Being a good footy player often isn't about being the biggest, strongest, quickest or tallest — it's about making the most of what you have got and playing to your relative strengths.

In 2014, the AFL created the Laws of the Game Charter, designed to provide the AFL Commission and the Laws of the Game Committee with an overview of the guiding principles and fundamental elements of Australian Football.

These principles loosely cover key elements such as player positioning, movement and the free flow of play. Nestled in between these principles is one setting out the physical characteristics of the players of the game.

Last night, in their win over Adelaide, Max Gawn and Kysaiah Pickett lined up next to each other for the 82nd time.

That four year partnership has brought a tremendous amount of individual and team success, not least Melbourne's 2021 premiership.

Both are integral parts to the Demons' set up, even if their heights span the extremes of the current footballing spectrum.

The gap between Gawn and Pickett is — depending on the source you trust — 38cm, or one foot, three inches in the old language.

That 38cm gap is just 4cm shy of the record gap between Fremantle teammates Matthew "Spider" Burton and Peter Miller.

Australian Football has long been a game fought at two different altitudes. For a team to have success, they have to be adept both in the air and on the ground. A good team is balanced between the tall timber and the mosquito fleet, symbiotically feeding off each other to make an unstoppable force.

For much of footy's history the height of the general playing pool tracked that of the general population. But recent decades have seen a shift away from this trend, of increasingly soaring heights amongst players notionally big and small.

Measuring up to find the right data

Since the start of the VFL in 1897 more than 13,000 players have played in the league.

At the present time there are height listings for about 12,300 of them. Many of these are taken from sources such as club yearbooks, newspapers and media guides.

This blend of official and unofficial sources makes telling the story of height in football hard to do.

Take Gawn and Pickett for example. AFL Tables — the much relied upon yet unofficial source — lists them at 208cm and 170cm respectively. The AFL currently has the teammates at 209cm and 171cm, with other measurements out there pitching different heights.

Two further curious cases involve two of the game's current tall stars.

Tim English and Harry McKay have taken dramatically different trends in the progression of their official AFL listed heights over time, in a way that confounds normal growth patterns.

In short — there are individual discrepancies that make this exercise harder — but not impossible.

That's nothing compared to working out how tall everyday Australians are.

There are few long term sources tracking the heights of Australian men and women over time. Instead, a patchwork quilt emerges of different studies taken at different times of different cohorts of Australians.

Studies of height have been used for a variety of reasons over time for different important purposes. Academics believe that height can be used as a proxy for improvements (or sudden declines) in living conditions, nutrition and health care.

For example historians believe that a decline in the average height of military recruits in the late 1800s may have been at least partially impacted by the 1890s economic depression.

Changing sizes across the history of the game

For much of the first half century of league football the height of elite footballers largely tracked at that of the average Australian male (as estimated by ABC Sport), albeit at a distance of about 5cm.

This includes that dip in player height around the turn of the century, right when the delayed effects of that 1890s economic depression would be expected to hit.

Around 1950 the trend between the average height and the height of professional footballers started to diverge. As the years have progressed more and more distance has been placed between the average Australian and the average footy player.

In the VFL, individual height barriers were slowly ticked off over time.

Geelong's Eddy James was the only 6 foot 4 (193cm) player in the first VFL season and wasn't just making up the numbers — he was also the league's first (joint) leading goalkicker.

Fifteen years later Melbourne's Tim Lane was the first player over 195cm in his sole VFL season.

The Herald described Lane as:

In 1929, Len "Booby" Mills was the first VFL player to crack the 200cm barrier when he debuted for St Kilda at the age of 31. Mills wasn't a late bloomer or a flyer for the Saints; instead having a full life and career before joining the club.

Mills joined the military for World War I at the age of 16, and later became one of the most feared military boxers of his day.

One of the finest ruckmen of the era — two time Magarey Medalist Bruce McGregor — called Mills his hardest opponent, able to win hitouts without rising from the ground.

Fitzroy's Dean Farnham was the first over 205cm in 1974, and Matthew Burton becoming the first above 210cm in Fremantle's debut season of 1995.

The record for the tallest AFL player currently rests with three different players at 211cm: Peter Street, Aaron Sandilands and Mason Cox.

Richmond rookie lister Mate Colina is poised to break this tie if he debuts, with the former basketballer standing at 213cm.

At the same time the heights of the shortest players in the league have also increasingly stretched skywards.

This year Hawthorn rookie Nick Watson took over the mantle as the shortest player in the league — one centimetre shorter than Pickett and Caleb Daniel.

A forward thinking reason?

Given the trend away from the national average height, a bigger question presents itself — why?

A clue can perhaps be found closer to goal.

While the height of the average goalkicker hasn't significantly increased over time, the height of the spearheads — those who kick three or more goals in a game — has leapt ahead of the general trend.

Gordon Coventry — the game's second greatest goalkicker and noted high marking exponent of his day — was the same size as Hawks forward Chad Wingard (183cm).

Bob Pratt, considered by some to be the greatest full forward of the 20th century, stood at just 180cm — the same size as small forwards Orazio Fantasia and Charlie Cameron.

The great full forwards of old tended to be placed in one-on-one battles — often only having to beat one opponent. They didn't have to crash packs to take contested grabs to kick goals.

As football has evolved, it has become significantly more aerial in nature.

The development of the drop punt through the first half of the 20th century and its eventual widespread adoption across subsequent decades has led to more predictable high marking contests.

This likely led to an arms race for teams targeting taller and taller players to target in the forward half.

Defences have also had to keep up with this increase in size. You can't spoil a mark you can't reach, and to spoil a Harry McKay you need a Ben McKay sized defender.

Recent years have seen a move to more and more intricate team defences — designed to stop easy marking opportunities and the subsequent goals.

But eagle eyed readers might notice a little downtick in the trend of the biggest goalkickers in recent years.

This trend might be part strategic, and part symbolic of a greater change at play across society.

A downward tick over time

This year 41 hauls of three or more goals have been kicked. Seventeen of those bags have been kicked by players shorter than league average height, with just 13 kicked by players taller than 195cm.

Teams are increasingly leaning on more complex forward set ups — often with a dominant small being left deep in space.

Focal points such as Toby Greene, Charlie Cameron and Tom Papley have taken the place of more traditional talls, forcing defences to adjust in kind.

Overall, player height across the league seems to have stagnated in the past few years. Shorter players are now being considered at the top end of the draft again — Watson was pick five last year, and Pickett was the 12th pick in 2019.

There's also a broader theory amongst some academics that the "great Australian growth spurt" may be coming to an end.

Football may just be the canary in the coalmine in this respect.

Football has long been reflective of wider society. It has represented broader social trends, including the size of the community. If Australia is really slowly getting smaller again, it makes sense that footy is too.

Or this could all just be a minor blip — a strategic anomaly — and the footballing height race might just be heating up.