It’s one of the toughest calls a footy coach has to make – whether to take an underdone player into the most important game of the season.

Get it right and the pay-off is huge. Get it wrong and the consequences can be disastrous.

Four days out from the 1999 grand final, North Melbourne rover Anthony Stevens’ ankle was giving him hell.

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“I remember him coming into my office and I just asked him to hop up and down, because that’s a good test for an ankle,” his former coach Denis Pagan told The New Daily.

The sight Hawks fans don’t want to see on Saturday. Photo: Getty

“He couldn’t even do that, let alone hop sideways.

“He came back on the Thursday and it wasn’t much better.

“The doctors got him out on the track and he trained for 20 minutes on the Thursday night and they said he was ok.

“He wasn’t 100 per cent but he played a part and we won the premiership.”

Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson – wrestling with the decision of whether or not to risk Cyril Rioli’s hamstring in Saturday’s showdown against Sydney – is facing a similar predicament.

Pagan believes a coach needs to have full faith in his medical team, and said the decision to play an underdone player hinges heavily on the type of impact he’s likely to have.

When it comes to the player many good judges believe to be the best ever, Pagan said it was a no-brainer.

“In 1994 Wayne Carey tore a calf muscle in the last home and away game,” he said.

“There wouldn’t have been too many people who would have played.

“We played him the next week, he didn’t train at all, it was that drawn game out at Waverley against Hawthorn. I think he might have kicked six goals.

“We had a week off, then against Geelong in the preliminary final, Wayne was best on ground he kicked another six goals.

“He trained, in the three weeks that we participated, I won’t even say it was training – it was stationary skills and a light canter on the Thursday night before the Geelong game.”

Pagan said he could not recall an incident where his medical staff had given a player the all-clear and they hadn’t made it through a game.

“You look at all your indicators and your risk factors and if they’ve all been answered and you believe in the individual and you believe in your medical staff, which I did, our team never let us down,” he said.

Michael Voss’ knee was sore heading into the 2003 grand final, but he came out a triple premiership captain. Photo: Getty

Jason Akermanis knows both sides of the underdone players debate.

His Brisbane Lions prevailed in 2003 when Michael Voss (knee) and Nigel Lappin (rib) both entered the game under clouds.

A year later they were left exposed when Jonathan Brown (knee), Alastair Lynch (quad) and Craig McRae (hamstring) weren’t 100 per cent.

“The golden rule with taking in blokes that aren’t 100 per cent is that you can probably carry one, but you couldn’t carry any more than one,” Akermanis said.

“You get two or three and you’re generally going to get beaten on the day.”

Akermanis, however, feels Hawthorn should roll the dice on Rioli – and thinks he should be played from the start rather than wearing the green sub’s vest.

“Cyril is healthy, he’s still a handful, he only really needs to do four or five things – tackles, pressure, a couple of shots on goal – and it could be the difference,” Akermanis said.

“I think to stretch Sydney’s defence you need to have them jumping at shadows and Cyril would make a lot of very good defenders nervous.

“They’ll probably use him as the sub, but he hasn’t played in three months – he’d be one of the freshest guys out there.

“I’d probably run the gauntlet and play him from the start.”