Midfields/midfielders are vastly overrated....there I said it.
Why? Because everyone gets excited by their raw stats which in a lot of cases are worth jack shite. It's the age of stats Chapmion Data, Dream Team etc etc
It’s been well documented that over the last couple of decades the Brownlow medal has now become the midfielders medal with KPP finding it extremely difficult to do well.
Not only have they struggled to poll well the midfielders that are winning it are doing so with a massive amount of votes well and truly above what they used to get when they won.
What does this mean? Are midfielders so much better now than what they were 20 or 30 years ago or are the KPP not as good as they once where? Or could be the third option that in the stats obsessed frenzy that has been building up over the last two decades, so much attention is put on the quantity of the ball a player gets and the media attention they then receive. Unfortunately, this makes it hard for umpires (who are only human) to have an unbiased and unaffected view of a players impact/ability on a game and thus go with the safe option of the guy who racks up a lot of the pill.
Look at the hawks top 10 in the 2013 b&f, only 2 full time midfielders in there (Mitchell and Smith). It was won by a defender with several other defenders and forwards in there. I personally don't think the Hawks midfield is anything special but they gelled well with backs and forwards to win us the premiership.
From memory Enright won the b&f a couple of times in the Cats premiership years. Not only that everyone bangs on about the Cats midfield back in hey day (and it was good) but their defence, I believe, was the linchpin for their success.
I'm not saying midfield aren't integral, of course they are, but they get more praise than what is warranted.