David King has heaped praise on Hawthorn forward Luke Breust following his influential performance against Brisbane.
The tripe premiership Hawk kicked three goals and contributed to eight scores before injuring his knee in his side’s upset 12-point win over the Lions in Tasmania on Sunday.
Breust leads Hawthorn’s goalkicking with 33 majors – the 10th time in 11 years he has booted over 30 goals in a season – in what has been a tough year for the 17th-placed Hawks.
“Luke Breust set the game up with three goals,” King told SEN’s Whateley.
“He’s so clever. He puts defenders into a decision-making process they can’t compute in real time. He puts them into that no man’s land decision.
“(Brandon) Starcevich thinks on the weekend, ‘do I need to go and spoil that?’ He takes one step to commit there and says, ‘I’m not going to get there’ – too late – over.
“He just puts them into that 50-50 situation consistently and breaks them. He’s had a fantastic year.
“Jordan Lewis was on with Garry (Lyon) and Tim (Watson) probably two weeks ago now and said he should be the All-Australian small forward.
“I reckon it raised a lot of eyebrows … and then you see what he did in terms of setting up this win, you say, ‘good call, good call Jordan’.”
Breust sits 19th in the AFL for goals behind the likes of Bayley Fritsch (39 goals), Toby Greene (37), Charlie Cameron (36) and Tom Papley (34).
The 30-year-old has kicked 441 goals in 239 career games for the Hawks.