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In round one, in his first game back since July, Gary Ablett received a handpass from Alex Sexton on the defensive side of the centre square.

He drilled a 30-metre pass to Sam Day who dropped the ball, but that didn’t matter. Ablett followed up and received a handpass again from Sexton about 60 metres out, did a little shimmy to avoid Brendon Goddard and then nailed the goal from outside 50 on the full at top pace. Gary Ablett…he wasn’t supposed to still be this good was he?

To put things in perspective, the number two and three picks from his (super) draft year of 2001, Luke Ball and Chris Judd, are both retired. Players in that draft who have come out of forced retirement include former teammates Stevie Johnson and James Kelly.

There are only two players from that draft who remain in the top 50 of the official AFL player ratings: Sam Mitchell and Luke Hodge at 37 and 40 respectively. After injury interruptions, Gaz is now all the way back at 58!

And so on Saturday at Domain Stadium, we have in the gold corner Gary “needs some hair” Ablett who last week amassed 34 possessions in his first game for seven months; while in the purple trunks we have the player who has taken his crown as the premier superstar in the competition, Nat “needs a haircut” Fyfe.

Looking just at the numbers this seems almost an unfair match-up. We have Fyfe, coming off perhaps the most dominant season imaginable against Ablett, the former superstar now not even rated in the top 50 guys going around.

It’s an interesting exercise to look at how good Fyfe was last year and compare this with past superstars. To begin the debate, let’s assume we want to know what proportion of a team’s clearances, tackles and inside 50s a player gets.

The best midfielders do a few things but mainly they clear the ball, apply defensive pressure and put the footy in attacking positions.

Looking at the graph below depicting proportions of clearances and contested possessions, a “better player” would be one that is further to the upper right. That is they have both more of x and y than most of their rivals.

We can see that last year Fyfe averaged more than 20 per cent of the Dockers’ contested possessions and more than 12.5 per cent of Fremantle’s clearances. In short, he’s as far into the top right-hand corner as anybody has ever been. Fyfe 1, Gaz 0.

But is this even the best combination of metrics to look at? Sure it’s great to see a hard ball won, but I personally also love to see some defensive pressure. So how about this?

This is where we can really see that West Coast’s Matt Priddis is not only a clearance machine, but also a tackling one - laying more than 10 per cent of the Eagles’ tackles on average per game (just think about that for a second: one in 10 tackles!). We can see that Gaz applies more of his team’s tackles then Nat but with neither excelling as much as Priddis or others from the past such as Lenny Hayes and current assistant coach Brett Kirk. Matt 1, Nat 1, Gaz 0.

Round one was one of the most exciting of recent times and had the second-highest average scores of the past 12 years. So what about an assessment of the proportion of times a player gets the ball inside the 50 compared with the proportion of time that a player clears the footy? Here we can see Gary Ablett stand out, but also current Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley (in his heyday) and Ben Cousins in 2005. Fyfe falls back into the “crowd”. Matt 1, Nat 1, Gaz 1.

But where Gary is truly able to establish himself as a standout is his proportion of effective disposals. If a player is getting a high proportion of his team’s inside 50s and also effective disposals, you can guess he’s having a decent impact.

But just how much do these inside 50s count for? Our best proxy with the data is too look at goal assists and inside 50s. Again here Gary separates himself from the pack…and Fyfe.

So on Saturday night we have the current champion and reigning Brownlow medallist lining up in the centre square vs the former champion looking to take back his crown.

I expect an injury-free Gary Ablett to easily make it back into the competition’s top five players this year. The question is can he take back everything that was once his - numerically and on Bronwlow Medal night.