The Dee-fensive odd couple and Levers bid for grand final redemption

Jake Lever has been here before. Winning the minor premiership. Demolishing Geelong in a preliminary final. Starting hot favourites in the grand final.

“Straight after that game I didn’t sleep for a week,” said Lever, as he reflected on the final week of the 2017 finals series during his last season for Adelaide.

Jake Lever in Perth this week.Credit:Getty Images

“I was just imagining myself getting up and getting a premiership medal, what the celebration would look like, what the feeling would be like when the siren went.”

It’s not often that a player would so openly admit to playing the game out in his head before the first bounce of a grand final. It’s even rarer that he’d do it in the week leading up to his personal shot at redemption.

He won’t be making the same mistake.

“I definitely feel much more relaxed. I’m not as nervous as what I was last time,” he said.

He is also half of the back line duo that holds a key to Melbourne’s premiership hopes. So critical have Lever and Steven May been to the Demons’ rise, with their intercept marking and ability to peel off their opponents to support the other, that they are almost thought of as one entity â€" “Lever and May”, “May and Lever”.

At 25, Lever is still at an age where physically, he may not have reached his prime. But the father of two, who says he is an “old soul,” is wise beyond his years.

When you quietly ask senior people at Melbourne in Perth who the next Demons captain will be, the resounding answer is Lever.

Jake Lever is a vital piece of Melbourne’s premiership puzzle. Credit:Getty

Captain courageous Max Gawn, 29, still has several years left in the tank, but Lever will have had the perfect apprenticeship by the time Gawn retires.

Even now, with Lever possessing grand final experience that no other Demon has, several teammates have been approaching him, wanting to know what to expect.

“It is about taking it in your stride and taking it all in. Don’t play the game over and over and over in your head because by the time you get to the game itself, you’ll be drained.”

That fateful day in 2017 was his final game for the Crows. He completed his much-anticipated move to Melbourne and ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament in his first season, missing the Demons’ dream preliminary final run.

And within the first few weeks of arriving at the club, Lever was no longer known as Jake. He was Rick.

Lever was sitting in the front row of an opposition analysis meeting when assistant coach Craig Jennings asked Rick to come to the front of the room to join him.

“I just did the old look around and thought, ‘oh, this is really bad. I don’t know any Ricks ... I am yet to introduce myself to this Rick bloke.’”

But Jennings just stared straight at Lever.

“Yeah,” Jennings smiled, “I reckon you look a bit like a Rick! Come up the front.”

Cheeky teammate Tom McDonald made sure the nickname stuck. Even watching Lever get the ball at training sessions in Perth in grand final week, a chorus of teammates exploded with calls. “Yes, Rick!” “Handball here, Rick!” “Yes! Nice, Rick!”

Lever and May â€" or as their teammates call them Rick and “Dugong” (May is never going to have the lowest skin folds) â€" make for a dangerous defensive duo for the Demons.

They are constantly mentioned in the same breath, such is the harmony in which they operate on the field.

But they are also infinitely different. One is a stopper, the other an interceptor. One has grown an exquisite moustache, the other is clean-shaven.

One likes the quiet life and other ... doesn’t.

Last year in Queensland as the Demons were heading to training, Lever exclaimed how beautiful Maroochydore was and that he could move there in an instant.

“Nah,” retorted May. “Not enough nightclubs.”

A busload of teammates erupted in laughter and Lever smiled as he shook his head.

But the one thing that footy’s favourite odd couple has in common is an innate ability to lead. May is a past captain and Lever a likely future one.

It was at three-quarter-time of the preliminary final obliteration of Geelong when Lever found himself daydreaming for the briefest of moments.

The Demons were 78 points in front and coach Simon Goodwin was delivering his final message of the game and out of nowhere Lever copped an elbow to the ribs.

“Oi! Listen!”

Lever turned around to see May, who after being subbed out of the game with a hamstring injury was in his tracksuit, staring at him sternly.

“He just wanted to finish the game off,” Lever said. ″⁣He’s just such a ruthless competitor. It’s a pretty good partnership, I think.

“I reckon we couldn’t be two more polar opposite people.

“But on the field I have so much respect for the way he plays. He just wants to win all the time. For a bloke that came from the Gold Coast where he hadn’t won a lot of games, I think he’s been starved of that and that’s what drives him so much.”

On Saturday, May, Lever and their teammates will try to deliver the premiership nutrition that Melbourne fans have been cruelly starved of for so long.

Sam McClure is a sport reporter for The Age and winner of 'best news reporter' at the AFL Media Association awards.Connect via Twitter or email.

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