Joel Selwood has listed the top four players he played with across his 355 game career in response to a fan question on this week’s episode of the To The Final Bell podcast alongside fellow premiership captain, Cameron Ling.

Selwood is temporarily sitting in the co-host chair in place of Cats’ AFLW skipper Meg McDonald who’ll return to hosting duties in mid-April.

The recently retired Cats great didn’t strictly list them in order, but he did mention one name first: current Geelong captain Patrick Dangerfield, where he said Dangerfield's peak football was ‘probably’ better than any other player he played with across his 16 season career at the Cattery.

“I think of how he can start games as being more exceptional that probably anyone I've ever played with and the impact that it can have,” Selwood said of Dangerfield. 

“Why I say Patty is because he had a period of footy for a 130 games where I reckon his top class footy is probably better than anyone's that I've ever played with, which is probably a bit unfair because I've played with a lot.”

Tom Hawkins is also on the list, Selwood suggesting that there may not be a more valuable player in the competition.  

“’Hawk’ is one of them,” he said, “305 games with him in the end. To see what he is still doing now... and we put a lot of pressure on him as a kid too. He was a kid that we saw a lot of talent in as a junior and we just wanted to get him to that stage where he was just impacting games really quickly. 

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To The Final Bell - Round 3

To The Final Bell returns with VERY special guest host, former captain Joel Selwood, to take the seat until Meg's return! Cameron Ling and Joel discuss Geelong's Round 2 loss to the Blues and the upcoming Gold Coast clash!

“And through that, being nearly 200cm, you have your growing pains. He had his back pains, he had feet problems at different stages, but to be honest, what he's been able to do for the last seven or eight years, I don't know if there's been a better bang for buck player in the comp.”

He rounded out the list with two players that were difficult to split, Gary Ablett Jnr and Corey Enright.  

“’Gaz’ and ‘Boris’ are two others that come to mind because Gaz, for what he was able to do, not only here but Gold Coast being younger at the time and him playing the sort of footy that he did, and then.. Boris sort of just kept getting better and better and he was a teammate that you could lean on and rely on and I also played nearly 240 games with him.”

You can catch up on all the To The Final Bell episodes here and keep an eye on the Cats' Instagram page on Monday for your chance to submit a question to Joel or Lingy.