Collingwood midfielder Dane Swan, who this week won the AFLPA Most Valuable Player Award, is most definitely in the latter category.
While his journey has been gradual, at 26 and after 148 games, Swan has been clearly the 2010 player of the year, which makes him footy's best-performing current player.
After being drafted at pick 58 in the 2001 national draft, he provides a contrast and comparison with Carlton captain Chris Judd, who was pick three in that same draft.
Judd was a star almost from game one - I remember assigning Brisbane Lions tagger Robert Copeland a shut-down role on Judd in about round 10 of his first year, a fair indication of his meteoric rise to prominence. A 2004 All-Australian in only his third year is further proof of his stellar early-career form.
Swan's elevation to his current elite status was far more measured, and even as of now, has only ever been tagged on a handful of occasions. The modern system of heavy interchange rotations means it is difficult to tag more than one player, and at Collingwood, the explosive Alan Didak tends to get the close attention.
The other factor is that Swan is going to the interchange for a short break a couple of times a quarter, and then being a vision of perpetual motion in his short bursts on the field, makes him virtually untaggable.
The total metres covered on a football field are a combination of walking, jogging, hard striding and sprinting. Swan, in motion, is not a smooth, well-balanced, athletic-looking footballer. However, he never walks, barely jogs, and is always running hard to get involved.
It is difficult to think of any distance over more than 30 or 40 metres at which he would excel, but his power-running enables him to get to contest after contest, and still accelerate clear with the footy.
The regular interchange breaks suit his physical capabilities perfectly - the knowledge that when tired he can go to the bench also enables him to avoid any thoughts of having to pace himself through a four-quarter game.
In essence, Swan puts around a dozen self-contained seven- to eight-minute high-energy top-speed bursts per match.
He would have been in trouble during the previous eras of players spending most of the game on the ground without regular off-field breaks. Collingwood's player-driven heavy use of the interchange bench has been a terrific fit for a player with his speed and power-based athletic strengths.
Around the contest and unfatigued, his strength over the footy is excellent, he can change direction quickly, and he keeps his feet extremely well.
Swan is also a one-touch ball-handler, both overhead and at ground-level, and continually gets the ball, or to where it is going. His consistent high-level performance has been enormous, so while not a shooting star, the reigning Collingwood Copeland Trophy winner has elevated his reputation and status in line with his fantastic performances over the past few seasons.
The umpires do not consult the stats sheets before awarding their Brownlow Medal votes, and this would count against Swan, whose prolific possession-gathering puts his name at the top of the disposal order just about every week.
But Brownlow winner or not, the Magpies' star is already this season's most valuable player.
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
