I am assuming you must have been too young to see the midfield of Tim Watson, Leon Baker, Merv Neagle, and Daisy Williams backed up by Glenn Hawker, Alan Ezard etc.
(Also the midfield of D. Reynolds and B. Hutchison had 5 Brownlows between them, so could not have been too shabby).
You left out Simon Madden there AN …
#BigMenMatterToo. 
Old enough to have some memories of having seen then play but probably not old enough at the time to fully appreciate them.
They were an amazing combination. Hardly beaten. If one was down another would step up and even things out.
You are right, there. Simon was not renowned for his pace, but for the young ones, he was widely acknowledged as the best ruckman of that decade (at least).
He taught Ryder everything he knew too and you can see it in his Ruck work.
At least.
I remember Greg Williams saying after a State of Origin game once, when he first played with Simon instead of against him, what an armchair ride he got that day.
While he roved to Harry Madden for years & got the ball tapped in his general direction, Simon just kept shoving it down his throat all day.
Carry on VFL.
Also kicked almost 600 goals. Fair effort for a ruckman, I only saw him play when I was a little kid but he still sticks in my mind as the best ruckman I have seen. He is in calculations for top 3 ruckman of all time in my opinion.
Was downgraded by CD for his kick rating?
Yes, he can turn it over but that’s going to happen when you are consistently trying to hit the most difficult targets in the game.
Zach Merrett (Essendon)
Ranked above average for midfielders. He rated elite for disposals, uncontested possessions and metres gained, though his kick rating was below average.
Haha… that’s laughable isn’t it. He’s one of the best kicks in the game
I don’t think you can even compare the midfields of say 2000 onwards with earlier midfields.
Old midfields were rover and resting forward-pocket rover, possibly ruck-rover (only really came in in Barassi’s day in the 50s), possibly ruckman (some were immobile, some were agile) and the two wingers. Half forward flankers were half forward flankers etc etc.
Dangerfield must be rubbish then…seems to clanger a lot of kicks.
Difference being his clangers his kicks long. kicks more than 40m to a 50/50 contest are efficient regardless of whether you retain possession (iirc). A 50 metre kick too your full forward which is marked by the full back because it wasn’t too advantage is efficient.
Zerret goes short far more often so unless we retain it it is inefficient.
I vote new nickname ‘Sponge’
Absolute superstar.
Set for an even bigger year.
30 disposals
9 Tackles
16 Contested
1 Goal
And probably had a heavy tag on him the kid is elite.
And I’m pretty sure that about half of those possessions were contested.
Couldn’t find the CP stat on the AFL site.