Collingwood has a very effective 22-player line-up, but their most productive two-man partnership is the dynamic duo of Dane Swan and Alan Didak.
I have joked a few times that whatever Swan gets out of his footy, he should give half to Didak. While every week Didak gets the hard, shutdown tag, Swan is allowed to play his free-flowing midfield game, gathering the footy more than anyone in the competition.
When Collingwood went to the top of the table by beating St Kilda on Saturday, as usual the Saints' best tagger, Clint Jones, was assigned to Didak, and as usual Swan was given the freedom of no specific defensive opponent.
The reality is it's very difficult to heavily tag more than one player.
The Magpies dominated the scoreboard and won the game comfortably, and I thought Swan and Didak were their best two players.
Who was the best? This is where difficulty of role must be taken into account. Didak had to contend with Jones' shutdown intentions and still had a 20-kick, 13-handball game. Doing this with Jones breathing down his neck gave him best-on-ground honours.
When Didak has 30-plus disposals, you can be sure Collingwood will be going well, which is exactly the reason he gets the hard tag each week.
The inadvertent beneficiary of this thinking is Swan. Without Didak in the Magpie line-up, Jones would have gone to Swan, which would have made his task so much more challenging.
Reputation is about the past and performance is more about the present. On that basis, Gary Ablett and Chris Judd have undoubtedly got far greater reputations than Swan.
In 2010, I would think Swan has been more productive than either. The sticking point of course is that Ablett and Judd have been heavily tagged every week for most of their careers, and they have still been the competition's benchmark midfielders.
Could you imagine the damage they would do if given the freedom that Swan enjoys every week?
Until he gets the opposition seal-of-approval as the first Magpie tag, then Swan will remain a very good player - and maybe even a Brownlow Medallist.
But he will never be the equal of Ablett or Judd until he receives and conquers the hard tag.
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
