The 20 year-old, who finished third in last year’s AFL Rising Star award, believes that veteran superstars including Jonathan Brown, Simon Black and Luke Power have been relied upon too heavily and require greater support from their team-mates to better share the load.
“Those blokes have been carrying the team for a number of years now, and it’s time for people to step up around them and take a bit more leadership and responsibility on this year,” Rockliff said.
Rockliff is a key part of the Club’s ‘generation next’ and is looking forward to helping lead the Lions into their next period of on-field success.
“We’ve certainly got some exciting times ahead,” he said.
“If you take a look at our current midfield group, it’s quite young with the exception of Blacky.”
“I think Andrew Raines is the next oldest at 24 and then it drops away to around an average age of around 20.”
Rockliff said that the Lions players are focussed on the job at hand and have been working incredibly hard in the lead-up to the NAB Cup.
“Anyone who came and watched us on Monday would have gotten an idea of how hard we're training. The boys are all about business,” he said.
“Over the whole pre-season, our standards have been set - and they’ve been set really high.”
“We’ve obviously had a couple of lapses with some off-field incidents, but everyone knows the standards that are expected within our group.”
