St Kilda coach Ross Lyon has confirmed he'll deploy midfielder Marcus Windhager to tag a Brisbane onballer again this week, but which Lions star gets the battle is yet to be decided.
Windhager has successfully performed shut-down run-with roles on West Coast sensation Harley Reid and Suns co-captain Touk Miller in recent weeks, with attention now turning to Brisbane's engine room ensemble.
Lyon sees Windhager's transition to a lockdown midfielder as a "win-win" for his development and the team's prospects each week, hoping the club's NGA product can learn from the best by beating them.
Having utilised iconic past taggers like Clinton Jones and Ryan Crowley during his past days at Moorabbin and with Fremantle, Lyon believes Windhager will be better in the long haul thanks to his matchups on the game's elite.
"It's like the mullet, everything comes back into fashion. It's back in," Lyon said of the tag on Wednesday.
"There was the rhetoric that you can't run a tag and play team defence. At the Saints or Dockers we always ran a heavy tag, Geelong had (Cameron) Lin running around. You can certainly play team defence and have a tag.
"For us, it's given Marcus a real focus. He's very disciplined with it and he certainly plays within the rules. It's a good role for him, we'll send him (to someone).
"They do it and then they become really good players themselves. It's a good way to learn, so we think it's a win-win."
Seeing dual Brownlow Medal winner Lachie Neale as a potentially 'untaggable' asset at Brisbane, Windhager could be used on one of Josh Dunkley or Hugh McCluggage instead as the Saints look to get the upper hand over the Lions.
Having preferred Windhager on the more fast-paced outside option over the inside ball winners, Lyon could call on his young midfielder to put the clamps on McClugagge instead.
The Saints coach conceded he was yet to decide on who Windhager would run with on Friday night.
"He's a star, but they've got Dunkley and McClugagge as well in there, who we rate highly," Lyon said when asked about tagging Neale.
"I'm trying to figure out, is Lachie Neale taggable? He sort of handles it pretty well now. We went to the more outside speed demon last week instead of the inside bull.
"We'll definitely run a tag, we've just got to figure out who it is."
The Lions could use their own tagger after midfielder Jarrod Berry did a successful job on Western Bulldogs star Marcus Bontempelli in Round 13.
The Brisbane ball winner was able to quell Bontempelli's impact at stoppages while also winning enough of his own ball to have a large impact on the result.
Berry could potentially go to Saints skipper Jack Steele should the Lions want to continue the 26-year-old run-with role, while speedster Jack Sinclair has also been prominent through the middle in recent weeks.
Brisbane will host the Saints at the Gabba on Friday at 7:40 pm (AEST), with the Lions looking to make it two wins in a row while the Saints could claim their third successive win and leap past their opponents on the ladder.
