Our best young player

Best Youngster on our list

  • James Aish

    Votes: 44 30.1%

  • Jack Crisp

    Votes: 5 3.4%

  • Nick Robertson

    Votes: 1 0.7%

  • Marco Paparone

    Votes: 3 2.1%

  • Daniel McStay

    Votes: 23 15.8%

  • Tom Cutler

    Votes: 8 5.5%

  • Lewis Taylor

    Votes: 27 18.5%

  • Sam Mayes

    Votes: 25 17.1%

  • Michael Close

    Votes: 1 0.7%

  • Jonathan Freeman

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Justin Clarke

    Votes: 9 6.2%
  • Total voters
    146

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I voted with the future in mind. I chose McStay. Looks very classy by hand and foot and takes a very good contested mark and can play at either end of the field.
He's very athletic for his size, 195cm, 90kg and still only 19.

If I was to choose who had the best 2014 though, I would go Aish-Gardiner-Taylor 3-2-1.
 

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Aish, Taylor, sure but I am going for the man under Brownie's wing in Mick Close. I like the way he goes about it and had the potential to be an inspirational CHF for us.
 
I have a soft spot for Close too. Aside from a few errant shots on goal he hasn't really had a massive balls up on field yet. Hopefully he will just start to see more of the ball. I think I've mentioned my theory a few times why his running endurance hasn't really been able to stand out yet is because of how sapping it is for an endurance athlete when they have to use their power. Once his strength is able to cope with more body-on-body contests on a more even basis his running will stand out.

For a 19 year old key position he was making repeat leads (I think he has shown he knows some tricks to get separation but again he needs more power to push off his opponent without eating into his tank) and he took some marks both contested and uncontested. As time goes on he is going to lead to where the mids are looking a bit more often and they are going to kick to space that they know he is heading to which will give him more opportunities. We were really short on i50s, but if we looked at a heat map for the year I think we would find that our time in the forward half of the ground was very low comparatively to everyone else in the comp. I think he is tracking well and won't necessarily be a superstar but should be a handy player.
 
Favourite - Lewis Taylor. Continues to be under-estimated and continues to over-achieve. Second Favourite - Justin Clarke - just seems to be a really nice young man.

I think Aish will be considered the best player of the group at the end of his career (hopefully). He seems to have the rarest of talents - in that its seems time slows when he has the ball and he has extra seconds to decide and execute. Hard to explain really.
 
ever since taylor won the rising star other teams suporters seem to be underrating him for some off reason?
 
askdotcom said:
ever since taylor won the rising star other teams suporters seem to be underrating him for some off reason?
Click to expand...

This is a positive ;)

Bloody hell, the kids won the Rising Star with only a month of pre-season training with main group...kid could be the next Brent Harvey (player, not person).
 
I love all our young players especially Jonathan Freeman who looks like has the goods showed so after 2 games kicking 4 goals against Collingwood he will be working hard with Jonathan Brown over the summer. Brown has said he's our only pure forward on our list.
 
Last edited:

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Yes but does "pure forward" mean he cant do anything else?
 
Jack Reiwoldt, Josh Kennedy, Tex Walker, Hawkins, Cloke, Schulz

Buddy can play a lot further up the ground than those guys, Tippett could play ruck at a pinch.

Coming back to my original comment, I think the rating of Freeman is a bit premature. He had one OK game where a couple of things fell in his lap, other than that I see a guy who needs to work on his endurance, strength, second efforts and defensive game. That sounds like a big knock on the kid, but we have to remember he has only played a couple of games and you cant expect him to be the finished product. He may play 8-10 games next year, I put him well behind Close. To call him a pure forward means he is camped deep and it is a knock to say that is all he can do, at this point in time I think that is all he can do. Close has a much bigger tank and is a lot more versatile, in the long run I think will be the better player.

Either way the fortunes of the Lions next year will, at least partially, revolve around the development of Freeman and Close.
 
Tom Hawkins, Travis Cloke, Taylor Walker, Jay Shultz to name a few are all 'pure forwards' ifg you want a definition.

However, its not a perfect definition - as they are all good enough players to be successful in other parts of the ground.
 
QAFL_Fan said:
Tom Hawkins, Travis Cloke, Taylor Walker, Jay Shultz to name a few are all 'pure forwards' ifg you want a definition.

However, its not a perfect definition - as they are all good enough players to be successful in other parts of the ground.
Click to expand...
I was about to ask "so where would you play Jack" , then realised he wasnt in your list.

Where I come from "full forward material" is not a compliment.
 
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