For almost as long as footy has existed there has been an obsession with the spearhead: The hulking forward dragging their side to victory, proving the difference between two sides.
This year, Geelong’s Jeremy Cameron’s early goal-kicking exploits has been the hottest story in the code.
With 27 goals in just his first six games, the former GWS Giant is on pace to kick 103 goals in the home-and-away season alone. The ton is maybe the most heralded “number” in footy and exciting to all fans.
That ties into the conventional wisdom that a spearhead is required to win a flag.
A classic example happened about 75 years ago. The Essendon Football Club were stuck in a holding pattern of being good but not quite good enough. They had finished runners-up in both of the 1947 and 1948 seasons, but couldn’t get over the final hurdle.
According to their 1948 annual report, the gap was clear.
“It is apparent that no team is complete without a spearhead,” the report noted.
That simple statement has dictated much of footy’s focus since.
For Essendon in 1948, the very next sentence of that now-dusty annual report suggested that the issue was soon to be solved.
“Your committee has hopes of rectifying the fault this season,” it said.
That “rectification” would be the recruitment of John Coleman.
In his first year at the Dons, Coleman would kick 100 goals, and the Bombers famously won the flag in 1949.
Coleman isn’t the game’s first spearhead but he may very well be the game’s most prominent, with the award for the game’s leading goal-kicker named after him.
Traditionally a big-bodied athlete who rarely moved far from goal, the spearhead is paid to finish off what others start.
However, in recent years, the influence of the spearhead has fallen.
As footy becomes increasingly about the team over the individual, the impact of just one player has waned.
More traditional spearheads still make their presence known across the competition, but not in the way of the key forwards of old.
Up north, one of the more radical approaches to this has been taken, directly striking at the traditional spearhead.
For Brisbane’s dangerous forward line, sacrifice and chaos have been the order of the day.
The spread
For most of us, watching a spearhead work is done at a distance, from the stands or the sofa on a once-a-week basis. Few get to see them work up close on a day-to-day basis, seeing their excellence at close quarters.
Chris Fagan is one of the exceptions. For six years, Fagan had the joy of watching the game’s best modern forward — Lance Franklin — up close and personal.
Franklin has transformed the game of the modern tall forward, stretching the field and slicing up defences for nearly two decades.
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However, his departure from the Hawks also had a big effect.
“I was lucky enough to be with Hawthorn in some pretty good years. You know, when Lance Franklin went to Sydney, we were sad to lose him. But an interesting thing happened: We became this team that nobody could really predict where the ball was going to inside 50,” Fagan told the ABC last week.
“Whereas, when Lance was there — because he attracted the ball — it went to him so often. So we became a little bit easier to pick off.”
When Franklin left the Hawks, many predicted that Hawthorn couldn’t repeat their premiership success of 2013.
While the Hawks undoubtedly felt his loss, they were able to evolve to become more unpredictable and harder to stop as a whole.
Fagan took a pretty big lesson from that experience.
“So I’ve always had that lesson [of Franklin’s departure] in my mind and trying to help us create that forward line where we have multiple targets,” Fagan added.
Fagan has applied these principles since he has been coaching the Lions. Brisbane’s dangerous attack comes in multiple forms, with a wide variety of weapons to nullify. A big part of this is how they set up inside 50.
Last year, for example, small forward Charlie Cameron set up the deepest of the Brisbane forwards to goal, isolating his strong one-on-one and aerial ability against often overmatched defenders.
Cameron is a problem for most teams. Against the Giants last week, Cameron finished with seven goals and two behinds, taking his tally in the last three games to 17 goals.
He takes more marks inside 50 than any other small forward in the competition, in fact, more than most tall forwards.
However, his coach reckons it’s his pressure game on the ground that dictates how well he’s going, and how often he’ll hit the scoreboard.
This year, the Lions have changed their set-up inside 50 on practically a week-to-week basis.
“We always try to mix up our mix. We’ve got small forwards who can mark the ball and are dangerous close to goal,” Fagan explained.
“We’ve got tall forwards who can play up the ground and help connect us up.
“Some weeks, it suits us to play our small forwards closer to goal and other weeks it suits us to play our talls, because we think we might get an advantage with them. Like last week — against North Melbourne — we potentially could and we did.”
Even situationally, the Lions are unafraid to move the pieces around.
If Cameron or a midfielder such as Josh Dunkley or Will Ashcroft are playing deep and there’s a forward 50 stoppage, they’ll often quickly rotate with Joe Daniher or Eric Hipwood to create opposition uncertainty and deny the value of the opposition “goalkeeper”.
This year, the Lions have spread their targets inside 50 as well as any other club in the league, especially when compared to the heliocentric Carlton and Richmond.
After seeing the Brisbane attacking machine firsthand, GWS coach Adam Kingsley summed up the difficulty in facing the Lions.
“They’re certainly very versatile,” Kingsley said.
“They keep asking questions of your defence. And that’s why they’re so good.
“That’s why they are one of the favourites to win the premiership: because they have all these weapons in the front half that if you make a minor error — they punish you. If you’re not quite on — positional-wise — they punish you.”
That goal of a premiership is firmly on Fagan’s mind. In September, the most unlikely of sources can pop up to make a difference up forward, such as Tom Boyd’s historic turn for the Dogs in 2016 or Sydney’s Mitch Morton popping up for two key goals in 2012.
“We don’t want to be that team that goes to that one bloke all the time. Because I think, when it comes to finals, it’s a little easier for teams to pick you off if you are predictable going inside 50. So, the fact that we’ve got a good mix of targets is important to us and we’ve gotta keep going with that,” Fagan added.
To get that good mix, some players have to sacrifice.
The key of it
Earlier in the year, there was noted media criticism of the Lions’ notional spearheads Daniher and Hipwood. Former Lion legend Jonathan Brown was perhaps the most blunt in his assessment:
“Any key forward needs to be reliable and predictable to his teammates and I’m not seeing [that] in Daniher and Hipwood at the moment.”
Of course, in Fagan’s eyes, that unpredictability is key. And he acknowledges the difficulty in that approach.
“It’s not easy being a big forward.”
When asked about what he thinks is important for his big forwards, Fagan demurred: “It’s not about goals — we want them to kick some, of course! It’s about assists, creating goals for others. It’s also about halving contests when the ball’s in the air so opposition teams aren’t taking intercept marks. It’s about their ability to bring pressure when it’s required.”
So far this year, Daniher and Hipwood have contributed significantly off the ball and away from goal.
Daniher and Hipwood are generally excellent field kicks, able to bite off tough kicks to teammates further afield.
Their ability to play higher up the field in creative roles also opens up space for Cameron, Lincoln McCarthy and Jack Gunston to operate, denying opposition sides an extra defender in many contests. That sacrifice hurts their raw numbers, but helps the team as a whole.
For Fagan, a combination of that upfield, off-ball and scoring impact is what makes him happy with Daniher and Hipwood.
“As long as we get that, and an honest effort every week, we’re happy with that.”
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