Despite the evolution of the game, the big key defender still retains a brutish quality.
Sam Collins, Sam Taylor, and Steven May exemplify decades-long brawny traditions of taking ball and body with meanness and madness.
Even the more graceful interception specialists like Darcy Moore move with a thunder, and at times, a set of cultured knees and elbows.
Yet the defender who combines both negation and interception seamlessly is all lightness.
Like that iconic pugilist, Harris Andrews floats like a butterfly.
With agility and a 202cm frame, Andrews' long butterfly wings can appear to envelope the entire back half of the ground.
And so it was on Saturday.
It may have been a good one-point game with four minutes to go in the third quarter, yet the dam wall in the Geelong defence had been threatening to break since Zac Bailey's flurry of misses in the first quarter.
Up the other end the Lions had no such issue because they had the force field of Andrews.
The Cats poked and scratched tiny holes to stay in touch for the best part of three quarters, yet they never looked like overwhelming Andrews and his trusty sidekicks Darcy Gardiner and Ryan Lester.
The Andrews control is the power source that feeds the Brisbane energy.
It affords Dayne Zorko and Darcy Wilmot the freedom to zig and zag with kamikaze dare to the corridor, where the irrepressive forward chains of Hugh McCluggage, the Ashcroft brothers, Jaspa Fletcher, and company launch.
The trust in Andrews helped Zorko recover from a second-quarter horror show against Collingwood in the preliminary final. He kept attacking, as Andrews remained serenely in charge, and eventually the Pies were engulfed by the Brissy blitz.
It took a quarter and half against Sydney in last year's Grand Final.
This year the Cats lasted longer, but the end result was the same; obliteration.
Andrews' aesthetic of speed, leaping, timing, judgement, touch and percentage kicking doesn't scream 'obliterate' like some of his teammates.
Yet his last four weeks have been the defender's version of Gary Ablett's ballistic 1989 September.
Incredible numbers, more extraordinary influence.
Totemic of the club (born in Fitzroy, bred in Brisbane), this 2025 triumph will forever be tied to him.
The continued absence of superstar and co-captain Lachie Neale over the last eight weeks has taken Andrews out of the dual Brownlow medallist's shadow.
The twin Neale injuries and comebacks bid, combined with Jarrod Berry and Eric Hipwood's own injury misfortune, and the untold tale of Josh Dunkley who revealed he played through a grade-three syndesmosis injury, threatened stress and chaos.
All the while virtual solo skipper Andrews remained calm.
The Lions presented as laidback as a Snoop Dogg groove in a flurry of Grand Final week media appearances.
Minutes after the siren, the Lions celebration in full swing, Andrews broke away and solitarily walked to the opposite end of the centre square. Every crestfallen Cat was consoled with a handshake and word. Away from the cameras, it was just as admirable as the rest of his day, week, and month.
Not just a generational positional player, Andrews has proven himself an equal to Neale as THE leader of the best team of the generation.
There was no Norm Smith Medal, yet September has been the early coronation of Andrews' first year eligibility Hall of Fame career.