St Kilda’s Callum Wilkie ready to take down Dusty Martin

Footy’s best one-on-one exponent is set to face a defender yet to lose a one-on-one contest this year. Someone’s stat sheet will get busted.

Richmond training at Metricon Stadium. Picture: Michael Klein

Dustin Martin is fire and Callum Wilkie is ice.

One is an irresistible force and the other an immovable object.

Literally, one is a mild-mannered accountant and the other the AFL’s resident rockstar.

Sick of the contrasts yet?

Well on Friday night, if Brett Ratten can orchestrate his match-ups to allow it, footy’s two polar opposites will take part in a match-up worthy of the biggest bucket of popcorn you can find.

St Kilda’s 24-year-old defender, a No.3 rookie pick who might just be footy’s most under-rated player, has not lost a one-on-one contest this year.

And Dustin Martin has won 48 per cent of his one-on-one contests since 2017, an outrageous number and clearly the No.1 player in the comp in that time.

Footy is full of statistics both telling and irrelevant, and yet when those two players collide someone’s stat sheet is going to get busted up.

Both times these teams have played in the past season Wilkie has gone to Martin when he roams into the inside 50 and kept him goalless in 62 combined minutes.

It’s not a massive sample size, more of an entree for tonight’s main course.

Dustin Martin of the Tigers. Picture: Michael Klein

Ironically Wilkie was plucked from his accounting firm in Adelaide at the end of 2018 as the Saints pounced despite strong interest from Richmond.

He is the only one of the AFL’s defenders not to be outmarked in a one-on-one contest and he is going up against the cream of the crop each week.

In his 18 matches this year he has been involved in 43 one-on-ones - one-out marking contests featuring only his opponent.

Darcy Moore is hot on his heels, having conceded only one mark from 59 contests, followed by Jacob Weitering (two markc conceded from 86 contests), Luke McDonald (one from 29), Tom Jonas (two from 52) and Geelong’s Jack Henry (two from 37).

Footy’s loneliest destination used to be playing in front of a rampaging Tony Lockett, but in the modern game its isolated inside Richmond’s forward 50 with Martin.

Adelaide’s Luke Brown found it out to his peril early in the third term in the 2017 Grand Final as Martin had his way with him for the mark and goal that turned the Grand Final.

This year he has won 48 per cent of those one-one-one contests (no.3 in the comp), which includes bringing the ball to ground and swooping on it to Richmond’s advantage.

He has outright marked the ball 27 per cent of the time in those contests.

St Kilda’s Callum Wilkie spoils a mark during the elimination final against the Bulldogs

Footy analyst David King, part of Fox Footy’s finals coverage this weekend, says Martin is so dangerous because he can create mismatches all over the ground.

“There is the one-on-one contests and then there is when he’s not forward and not absolutely in the midfield. It’s when he mixes between the two that he gets you.

“He finishes at the centre bounce and as the ball leaves he hovers around half forward. Jack Graham rolls up onto the ball and a back flanker follows Jack for 30 or 40 seconds. He is the most dangerous man in the competition and he’s free for little pockets of the game.

“So it’s the out-of-hours times that get you with a stoppage and when he gets Wilkie at a stoppage. How does Wilkie go then? It’s why Dusty is so dangerous.”

Martin is footy’s ultimate big game performer and would be odds-on to win his third Norm Smith Medal if the Tigers could advance that far.

But first he needs to get past footy’s most unheralded player, one desperate to make up for lost time in footy’s big stage.

Herald Sun