BRADLEY Hill and Steven Motlop share a lot in common.
Freakish football talents. Game breaking, game shaping abilities.
They are both regularly frustrating for coaches, teammates and supporters when it comes to the defensive side of the game, but they both have few peers when it comes to being the x-factor in big games.
They have been excitement machines for two of the modern AFL powerhouses, Hawthorn and Geelong.
Hill entered last Friday’s semi-final against Western Bulldogs knowing it could be his last if his team lost. It was his last. He will be playing for Fremantle or West Coast in 2017.
Motlop enters tomorrow’s preliminary final against Sydney in a similar state.
Like Hill, he is contracted to his club, and that position will be the public default one for player and club for a while yet. But he too may be in different colours in 2017.
Hill set for a medical at Fremantle
Just as the two Perth teams have been aware that Hill has been gettable for the past three months, clubs are also aware that Motlop is moveable. There have been informal chats about his status in recent months. There will be formal offers made to him in the trade period.
He is no better than 50-50 to stay a Cat, despite being contracted to be one next year.
Football club lists are comprised by all sorts of people. At Geelong, Motlop is the guy who will get a game every week, who will do what he has to do in-between matches, who gets on OK with everyone but does not have a powerful emotional bond with his club or teammates.
Geelong people like him, but he’s not popular. Some say he is not emotionally connected, others say he is, but just doesn’t go out of his way to express that.
He is said to be desperate to add a premiership to his CV. While he was drafted in 2008, he didn’t play an AFL game until 2010, and played just four in the Cats’ last premiership year of 2011, and not in the Grand Final.
In the five seasons since, he has played 20-plus games each year, except for 2014, when he played 17. He is a genuine star.
The Cats' qualifying final against Hawthorn was a snapshot of Motlop’s 111-game career. He was explosively brilliant at times and threatened to single-handedly win the match when it needed to be won.
In the final minutes he had two shots at goal, both from the right pocket of the Punt Rd end of the MCG. Both shots missed, neither by a great margin.
WATCH: Final two minutes Geelong v Hawthorn
He was very nearly the match-winner, yet some viewed him, very unfairly, as the reason Isaac Smith had the chance to win the game for the Hawks after the siren.
The second of those missed goals came after, as Dennis Cometti would say, an 'ambitious' dribble attempt from the boundary line, the point giving the ball back to Hawthorn.
Those, including Wayne Carey, criticising Motlop for the second attempt have done so on the basis that he should have not kicked at goal, instead tried to soak up time and keep possession, given that a ball-up or throw-in would have used up time and not provided the Hawks with a last roll of the dice.
But it is a flawed argument. Had Motlop done what they have argued and either drawn a tackle or taken the ball over the line, he almost certainly would have had a free kick paid against him, for holding the ball or deliberate out-of-bounds.
Under the pressure of the moment, he was fully justified in kicking at goal.
Geelong’s opponent in Friday’s preliminary final, the Sydney Swans, also have a key player who may be playing his final game for his club in Tom Mitchell.
Hawthorn has long touted him as a replacement for Hill in its best 18.
While nowhere near as dynamic as Hill or Motlop, he is equally crucial to his team’s hopes of ultimate success this year.
Neither the Cats nor Swans will be able to win a flag this year without significant contributions in a preliminary and Grand Final from Motlop and Mitchell.
Should either team achieve that goal, they both seem destined to be required to defend the title without one of their x-factors.
Yet in keeping with how those two organisations are now wired, they will move on seamlessly.
