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Dale Thomas...

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The thing is, everyone expects WAY too much from Thomas. The expectations that are placed on his shoulders are too much for a 21 year old. If everyone stopped putting all this pressure on him, they would realise how valuable to our team he is.
 
Expectation comes with the gig, if you can't live up to it quickly you're on the outer. That's not me being harsh, that’s the truth.
Leon is only just being taken seriously this year and he has been in the system for about 10 years. Is that the sort of slow development we are expecting from Thomas? Because if you're happy for him to only marginally improve for the next 10 years before he really asserts himself then I say trade.
We need players now, I don't think we are as bad as our form has suggested, we just need players who can perform week in week out.
I'm not sure he is there yet.

(Queue hate...)
 
I'm not saying that he will take years and years to develop, but he is still young and he needs more time to adapt to the midfield role.
What I have seen from Thomas this year is good improvement from last year and he has been pretty consistent. People might say that he hasn't improved this year because they haven't seen him taking specky's and kicking impossible goals, but they don't know what they are talking about.
 
I agree with Kirby. I think every year he has finished a better or more complete player then the year before. I think his coming along quiet well.

His endurance base will build the more he plays up the ground. The other thing he has to learn is that there is levels of running. I think too often he only knows one pace which is full throttle which is good but will test teh tank big time.

I think last year he certainly learnt his limitations a bit better, by the end of the year he was smarter and when to dish and when to dash. This year he has played a defensive role and has being much better at being involved in every game his played.
 

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I agree with you shawthing09. I have also noticed how often he chooses to pass the ball off to a teammate in a better position. Late last year he started to show that, and this year he is doing it more and more. The good thing is he is still creative while passing it to teammates (E.g. passing the ball 3 times and receiving it back from teammates, while running full pace, under intense pressure, close to the boundary and setting up a Jack Anthony goal in Round 1).
Some people also think that he tries to kick the goal from the boundary too often. The thing is, he only does this when there is no one else to pass it to, and he usually gets them.
He has also been hard at the footy this year, even though some idiots on BigFooty can't see this and call him "soft".
 
My theory on Dale Thomas has always been that he is a similar 21 year old to that of a 21 year Leon Davis.

Thomas has a thin natural frame, and some players, like Davis, Davey etc, have shown that it takes time for these "thin" framed players to develop into top level AFL players.

Why we wait, Thomas is still a very good contributor to our team, as has shown with some of his defensive efforts this year, including a massive effort on Josh Drummond that probably won us a game.

Thomas will be a star, we just may have to wait a few more years for "Daisy" to develop into an absolute "elite" player in the AFL.

He is not even worth mentioning as trade bait, because to put it simply, if we trade Dale Thomas, it will come back to bite us on the arse.:eek:
 
DThomas said:
The thing is, everyone expects WAY too much from Thomas. The expectations that are placed on his shoulders are too much for a 21 year old. If everyone stopped putting all this pressure on him, they would realise how valuable to our team he is.
Click to expand...

spot on, people see his flashy plays , big marks or incredible goals and expect that every week.

What they overlook is the fact he already does all the team things every week and one percenters etc etc, yet the moment hes not taking a big mark or kicking an awesome goal they think he isnt doing the team things.

All he needs is experience and with that comes consistency.

Not a lot of forward pocket/flankers become big in the midfield within a year or two, just look at ablett jnr.

Its called development
 
I have to agree with the "he is only 21, give him some time and then....whooooo!" sentiment.
I thought it was very interesting to see a thread on the main board rating Neon as 2nd to Ablett as the best player in the comp. I was even more interested to see how many affirmative replies were posted.

Davis...top5
Pendlebury...top 10 (min)
Thomas..top 5 in 2-3 years


Eliteness is growing.:thumbsu::thumbsu:
 

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