Top Cat: Patrick Dangerfield. Credit:Getty Images Last year, his swansong in Adelaide, he won the best and fairest and finished in the top six in the Brownlow Medal again. This year at Geelong he has been better still. At every new threshold, each of which might have overwhelmed another man, he has excelled: best on ground in his first game, best in his first clash with the Crows, best again as the Cats beat Hawthorn in the first final. One of the few highlights in Geelong's preliminary final loss to Sydney. He hit the ground flying. Inside, outside, sometimes overhead, all of it upside. Like Carey, opponents are keeping their wary distance. In terms of his favourite pastime, he is riding the crest of his own wave. Dangerfield's trophy cabinet is bulging. He won the players' association MVP by a record margin, and the coaches' award, and has scooped up every reputable media award, and is unbackable for the Brownlow. But he wants only the premiership.

Dangerwood: Footy's hottest celebrity couple. Credit:AFL Media He hears the stories they tell at Geelong, and yearns to be in one. "As you get older, you realise that team success is all that matters," he said. "Geelong has a very rich recent history. You want to be able to be part of that history. You want to be able to sit there and talk about it with your teammates." In Dangerfield's surpassing of himself, three discernible forces are at play. One was and is leaving Adelaide. This is not an indictment on the Crows, but the system that uprooted him and put him there. "I loved playing in Adelaide, but it was all footy," he said. "All my mates were at the footy club. I've still got incredible friends there. But I went for a fish and that was about it."

This is reminiscent of the young Chris Judd's experience in his early days at West Coast. "Family's so important to me, as it is for most people," said Dangerfield. "Being around for birthday parties for cousins, I missed eight years of that. "I have cousins who were 10 when I went away and they're 18 now and finished school. My sister was 14 and now she's 23. You miss out on a lot, and I got to the point where I'd had enough of missing out. I wanted to be part of it again." The second factor was Geelong. The city was both a homecoming and an escape. He grew up in Geelong hinterland, barracking for them. "I've been waiting all my life to pull on this guernsey," he said to a club official on day one. But true home is a 40-minute drive away around the Great Ocean Road.

There, he says, "there's no hoo-ha around footy". He marvels still to see and hear the white footy noise in Melbourne. The club turned out to be as comfortable as a cradle. Dangerfield had been apprehensive, as anyone who arrived with his fanfare might. He knew Joel Selwood and Harry Taylor and coach Chris Scott from international rules, but the rest only distantly. He found a group so unified and welcoming that he calls it "a weapon" for the club. Danger was no stranger here. "That part couldn't have gone any smoother," he said. It helped that this was a year of unusually high turnover: he was one of four recruits from other clubs, not to mention virtual recruits in Rhys Stanley, Daniel Menzel and Lincoln McCarthy. Assimilating on the field was trickier. "It's still evolving," he said. "In Adelaide, I knew the players so well because I'd been there so long. I knew how someone would turn out of stoppage. I knew whether they preferred to kick or handball. All those things: it takes a while to pick up on them.

"I've said this previously: I think we'll be a better side next year. That's not to say we can't win it this year. Why not? There's no better time than the present. "But you need to understand each other to play really good footy. We've been building throughout the season. It's gotten better and better as the year's gone on. It will continue next season and the season after." Crucially, Dangerfield and Selwood have had to learn one another's cues. Both could be seen as big on-field personalities, who might easily get in one another's way. Dangerfield agrees. "What gets forgotten now, given how incredible a season Joel's had, is that he barely completed any of the pre-season," he said. "We couldn't really train together to work on that chemistry. We've gotten better at understanding each other's games as the season's gone on, and we'll continue to do that." He has come to love Selwood like a brother, as if Selwood doesn't have enough of those already.

"It's not until you actually set foot inside the club that you understand just how impressive he is," Dangerfield said. "Success for Joel hasn't come through luck, or by joining an incredible club. He's achieved it because he's driven himself to it." But the single most significant influence in Dangerfield's rise and rise is himself. Talent sets him apart, but so does disposition. Footy doesn't possess him as it does many others, not least fans. That is not to say he doesn't love it, but that it is only one of his loves. Reportedly, the renovation of his Great Ocean Road home features a library. "Players need to understand that just because you lose on the weekend, doesn't mean it has to destroy your entire week," he said. "It shouldn't destroy what you do outside footy. Footy's part of your life, but it isn't your life, and it certainly isn't mine. "Preparation is different for everyone. What works for me isn't going to work for others. For me, if it was just footy, it would get pretty tiresome pretty quickly. Personally, I need to have a good balance. This season, I've had a better balance than I had previously."

The corollary is that Dangerfield is at ease as few others are with footy's non-stop fuss. This year, he has bobbed up everywhere, most memorably when surfing in a lounge suit in a Fox Footy promotion; the shoot took six hours. There he was again at the AFL Players' night, cheerfully at the end of every microphone. Up close, it is clear it is not egotism, a need to be seen, but its opposite, an acceptance that he is watched. "It's part of the footy landscape," he said. "It's only going to increase in terms of the exposure players get. I'm pretty philosophical about it. It's going to be there, so get used to it. "And I'm lucky: I get to go home, 40 minutes down the coast, and get away from it all. Playing down the highway, you're a bit removed. It's pretty beneficial playing in Geelong."