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Mid-season AFL All-Australian team: Big names still showing the way

Rohan Connolly
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Maintaining the highest of standards in AFL football has never been harder than it is in 2017. For teams or players.

Approaching the halfway mark of the season, last year's runner-up has had a shocker. Sydney are in 15th spot on the ladder at 3-7 and need something of a miracle to even reach the finals. Their grand final conquerors, the Western Bulldogs, have fared a lot better, but at 6-4 they too have had their struggles this season.

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For individuals, it's about doing everything possible to make the good form of one season spill over to the next, the pressure from within great enough, let alone the relentless scrutiny from outside.

And to that end, we've at least had a good glimpse so far in 2017 at what makes the great players great.

I went into the process of picking my mid-season All-Australian team expecting the usual revolving door of players in and out of last year's official best 22. And while there's still the requisite amount of change, the results were a big tick for the AFL's elite.

Last year when I did this exercise I could find room for only seven players who had been named All-Australians just 10 or 11 games previously. This time, just on half of the 2016 official All-Australian line-up have retained their spots.

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Alex Rance, Rory Sloane, Lance Franklin, Toby Greene, Eddie Betts, West Coast's Josh Kennedy, Patrick Dangerfield, Joel Selwood, Dustin Martin and Marcus Bontempelli have all been good enough again this season to make my mid-season 22. And that's no mean feat considering the company joining them.

I've found room for a couple of young guns who have taken giant strides very quickly – in-demand GWS on-baller Josh Kelly and Melbourne midfield bull Clayton Oliver, along with Tom Mitchell, a man who has made a change of clubs pay off big time – but the bulk of this team comprises players who have set high standards for some time.

Michael Hurley, Scott Pendlebury, Robbie Gray and Jeremy Cameron have been All-Australians previously. And Adelaide pair Sam Jacobs and Rory Laird and Carlton's Sam Docherty have been nominated in All-Australian selection squads before.

Contentious selections? Well, there's always some in any of these teams, but I'd defy anyone to suggest any member of this 22 doesn't have at worst very strong claims on a spot. As usual, there was a long roll call of potential midfielders who missed out. I also found the choice of ruckman difficult.

Three ruckmen have stood out in 2017 – Jacobs, Collingwood's Brodie Grundy, and the Giants' own giant Shane Mumford.

Mumford has a significant edge over the other two in terms of percentage of hit-outs to advantage so far this season. Grundy wins more of the ball around the ground, while Jacobs fares best for scoreboard impact.

But Jacobs has been a huge part of Adelaide's pace-setting form this season, a key factor in giving first use to a high-performing midfield that pre-season had been seen as a potential Achilles heel. He also rucks some serious minutes. That's good enough for me to give him the nod going solo, with (presuming this team was playing a game) one of the key position players to give him a brief chop-out.

Competition for spots in the defence was tight, too. With particular apologies to West Coast's Jeremy McGovern, St Kilda's Dylan Roberton and GWS's Zac Williams, I've gone for Rance and Hurley in the key posts, Jeremy Howe as a "floater" or third tall and Laird, Elliot Yeo and Sam Docherty as the smaller backmen.

Yeo ranks high for disposals and is second in the AFL for intercept possessions. He's been a constant in a side that's been up and down, a good reason he's running second in the AFL Coaches Association player of the year award. Docherty, meanwhile, still doesn't get enough raps.

Yes, he's frequently been used as a spare man, but that's a role that still requires intuitive reading of the play, and Docherty does it brilliantly, averaging more than 27 disposals and ranked third for rebound 50s.

Youngsters Kelly and Oliver definitely deserve spots, the former averaging just under 30 disposals per game, the latter just over. And so, I believe, does Mitchell.

It's fashionable these days to question a player's ball use when he collects high stats in a losing team. That's precisely what happened to Mitchell when he had an amazing 50 disposals for Hawthorn in round nine against Collingwood, the next best Hawk with half that many.

But using "metres gained" in Mitchell's case is a misnomer. He's an in-and-under ball-winner and distributor. And to average more possessions than any player in the AFL (35.4) in his first year at a club going through a transition and which early in the piece was being belted has been a phenomenal effort.

There are also a few players in this team – Franklin, Pendlebury, Dangerfield and Selwood – who are, these days, regularly marked harshly, victims of their own lofty standards more than any pedestrian form.

As good as that quartet have been over the journey, I reckon their performances so far this season have been every bit as solid as the seasons in which they won All-Australian honours. I'm very comfortable with them in this 22, that's for sure.

The very best players in the game are only ever, literally, an awkward fall away from dropping out of contention. Not to mention the hundreds of competitors snapping at their heels for similar acclaim.

That so many of my mid-year All-Australian team have been around the mark for as long as they have speaks volumes not only of their durability, but their status as stars for the long haul as well as the here and now.

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