After a couple of years in the system you get a pretty good indication of where a player is best suited, but to be good AFL footballers they need to be capable in a number of roles.
Brad Ebert, Chris Masten, Scott Selwood and Tom Swift are four good examples from the weekend. They have each maintained a similar role week to week, but over time we need to develop them so they can play onball, wing, half-back and half-forward.
Geelong and Collingwood are good examples of sides with a core group of versatile midfielders.
Starting with Brad, he’s mainly played wing and onball and he performed really well in those roles on the weekend. He’s a strong body, so for his age he is very good in close, but he also has a very good tank to get outside and run into space.
He’s obviously taken a step up this season and been really consistent. He had a limited pre-season last year, but this pre-season he built a good base and has carried that into the first six rounds.
Chris was playing his best game for the season up to the stage he unfortunately went down with a knee injury.
We’ve been rotating him through half-forward, wing and onball and he played the same role against Fremantle, I just thought he brought a different intensity to the contest.
He had 14 touches up to halfway through the second quarter and he was quite constructive with them. It was the cleanest he’d been in close, so it was really disappointing for him to go down.
Scott’s learning the ropes with some defensive jobs, and he had a pretty clear-cut role in the derby on Stephen Hill, which I thought he did very well.
If it’s not a Stephen Hill-type on the wing or onball he’s on a dangerous small forward, so his role, which always tends to be defensive, doesn’t differ too much each week.
He’s obviously got a bit of pace and a hunger for the contest, so he’s tailor-made for those roles. However, you’d like to think it’s just a starting point for him and down the track he can be a very good winger or onballer for us.
Swifty has a similar role to Brad, playing onball and wing, and he was really pleasing against Fremantle. His cleanness and class at times was evident, he stood out around the stoppages and he put himself in really good positions.
He stagnated a little bit early in the season, after battling back from a hamstring injury, so we sent him back to the WAFL and he had two ripping games. That gave us a lot of confidence that he has developed a lot from last year.
I’ve got no doubt with the talent those young guys possess they can be good players onball and on the wing as well as across half-forward and half-back.
If in a couple of years we can get eight or nine players who can play all those roles, with the individual obviously having his biggest strength in one particular area, we’ll be in a good spot.
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the club.
