‘Made for finals’: The interstate gun with the AFL’s No.1 ranking

Isaac Heeney thought he had space. He turned to goal and took a step. Braeden Campbell had dinked a loopy handball to him over a Crows player just as he was about to be tackled and Heeney was clear.

He was inside 50, tight to the boundary on his left and caught Izak Rankine in his peripheral vision closing fast from the right. You could almost hear Heeney thinking, “I can get through him. I can shrug him”.

It was late in the last quarter, with about seven minutes to go, on a wet SCG in round 19 and the home team was surging.

Rankine slammed into Heeney and wrapped his arms around him. Heeney, comfortably 15 kilograms heavier and stronger than Rankine, stood in the tackle. It looked like David Attenborough footage from a savannah. Heeney wriggled an arm free to try to handball. Rankine lunged and surprisingly managed to spin Heeney as they cuddled, and the pair tumbled to the ground. The ball spilt free. The Crows cleared it, and they hung on to win the game.

The significance of the tackle in that moment in the game, and in the context of Rankine’s season and career, cannot be underestimated.

“That was the complete midfielder’s game. As a coach, I thought that was the game that he had a turning point,” Adelaide assistant coach Scott Burns said of the Sydney game.

“Two weeks earlier against West Coast he had started to really influence games in the midfield, but that tackle in the wet against Sydney at that time of the game was such a big play. He’d had a great game, but that tackle was where you saw how competitive he is – how much he hates to lose.

“That game was a real turning point. It was a complete midfielder performance – inside and out, 30 touches, tackles, inside 50s.”

And he only kicked one goal. Ordinarily, good Izak Rankine games had to include him kicking three, four or five goals.

Rankine only moved to a permanent midfield role in round nine this year after being primarily a forward and part-time mid. Last year the idea of him as a midfielder was better than the reality, and this year was tracking along similarly: he was good but not great in the way he can be as a forward.

The first big change came in round 17 against West Coast, and then the next week against the Suns when he had high numbers and his impact was profound. But that was beating up two teams that were poor at the time. This was Sydney in Sydney.

Since round 17, Rankine has not gone from good to great – he has gone from good to elite. Champion Data ranks him the No.1 player in the competition since round 18. He is averaging 150 Champion Data points per game. The next best are Errol Gulden on 129 and Max Gawn on 123.

The question on hyper-attacking, dangerous mid-forwards like Rankine, Petracca, “Dusty” and “Kozzy” Pickett can be about their sleight of hand. The freakish goal can be the magician’s distraction from what they are not doing defensively.

Typically, the theory is you don’t want your stars to do the grunt inside midfielder work – that you use a tractor to plough a field, not a Lamborghini. Rankine, like Jeremy Clarkson on his farm, doesn’t understand why you can’t have a Lamborghini tractor.

“He is made for finals,” said one former coach.

“He is a difference-maker. There are plenty of role players in finals who do their job well, but there are not many players who can change the game. In finals, you need players who can kick you two in two minutes and change the game. Rankine is that.”

Another Gold Coast coach said: “The one player we missed last year in finals was Izak Rankine”.

The difference-maker could make no difference last year. Or, perhaps, he made a profound difference to two clubs by not being there.

Rankine barely played in his first year in the AFL after being drafted by Gold Coast. At the time, it was said he was struggling with repeated hamstring issues. In fact, he had rheumatoid arthritis, which took a long time to diagnose. The autoimmune disease causes swelling and severe pain in the joints, normally to the same joint on both sides of the body.

Relatively rare in people under 30, it took some time to diagnose him and then get him on the right (WADA compliant) medication.

This time last year, Rankine was suspended for four matches – including the Crows’ entire finals series – after admitting to using a homophobic slur during a game against Collingwood.

“I want to start by saying how deeply sorry I am for what I said. There was no excuse, it was wrong, and I take full responsibility,” Rankine said later.

“I’m disappointed in myself and I know I have let a lot of people down. I want to apologise to anyone who I have hurt and offended. I understand that word was offensive, harmful, it’s hurtful and has no place in our game or our society.”

Rankine was not a victim, but the length of his ban was the product of an AFL determination to eliminate homophobic language in the game by continuing to escalate punishments for any players using such terms.

The consequence was Rankine was not there last year as they lost to Collingwood by 24 points in week one of the finals and then were eliminated altogether when they lost to Hawthorn by 34 points the next week.

It’s academic what might have been last year, had he been there. The evidence of the first final this year against the Bulldogs, when Rankine had 34 touches, seven clearances, four tackles and two goals – one of them one of the most artful goals of the year – shows is he is not only in dominant form, he is indeed made for finals.

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