FOR most of Ryan Bathie’s sporting career, the transition game meant getting from offence to defence and vice versa. This year it has meant something completely different.

The transition game for Bathie this year has been learning how to play top-flight football after being a lifelong basketball player with four years Nicholls State University and one season with Melbourne Tigers in the NBL.

While picking up Bathie might have been considered something of a risk for Geelong, it was actually a no-lose situation and as his first VFL season draws to a close, it appears to shaping as win-win for club and player.

“It’s been good,” Bathie said. “It’s been a bit of an eye-opener, but it’s pretty much what I expected. It’s gone pretty quickly and it’s good to see how far I’ve come along in such a short amount of time.”

In fact, while Bathie stepped away from a basketball career that had taken him around the world and into the unknown, he is now sure he made the right move and continued improvement will put him in line to become an AFL footballer.

“Definitely,” Bathie said. “Coming in I didn’t know what to expect because I hadn’t played a lot of footy. But after playing this season and seeing how far I’ve come in the few months, and with another preseason under my belt, who knows? The sky’s the limit. So I’ve been pretty happy.

“My expectations were not as much as they are now, but I started off pretty well and had a bit of a slump halfway through the season and now the last seven or eight games have been good. The standard has been pretty good and the coaches have been happy. The turnaround during the season has been good.”

Having played every VFL game except one when he was rested, Bathie has been learning his football trade as a defender, mainly in the fullback and centre-half back roles.

With his size and strength (198cm, 97kg) Bathie can battle key forwards in one-on-one scenarios even though it took time to adjust to football’s physicality and the mindset of using to beyond the boundaries of basketball’s rules.

“That was probably one of the things I struggled with early,” Bathie said. “Just the amount of force you can throw around without giving away a free-kick. You can’t get fouled off in footy like basketball so you can give away as many free-kicks as you want and still stay on the field, which is good.”

The feedback from Geelong’s coaching staff is that Bathie is a good and fast learner, enacting his lessons on the footy field without too much trouble and rarely needing to be told twice.

The next step for Bathie once the season is over will be to put in another pre-season campaign to increase his aerobic capacity and ability to cover more ground on the footy field than was needed on the basketball court.

But Bathie is determined to do whatever it takes, committing 100 per cent to making it in the AFL, even though he does have moments where he misses basketball.

“Every now and then I miss basketball,” Bathie said. “I miss seeing my mates playing, but I’ve gone to a new career. I do miss it, but I get out once a week or every a couple of weeks for a shot with some of the boys.”

In the meantime, the transition game continues for Ryan Bathie.