Watching the Pies dismantle Melbourne on Monday and in particular, Neale Daniher Trophy winner, Jack Crisp clearly taking the honours over Clayton Oliver, I was reminded again of how stiff, perhaps unfair a player can be when it comes to All-Australian honours - the now annual recognition of a player's season by the AFL.
I was also reminded of a vote for the last two spots in 2022 by the All-Australian selectors of which he was one of the last four to go into the remaining two spots.
There was serious support for Jack, but in the end, not enough.
He clearly had an All-Australian quality year and was on the cusp of his first selection.
But as it happened on numerous other occasions, he unfortunately missed out.
Jack Crisp is an incredible football story.
He was recruited with pick number 40 in the 2012 Rookie Draft, which means he was about the 100th rated young player in the country that year by those supposedly in the know.
Most clubs had an opportunity to pick him up, but obviously there was something about his elite running, competitiveness, ball winning and kicking ability that eluded many eyes of the recruiting cohort.
He's pretty hard to miss though at 190 centimetres - and whoever dreamed up the idea of throwing him in as steak knives in a Dayne Beams trade clearly had no idea who or what they had lucked in on in that Rookie Draft.
It does make you wonder sometimes about recruiting and list management.
If that draft year was redone, he’d be clearly in the top five and you could make a case for him being the number one player of that year.
But what he is right now is the unluckiest player currently playing in my view, that has never been recognised by the All-Australian selectors with his two best and fairests in 2021 and 2022 along with a number of top five finishes along the way.
Without question, he was just a whisker away from winning the Norm Smith Medal last year, a skerrick behind Bobby Hill with his four great goals.
He currently now has an incredible 227 game record without missing having just gone past Adem Yze on 226 and is now in pursuit of the record holder, the great Jimmy Stynes on 244.
It's an incredible story on many levels and at 30 years of age, there's still time for him to crack that All-Australian team.
He's not alone though, and after a brief scan this afternoon, I've come up with a host of players that could be arguably in the same criteria.
Here's a number of them - Jack Crisp, Nick Vlastuin, Mitch Duncan, Jake Lloyd, Hugh McCluggage, Tom Liberatore, Jacob Weitering, Jack Viney, Dion Prestia, Steve Coniglio and I'm sure there's plenty more who may challenge for a spot on that list.
But everyone loves a list, so I'll give you my top five of the unluckiest players never to have been nominated as an All-Australian.
In fifth position is Hugh McCluggage, in fourth Nick Vlastuin from the Tigers. After four nominations in the wider squad, Jacob Weitering is super unlucky, and he comes in at three, and then of course there's Tom Liberatore who after being close on a number of occasions has still to get the nod.
Then in number one spot, the bloke who nearly pinched the Norm Smith Medal last year, is Jack Crisp.
His finals campaign was testament enough to how great he is. In the three matches they played, he rated (in the official Player Ratings) 18.0 (vs Melbourne in the Qualifying Final), 15.5 in the Prelim (against GWS) and then a whopping 21.9 in the Grand Final.
He's a great player. Hopefully one day he gets the nod.
