Hawthorn coaches sat down to a match committee meeting, the last one of the year. It was a few days before the 2014 grand final and they tossed up names and options. The arithmetic was just not working. There were too many defenders for only so many places, so they changed the equation.

The Hawks then bent their own rules. They didn't want to play another small defender, but they also couldn't not play Taylor Duryea. They didn't want to have a small defender as the sub – they had barely ever used one in that role – but again they couldn't not play Taylor Duryea.

"We had picked a small defender as the sub once or twice for the year, it was rare but we had experimented with it," said Luke Beveridge, the Western Bulldogs coach who for the three years before this one was the Hawks' defensive coach.

"We just thought we had to pick (Duryea). He was going too well not to be picked. He almost broke the match committee rules to a degree to play with another small defender. It helps having Shaun Burgoyne, Luke Hodge and Sam Mitchell in the back half who can all move into the midfield when the sub comes on, but it was a bit unusual for us."

Duryea, of course, had the dream grand final experience, if being sub can be a dream grand final experience. He came on in the last quarter when the game was essentially won and so was able to attack it with what felt like a degree of freedom.

He had nine touches and a run down the wing that had almost as many bounces as steps before he found Jarryd Roughead.

It was a step forward in his grand final trajectory. In 2013 he was the emergency, last year the sub, this year he will probably start on the ground.

"You never feel secure, especially in my position, I've been on the fringe most of the year really to be honest, so for me I'm always on edge," Duryea told the AFL website this week.

He could feel a little more secure after last week's preliminary final, a game that even those who have been eager backers of Duryea recognised was a watershed match for the slow-burn defender. It was certainly the best match he had played for the club not only in raw numbers but the fact it was in a game of such consequence and in such a hostile environment.

He had been good all night but his moment came late. The Hawks were 20 points up with eight minutes to go when a clearing Dockers kick went to Hayden Ballantyne at the back flank. Duryea closed on him, jumped high to spoil from behind and had strength in his body to land and hold position as others swept past him. He gathered the ball in, sidestepped Ballantyne and, as Garrick Ibbotson tried to drag him down in a tackle, he swept his left foot through the ball at 50 and goaled. He had not shown that sort of poise or level of daring before.

"I just initially tried to spoil the ball and thought it was going to go out of bounds, but it stayed in – I just made it up from there," Duryea said. "I saw an opportunity to kick a goal and wouldn't usually (have a shot) from there, but once I saw it go through, I just let a bit of emotion out.

"That's not to say that I thought it was the sealer but I thought it was a really important goal and I just really gave it something in the celebration."

Beveridge laughed at the celebration. "Taylor is one of those lads that does look up at the screen a bit. They all do it, but you do see him do it more than others," he giggled with clear affection for his former player. Mirror time, it seems, is also not unfamiliar to Duryea. "He cuts the boys' hair, Taylor. He is borderline metrosexual."

The moment in the final was a moment of reflection. It illustrated what has always appealed about the tools Duryea has as a player: athleticism and strength as well as a penetrating left foot. A powerful player with a good leap, he is extremely good overhead because, Beveridge said, he also has courage in the air for a player of his size (179 centimetres).

It meant that when he arrived at the club he was figured for a small forward with potential to play in the middle of the ground. He told Peter Hanlon this year it was only when he went to defence he counter-intuitively felt more freedom to play the game. "Stuff it, just play footy, play my role, clear my mind," he explained.

Duryea took a long time to play his first game and no time to play his 50th. He is that sort of player who takes a long time to be an overnight success.

Duryea is from Wahgunyah, a small town of 900 on the Murray looking over the river at Corowa. The All Saints winery of Rutherglen is nearby. Duryea played at Murray Bushrangers and boarded at Caulfield Grammar after Jack Ziebell's dad reportedly encouraged the school to take him on just as they had his own talented son.

A tough player who turned heads at the private school for his hard approach to the game, he turned Hawks' recruiter Graham Wright's head when he saw him play in an APS v AGS game. His effort that day stuck in Wright's mind when the draft arrived and he considered options with the fairly speculative late pick.

Wright says Duryea's emergence is in part due to one of the benefits of success at the club. Recruited late in the draft in in 2009 (pick 69) Duryea took four years to make his debut, a length of time that the club was afforded because of its on-field strength.

Duryea, like a couple of Hawk teammates, might not have held on at another club impatiently seeking the next generation.

"Being relatively successful over the period has meant we have been able to develop guys how they need to develop and give them that grounding. He played Box Hill seconds for a while at one stage, as did Breust, and Langford has done a bit of that and look, that has been a good grounding for them coming into the team to be developed to a point they are ready," Wright said. And Duryea now clearly is ready.

Wright said, though, that the prime reason Duryea had made the level was down to him. Beveridge said he had the sort of taxing honesty about his performance that framed him with the clubs' most demanding players.

"He has had times when he hasn't gone well and he is really honest with himself and in that sense he is no different to Luke Hodge and Sam Mitchell," he said. In post-game reviews Mitchell and Hodge are the first to arrive at the assistant coach's door and, before the coaches have a chance to speak, the players detail the shortcomings in their own games with ruthless honesty. The coaches sit and nod as they tick off point after point that they were to raise with the player.

"He is a real leader, Taylor," Beveridge said. "Early on, when he had injuries and he had not established himself, he still spoke up and you thought 'I hope he can match that with the way he plays.' And he has, he has become a really good player for them."