THERE'S eight minutes remaining in the 2005 grand final. The Eagles lead by five points. Sydney's Brett Kirk emerges from beneath a pack, 30 metres from goal, and tosses the ball to umpire Scott McLaren for a ball-up. Television commentator Robert Walls says, "Let's remember, Sydney in this situation is very, very good. Let's go back a couple of finals ago, Ball to Davis." McLaren thumps the ball into the turf.
Swans ruckman Jason Ball, his head swathed in bandages, outbustles West Coast counterpart Mark Seaby and palms the ball into the path of Amon Buchanan, who ducks a David Wirrpanda tackle and slots a wobbly left-footed goal. The Swans are in front by one point.
It would be the 15th and last goal of a grand final that Sydney would win by four points.
Ball had only four disposals that day, but his impact on Sydney's premiership was profound. In fact, his team may even have been looking on from the stands had it not been for his contribution a fortnight earlier. Widely remembered is Ball's tap to Nick Davis for the winning goal three seconds from the final siren. Davis kicked four brilliant goals for the term, but at the time, former Essendon and Hawthorn champion Paul Salmon observed: "I think Jason Ball was solely responsible for that win … his effort in that instance to get the ball to Davis undoubtedly won the game."
Often forgotten about that soggy semi-final at the SCG is that Geelong led seven goals to three midway through the final quarter, but had captain Steven King sitting on the bench with a hamstring strain. Ball and Darren Jolly got on top of makeshift ruck pairing Cameron Mooney and Henry Playfair to provide the impetus for the Swans' victory. They finished the night with 66 hitouts to the Cats' 22.
The Ball example drives home two principles: that ruckwork can prove the difference between victory and defeat; and that the value of a class ruckman becomes most evident when you haven't got one.
THERE exists, however, a counter-theory in modern football: that hitouts are overrated, and the real issue is who clears the Sherrin once it falls to earth. There are equally passionate advocates of both schools of thought: it is football's equivalent of "the chicken or the egg?".
All agree that dominating possession from stoppages will go a long way towards winning you a football match.
Former Geelong midfield champion Garry Hocking, now in his second year as coach of the under-18 Geelong Falcons, certainly believes so. "I'm not trying to take it away from ruckmen, but I think it's more value if you can get the clearances. Statistics would suggest that if you can get the clearance, particularly the centre clearance, you've got a higher chance of winning games," he said.
"I think it's more a combination of getting a (ruck) contest and having good clearance players. You've got to win the clearances: that's where the game stops and starts … There's, what, 80 or 90 stop-plays where you can have a direct influence on who gets possession of the ball, the most critical of them the centre bounces."
Tony Shaw, the former Collingwood captain and coach, agrees, although he believes quality needs to be weighed up against quantity: "One thing that needs to be remembered is that there's clearances and there's clearances: a bloke can get tackled straightaway and clear it with a scrubby old kick, but the clearances you're looking for are where a tapout finds a player on the run who can break clear and use the ball to advantage." He nominated West Coast as the outstanding exponent of winning such clean ball.
To further illustrate his point, Shaw used the example of Richmond's Nathan Foley in last Friday week's upset against Collingwood. "It can be devastating, not just because you score a goal, but for the emotional impact. I thought that took the spirit out of Collingwood."
Former Essendon great Simon Madden is the only player to win a Norm Smith Medal playing in the ruck (in 1985), but he believes the craft carries even greater weight come September: "It's very hard to find a premiership team in which the ruckman hasn't had a vital part to play."
His belief is that the intensity and pressure of finals football ensures that the base instincts of football rise to the surface.
"In the modern game, there may be a lot more possession footy, and a lot more handball, and kicking the ball backwards, and wasting time, etc," Madden said. "But you watch the past few grand finals and the longer the game goes, the more it's about hard-running, hard-battering, hard-contact football. And it becomes less and less about predetermined moves, and more and more about who wants to win the ball more.
"As the game gets tighter and tighter, it gets played more on ability and not strategy. In those dying moments, you're just trying to push the ball forward and get it moving in your direction, and that's where a ruckman can have such a big say every time there's a bounce."
Proponents of ruckmen also point to the intangibles they can bring to a team. Abstract qualities such as aggression, momentum and confidence. As Salmon put it: "Ruckmen control situations. They have such a strong presence, they are such big fellows, if they can control a game, their team can go a long way to being successful."
The accepted wisdom, particularly since the interchange bench was expanded to four in 1998, is that teams need two legitimate ruckmen. In the AFL era, only two premiership teams buck the trend: Carlton with Justin Madden in 1995 and West Coast with Paul Harding in 1992.
It is possible to mount an argument that ruckmen are more pivotal than brilliant key forwards. The Magpies of 1990, the Crows of the late '90s, even West Coast last year, did not have a star spearhead — but they had quality ruckmen.
Perhaps not coincidentally, each of the finals contenders this year has a genuine ruck pairing, although Geelong is in the process of juggling three big men, and Collingwood is yet to settle on its back-up for Josh Fraser.
THERE ARE two compelling cases for dual ruckmen. One, as advanced by former Melbourne coach Neale Daniher this week, is "the speed of the modern game". "The ruckman's required to keep moving from one point to the next, which means he needs to come off for a rest, not just sit in a forward pocket," Daniher said. "I mean, you might send him down to the goal square for a little while just to give things a little shake-up, but it's unreasonable to expect him to chase a back pocket down the field while he's trying to have a spell."
Which raises the second reason: in this era of positional rotations, a 195-centimetre-plus footballer is occasionally used to upset a defensive structure, create a mismatch, pinch a goal or two.
The three premiership favourites — Geelong, West Coast and Sydney — have that option.
Geelong can send Brad Ottens forward with confidence; he has kicked 12 goals this year. It may mean that at any given time, the Cats have a ruckman either forward, on the ball or on the bench.
Hocking believes this might be an advantage against certain teams who are stretched for height in their defence, such as Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs — even the Eagles, if it means players such as Adam Hunter and Andrew Embley are needed to shore up the back line and are removed as attacking threats.
"I think, traditionally, two (ruckmen) is the best option …" Hocking said. "But three (ruckmen) could work, although it would mean that one of Cameron Mooney, Nathan Ablett, Tom Hawkins would have to be sacrificed — because the ball's going to be on the ground a lot and the way the game has gone, it's a running game."
Simon Madden is not convinced the Cats are best served playing three ruckmen. "It's a difficult position for a coach," he said, "but it's a beautiful position to be in when your biggest concern is not who you're going to pick to play, but who you're going to leave out."
The West Coast and Sydney pairings have been the most productive this season. Peter Everitt and Darren Jolly have both managed to be on the field for about two-thirds of the time in Swans' matches this year, meaning significant forward opportunities. They have played every match, and kicked 15 goals each. The Swans are ranked the No. 1 team for effective hitouts, and second for clearances.
The game plan of Swans coach Paul Roos involves forcing stoppages when the ball is in dispute, and capitalising on the ruck contest to gain possession. As Shaw observed: "Roosy knows he's got some great competitors; I reckon he built Sydney's (playing) style around his personnel rather than the other way around."
It's a similar story for the Eagles, where Dean Cox and Seaby spend even more time on the ground, and have booted 10 and 16 goals respectively. The Eagles are No. 2 for effective hitouts, No. 3 for clearances.
Although the brilliance of midfielders such as Daniel Kerr, Chris Judd and Ben Cousins is unquestionably the main factor, Hocking suggested another reason: "I think now what they work on a lot is fifth man in. West Coast used it a lot last year, with Ashley Sampi rushing in from the forward line and giving them a real impetus at clearances by making it five on four. And Geelong are a little bit like that this year, with maybe a (Mathew) Stokes or a (Shannon) Byrnes — someone with the leg speed to get in there quickly so that they can outnumber the opposition."
Port Adelaide will look a far more dangerous prospect in Tasmania tomorrow with premiership duo Dean Brogan and Brendon Lade reunited. Lade, with 80 per cent game time this season, has had the heaviest workload of any ruckman in the league in 2007.
In Launceston, they will be up against young Hawthorn pairing Simon Taylor and Robert Campbell, described earlier this year by Hawks midfield dynamo Sam Mitchell as the team's "most important player". They split the ruck duties almost 50-50, and offer contrasting styles.
Another improved team this season is the Kangaroos, and Daniher suggested "it's not the only reason — but it is largely because of their ruckman".
"Young Hamish McIntosh used to be gone after two or three efforts, but now he can sustain a game, and David Hale has grown into his body," he said. "And it's helped their midfield to get a fair crack at having first use of the ball."
THE one club that was universally identified as having a weakness in this area was Collingwood. There are some Magpies fans who will tell you that ruck contests cost the club a premiership in 2002, when the Lions won the grand final by nine points, and the hitouts 48 to 27.
"I've always believed Josh Fraser is a very good player, but I see him as more of a forward/ruckman," Madden said. "More of his football should be played forward, and then he gets thrown into the ruck for a spell. Collingwood needs to find a (Damian) Monkhorst-type player from their premiership year. You can only work with the players you've got, and looking at it from that perspective, I think he's done a wonderful job, but I still believe Fraser would be more dangerous if he was in a position to be thrown around the ground more."
While Chris Bryan and Guy Richards have offered valiant support at various stages this season, Shaw believes there is a viable makeshift plan for the Magpies. "In the finals, I'd be looking at telling Josh to go hard for 15 minutes because he's a workhorse and he loves that, and then I'd be throwing Anthony Rocca on the ball for the next seven minutes. Anthony's got the best hands when he's palming the ball, and I reckon he'd cope better cruising around the midfield than he would sprinting around the forward line trying to lose a man, which really hurts him. I reckon he could be a really dangerous ruckman, especially his centre-bounce stuff."
Which is what one school will tell you is what really matters in final. For the other school — which suggests all of these big blokes are overrated, and it's really all about clearances — there is the Jason Ball example to ponder.
Denis Pagan, twice a premiership coach with the Kangaroos, simply believes the key to winning a grand final is having six or seven "A-graders" playing at their peak on the big day, whether they be rovers, forward flankers or full-backs.
"But if you look at the utopia of a perfect set-up, you'd want to win the clearances at the stop-play situations because that's where the game starts and that's where it can be finished," he said.
"And if you have a ruckman who can give you that advantage, why wouldn't you jump at it?"
