As we all know, Hanners injured his knee quite badly at the end of the third quarter of the 2016 Grand Final. He had a bit of a rest in the off-season but then got back into his running in a big way and blitzed the early pre-season, which, according to Longmire (at the recent AGM) was the worst thing he could have done (with the benefit of hindsight) because he then developed groin soreness. I thought he worked his way through 2017 pretty well considering. He changed his game to play a bit more on the inside, presumably because he could no longer deliver the outside gut running that we'd come to expect from him. 2017 wasn't his most dominant year but he was still a pretty good contributor after a slow start.

As we also all know, he had no pre-season leading into 2018 so it's hardly surprising that he's not firing on all cylinders. He's going just OK but the idea that he's lucky to be getting a game is daft. We have no-one running around in our NEAFL midfield who could come in and perform even at his currently reduced level of output.

He may well be past his best but we can only know that in hindsight. He's still in the peak years, age wise, and there have been plenty of players whose form line has stuttered, coinciding with a period of niggling injuries, only to regain their mojo and have more excellent seasons.

I'm also a bit baffled by the certainty implied within the comment "JPK's demise". He's started the season slowly but he did so last year too. By the end of the year, he was deemed by many to be the unluckiest player to miss the AA team and he polled 23 votes in the Brownlow, finishing 4th in the count. In neither year was he dreadful at the start - he was just down a bit on his normal levels of production.

Every player eventually declines but, as with Hanners, we can't know whether he's fallen off a cliff until we have the benefit of hindsight. It would seem unlikely that a player still close to the prime age (especially for a solidly built inside mid) would "demise" (I don't know what the correct verb form is) over such a short interval. Maybe we should wait a bit before condemning him to the scrap heap.