THE MOMENT has arrived for the Western Bulldogs' midfield.
On Saturday night, the Bulldogs' young stars crash head-on into a Geelong line-up containing superstar pair Patrick Dangerfield and Joel Selwood.
They will do so aware that whichever team gets the ascendancy in the centre square will gain territorial advantage and field position, buzz phrases among new-age coaches.
As Geelong's Mark Blicavs said simply on Wednesday, winning out of the centre helps a lot.
Against North Melbourne, the Cats' star duo harmonised in the middle like the Everly Brothers, recording 16 centre clearances for the game, doubling North Melbourne's total of eight.
After the game, Dangerfield admitted he had not been "super-pleased" with his past five weeks, and had worked diligently on his centre clearance strategy to turn his form around.
"My body work around stoppages I've felt a bit off with," Dangerfield said.
One thousand metres gained later, Dangerfield was back, a superstar with an intimidating presence and, along with Selwood, Melbourne's Jack Viney and Carlton's Patrick Cripps, one of the top four centre clearance winners in the competition.
Earlier that afternoon at Adelaide Oval, the Western Bulldogs similarly bared their teeth.
Their midfield began to haul in a nine-point deficit immediately after the last break, with a centre clearance from Marcus Bontempelli that started with a Tom Liberatore handball.
It was no coincidence the Bulldogs kicked the first three goals of the quarter to create a lead they would not surrender.
The Bulldogs' pair finished the game with nine centre clearances between them, as the Bulldogs won the vital clearance battle 13 to five in the final quarter to beat Port Adelaide by three points.
In the space of 10 hours, all four Cats and Dogs showed an ability to exert their will and skill over the game's direction.
But both duos know the result depends more on how the midfield unit operates rather than individual performances.
While neither Bontempelli nor Liberatore are in the top 20 for centre clearances this season, the pair, along with Mitch Wallis, are within the top 32 players in the competition.
That trio help to make the Western Bulldogs a serious challenger to Geelong in that part of the ground.
The Dogs lead the competition for clearances differential (+39), while Geelong (+34) sits third.
With the number of goals dictating the number of centre bounces per game, that differential statistic is the most important in assessing a team's skill at beating the competition in a particular area.
The Bulldogs sit second in scores from stoppages differentials (+135 points) while Geelong (+122) is fourth, and would probably be higher if they had kicked straighter.
Geelong averages 15.1 more inside 50s a game and the Western Bulldogs average 13.6 more inside 50s than their opposition, just one reason why both clubs have conceded fewer points than all but the famously miserly Sydney Swans.
That's why the supporting cast in both teams is long and varied.
Along with Dangerfield and Selwood, the Cats have five players who have attended more than 100 centre bounces this season, with Zac Smith, Blicavs, Rhys Stanley, Josh Caddy and Cam Guthrie part of a long batting list.
One Western Bulldog who has gone to more than 100 centre bounces this season, Luke Dahlhaus, will be missing on Saturday night through injury, but the Bulldogs pair will have Wallis, Jordan Roughead and Tom Campbell in support as the respective quartets butt heads in the middle.
Liam Picken, who has attended just 42 centre bounces in 2016, has been part of winning clearances more often (57.1 per cent) than any other Bulldog.
The experienced Picken can double as a tagger if Dangerfield or Selwood need to be quelled, so he might find himself in the centre square more often than he has so far this season.
There is also the prospect of the bustling Blicavs jogging alongside the deceptive Bontempelli as he lolls around stoppages, halting the Bulldog's ability to be third man-up and matching him for endurance.
Whatever the match-up, Blicavs knows it will be a midfield battle to test every Geelong resource.
"We are going to need to be right on. If we do anything below our best, we'll be chopped up," Blicavs said.
"We're just going to have to be really good around the ball again, take it forward and try to lock it in our forward 50."
STATS QUIRK OF THE WEEK: Round 12 was the first round since round 23, 2013 that every winning team has scored at least 100 points, with the Western Bulldogs kicking exactly 100 points, and three winning teams (Geelong, Adelaide and Greater Western Sydney) kicking 15.15 (105).
