likes of which in watching football for almost 30 years I’ve never seen. He was pretty much best on ground for ten games straight. An unheralded feat, awesome in nature, and one we may not see for another 30 years.

But the boy suffers from “James Hird” syndrome, not that post-playing career shirking of responsibility, but being injury prone, and losing large portions of a champion career due to it. For the second time now Fyfe is sitting out a season – and so is another put aside from the current conversation.

For me, right now, it’s whittled down to a five-player discussion.

Let’s start with the blatant – Buddy Franklin. He will eventually be spoken of in the same reverential tones as Matthew Lloyd, Jason Dunstall, Gary Ablett senior and Tony Lockett. He’s that good, and will kick that many goals. He’s already kicked a tonne once. Booted 13 in a single outing.

His best is monstrous, tear them a new one, rampagingly ridiculous stuff. His athleticism mixed with his strength, pace and talent are formidable for even the best defenders – just ask Cale Hooker.

He isn’t the greatest mark there ever was, but he can hold his own, and I’m guessing most backmen feel safer when the ball is in the air as opposed to the deck cause Buddy will kill you from the knees down.

He kicks them from sixty without blinking and has a dynamism that I’d argue no other key forward has even gotten near. The man is clutch, he plays big when it is big and there really is no better measure of a champion.

The next guy is in the mix with a bullet. I never saw Leigh Matthews play on a weekly basis, but they say this guy moves like him. Dustin Martin may one day be the player in the competition.

I heard Wayne Carey say the other night that Dusty turns 50/50s into 70/30s. I’d give him five more on the plus side Duck.

Martin is that rare composite of silken class and brutish force. Riccuito had it. Voss had it. Martin is kin. Sure that fend off of his is a joy to watch, but what is even better is witnessing the blossoming of man with the ability to say ‘No more!’, to lift, to flex, and to carry his team with him.

He is one of those players whose touches can matter so much more than anybody else on the ground, everybody playing and watching can sense it too, exacting, desperate, savage and surgical, the Tigers have gotta get this kid deep into September as soon as possible.

The Bont – that’s right, the Bont. There are a slew of arguments for others (Parker, Sloane, Pendlebury) and I hear you, I hear you loud and clear, but I’m saying this guy is better. This guy has more to his game at an earlier stage and will get even more on it as he goes.

Marcus Bontempelli can and will do it all. You can see it from a mile out. Remember watching Nat Fyfe and thinking this kid is gonna be something? Well I’m saying the Bont may end up being more.

I would best describe him as Anthony Koutoufides meets James Hird with more than a smattering of Chris Grant included. At six-foot-three he wins contested possession like Scott West did, dishes off by hand like the Diesel and is as clean with the ball as Simon Black. Not to mention the kid is a great mark and seems to relish the big games and play accordingly. Did I mention he’s only 20 years of age?

Dangerfield is a ‘Best 5’ no-brainer right now. He can do everything, and then some other stuff too. Tough as nails. Excellent skills. He marks like a key-forward – rare for a midfielder – and kicks goals every week.

In a school-yard pick most would go Paddy first, and with good reason. He is creative in that uncommon but special way – when he handles the ball his team scores more. He is fearless, both in courage and work-rate. Nobody in the game seems to spend more time week to week writhing in pain, well possibly Nick Riewoldt, and in a strange way it is an apt comparison. Both go in where Brett Heady would fear to tread, and both run till they’re buggered.

Danger is the kind of guy you’d just love to see play in a grand final – like Chris Judd or Adam Goodes before him he just seems made for the occasion. Maybe this year we’ll get lucky.

Joel Selwood is the best player in the AFL. You can say what you want, but for me no-one is better. Nobody wins more contests, nobody gives as much, nobody plays as well when it matters the most more often.

He gets too many free-kicks you cry, the answer is simple, it’s because he gets to the ball first and goes in harder, you see. When I think ‘Leader’, I think Selwood. When I think ‘Never say die’, I think Selwood. The composure, grit and ease he played with almost immediately somehow befit him.

Nobody ever made excuses for Selwood, they didn’t have to, he didn’t allow it. He was never too young, never needed more games in him, he just was. He mattered from day one and never looked back. And he wouldn’t, because the great ones don’t. They look forward, and they lead, it just happens.

Carey, Voss, Buckley, Hird – the men that coaches relish, the ones the fans consecrate, a lot of players are contenders in the AFL, not many are all-timers. Selwood is.