Modern footy is about three central questions:
- In which parts of the ground do you give yourself a defined numbers advantage?
- How do you maximise that numbers advantage when and where you have it?
- Do you have enough players that can make an opposition’s numbers advantage into a weakness?
That third question, asked more simply, is do you have enough superstars?
Do you have blokes that turn a 50/50 into a 60/40?
For Geelong and Brisbane on Friday and Saturday night, the answer was a defined yes.
And those superstars were their captains, both of whom played blinders to guide their teams to the Grand Final.
Patrick Dangerfield and Harris Andrews are different players and different characters, but both have the effect of disadvantageous situations for their team into defined positives because they’re so f*cking good.
Dangerfield, at this point in his career, is a splash player.
He’s Philip Seymour Hoffman showing up in a red convertible in the Talented Mr Ripley and owning it for the rest of the five minutes he’s in the movie.
On Friday night, he turned back the clock, he was a character actor who returned to being a leading man.
For more reasons than one, Friday night was his The Master.
With 29 minutes gone in the first quarter, Patty Dangerfield kicked Geelong’s only goal of the term to send them into the break down just 13 points.
After that moment on centre stage, for most of the season he would have just left it until the next time his team needed him.
Except in this game, they needed him at the heart of the contest for the entire game.
You know Dangerfield is in the mood when he starts to prowl.
He always has a strut, but when he’s fully up for the fight, he prowls.
His hands flow almost in billy strut for the whole game.
His head is on a swivel looking for the next victim, like he’s Alexander looking for more worlds to conquer.
That prowl is his version of the Chris Paul stomp or the Kobe jaw jut.
It’s a flashing light that says: “I’m here to bend the game to my will.”
To do that, he spent his time where the game can most easily be dictated: the middle.
Since Round 3, Dangerfield hasn’t attended more than 32% of centre bounces.
On Friday night, he was at about half of them.
His eight clearances were his most of the season and his 20 contested possessions were the most he’s had since 2019.
By player rating, his 29.4 is the best game he’s played since 2017.
It’s his only game of the 2020s over 26.
Marcus Bontempelli, who led the AFL in player rating this season, had two better games for the year.
But the numbers don’t remotely do him justice.
He was ferocious in his attack on the ball.
The whole game was Hawthorn players trying to stop a train from getting from A to B.
To quote Chael Sonnen, 1 on 1, 2 on 1 or 5 on 1, Danger made them all need 911.
When he was getting gang tackled he kept his hands free. Every 3 on 1 was a win for Geelong.
The Hawks almost always had more numbers, but Dangerfield was so imperious that Geelong’s extraordinary outside runners could stay out knowing that Danger would punish Hawthorn’s flock to the ball.
That’s a superstar, just by being there, his team was in the ascendancy.
If Dangerfield is a spike player, Harris Andrews is a metronome.
When was the last time he played a bad one?
But on Saturday evening, he played an almost perfect one.
In fairness, Collingwood could not stop kicking it to him and their plan of playing the totally immobile and unthinking Mason Cox (if I could bear to listen to Sam McClure, I’d be interested to hear his thoughts on the game) was a bold strategy that didn’t pay off.
Andrews got to every Collingwood bomb entry, which is to say every Collingwood entry, and shut it off.
As far as I saw, he didn’t lose a contest playing essentially as a loose because his direct opponent was such a non-factor.
Whenever he was in a one on one, he won it taking five intercept marks.
Whenever he got over to help an opponent, he made sure his side didn’t lose it either by forcing a stoppage or just taking the mark himself.
He was perfect.
Collingwood scored on about 45% of their entries this season.
Harris Andrews is the major reason that they scored on 32% of them on Friday night.
In the second, Chris Fagan swapped Andrews out of his preferred help defence role and onto King.
He had three more disposals and no more goals for the rest of the game.
He was, as he always is, brilliant.
Like Dangerfield, he’s a Mr Fix It.
He has a preferred role, but can do anything in the back half just like Dangerfield can do everything in the front half.
Modern footy comes down to those three questions at the top.
On Preliminary Final weekend, Geelong and Brisbane both had the best answer to question three.
Dangerfield bent the contest to his will. Andrews erased Collingwood’s forward line by himself.
Both men consistently turned situations that should have been 50/50, or worse, into defined advantages for their team.
That’s the job description of a superstar. And it’s why the two captains will walk out next Saturday night with their sides behind them.