Nick Riewoldt: Playing Patrick Dangerfield forward is Geelong’s best chance of winning 2020 AFL premiership
Patrick Dangerfield may not have kicked a goal playing inside 50 against Brisbane on Saturday night, but Chris Scott must persist with him up forward. It’s the Cats’ best chance at clinching the premiership, writes Nick Riewoldt.
Geelong
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Any internal struggle Geelong’s coaching staff was having about where to deploy Patrick Dangerfield for the rest of this year was answered emphatically last week.
He left a trail of destruction at the Gabba as a forward and sent shockwaves through the defensive fraternity of remaining teams.
Backmen would have been watching the big Cat in that game, thinking: “Oh no, get him back into the midfield”.
Some of the things he did against Collingwood last week were breathtaking.
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If you froze footage with the ball in midair and looked at his positioning, he had no right to win the footy.
There was no craft, there was no technique, there was just a sense of line up next to your opponent, and stand and deliver with sheer power and agility.
This is what sets Dangerfield apart.
From experience, there is an art to playing forward. You need to create separation or split from a defender.
When I first started, the way I used to get it done was by running an opponent into the ground, using a fatigue element to generate that split.
But as the game evolved over the past decade — using team defences and rolling zones — the ability to outrun one opponent just meant you ran into the next.
That became an issue for me later in my career because my greatest asset was all of a sudden more easily nullified.
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So you had to operate in a smaller space, and the secret to this was using smarts and craft.
All great forwards over the journey have conjured subtle tricks to create the separation needed to win the ball.
Jason Dunstall had a subtle movement away from the ball carrier, getting his defender moving backwards, and then would explode forward.
Jack Riewoldt has the amazing ability to get lost in behind his opponents and then get around them leading forward.
West Coast’s Josh Kennedy sets players up so well with little hook leads — where he’s on the move, changing direction a couple of times and then hitting back up at the ball carrier.
So there are all of these little nuances forwards can add into their game to make sure they are not just a one-trick pony.
This has never been as relevant as today with congestion and lack of space.
Because the reality is that most forwards are playing on defenders who are just as smart, and just as strong, and just as athletically gifted.
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But once in a while a very rare talent comes along that has the physical weapons to render irrelevant all of those beautiful techniques that forwards have developed over the decades.
At the moment, that player looks like Dangerfield.
Because while there is an art to playing forward, he is not an artist.
He is a throw back to the Gary Ablett Sr days.
He stands in front of the canvas and goes wham.
He’s getting it done with brute force and explosiveness, rather than finesse.
Dangerfield, who flies with breathless courage even though it has never been his role or position, drew three defenders in and hit the contest so hard he split the pack, leaving Hawkins to do the roving, which is a welcome change for him, and he then handballs to Luke Dahlhaus for a goal.
This has to give the Geelong midfielders confidence that they have a guy forward who can crash packs, who can mark the ball on the lead and who can win it on the ground.
In this sense, he has all the things you want in a key forward in a midfielder’s body.
Playing Dangerfield forward is Geelong’s best chance of winning the premiership.
It removes a predictability about the way the opposition plans to stop Geelong’s ability to score.
Before, opposition teams were looking at Geelong and thinking, “If we take away Hawkins, we can win this game”.
But Dangerfield diminishes the Cats’ reliance on Hawkins, and Hawkins’ Island.
Now, all of a sudden it is not that straightforward for Brisbane because there is a guy in Geelong’s forward line who can tear the game apart.
It is a match-up nightmare.
Admittedly, there is the contingency to throw Dangerfield back in the midfield if the game is slipping away.
But only in case of emergency do you break glass.
Having said that, it is incumbent on the Geelong players who rotate through the midfield that this does not happen – great players such as Joel Selwood, Mitch Duncan, All Australian Cam Guthrie, Sam Menegola, Brandan Parfitt and at times Gary Ablett Jr.
They have enough talent through that part of the ground to not need Danger.
It is true that it is a lot to put the entire fortunes of a football club on one man’s shoulders. Particularly in a final.
But Dangerfield has very broad shoulders.
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