Pendlebury a smooth mover
20 May 2007 Sunday Herald Sun
Jon Ralph
SCOTT Pendlebury has no right to be playing football of such rare quality so early.
Rising star: 2005 No.5 national draft pick Scott Pendlebury is having a postive impact at Collingwood. Picture: Alex Coppel
Not when you consider the impediments in his way or the total lack of a football pedigree.
Right now informed judges and fan site geeks alike are pondering the question of whether the 19-year-old former basketball prodigy has gone past cult figure and teammate Dale Thomas in form and potential.
It matters little: both will be Collingwood midfield stars for a decade to come.
But when you stack up Pendlebury's slashing 2007 form against the challenges he has so far overcome, you start to realise what an undoubted star the young Sale junior could one day become.
Consider the events of the past two years.
A month after moving into Canberra's Australian Institute of Sport on a basketball scholarship in January 2005, he pulls the pin to play for the Gippsland Power, despite not having played competitive football since the under-12s.
Without a pre-season, and with little understanding of elite football, he has such a dominant year he is the No.5 selection in the 2005 national draft.
Glandular fever totally wrecks his first pre-season at Collingwood, yet he dominates in the VFL from the start and manages nine solid senior games.
Then after his first football pre-season of any kind, he goes bang: Pendlebury is averaging 19 possessions, has already kicked 8.4 and is gliding around the midfield like a seasoned pro.
And it's not just the raw numbers _ Pendlebury is blessed with the type of awareness and lateral movement that VFL coach Brad Gotch says could see him ``find his way out of a telephone booth with someone else trying to tackle him''.
Pump another three pre-seasons and 50 games into him, and Pendlebury could be anything.
"When you put all those events into place, it's quite extraordinary what he's done, and also you can't forget he is a bottom-age player,'' recruiting chief Derek Hine says.
"Realistically he should have been drafted back in November. For him to be playing at the level he is, we are obviously pretty excited about it.''
Pendlebury _ a hard-working, likeable kid with a flashing smile and an insatiable appetite to learn _ is understated about his performances so far this year.
"I didn't really know where I was when Round 1 came because I had done all the work but I was really nervous,'' he says.
"Now I want to take it up a level and improve more and more.
"I don't really feel like I am playing for my spot every game this year, where last year I did.
"At the start of the year I wrote down a few goals and one of them was to be more consistent. I have been that so far, but it's only seven games so far.''
The potential upside is so considerable because Pendlebury is desperately eager to improve his game.
Collingwood's highly rated development coach Alan Richardson says Pendlebury doesn't have to be told anything twice.
A fortnight ago Richardson took a mid-week training session tutoring the young players about protecting space in marking contests.
Days later Pendlebury was on the last line of defence against Adelaide's Andrew McLeod and pulled off a copy-book spoil executed with that very skill.
This week assistant coach Gavin Brown's defensive award went to Pendlebury because he spotted Alan Toovey's opponent, Blue Brad Fisher, ducking away from the contest when the Pie was on the bottom of the pack, and immediately picked him up.
"We are really aware of how coachable he is,'' Richardson says.
"Not only was he thinking about being accountable but he had the ability to see (Fisher). Not a lot of players would do that, and it's not the first time we have noticed it with Scotty.''
Pendlebury thinks the peripheral vision must have come from those countless hours playing point guard on the basketball court.
"The way I play now is because I played basketball a similar way,'' he says.
"You have to see someone but you aren't allowed to look at them because then the defence knows where you are going to go. So you see them then give it to them at the last minute.
"Definitely ball control is the biggest thing I have transferred from basketball.''
AIS men's coach Marty Clarke said this week Pendlebury had ultimately made the right call in jettisoning basketball.
"He only lasted here a few days and there was obviously something on his mind. The decision to play football has been good for him,'' Clarke says.
"It is tough to survive if you don't like playing basketball every day.
"He was a combination guard at junior level. He had good court speed and good balance. He probably never had the legitimate foot speed to be an international point guard but he could shoot well and it made up for his lack of speed.''
Despite his limited junior football career, Pendlebury's foot skills see him constantly releasing teammates into space, hitting up targets in the forward line, or kicking big-time goals.
"He is the sort of player that you want the ball in his hands,'' Richardson says.
"The pressure kick doesn't seem to faze him.
"We have had weeks where we haven't kicked well and the pressure tends to build with each miss, but Scott has at least twice broken a run of points with kicks from 35 or 40 metres out. Mentally he is very strong.''
At 191cm and quickly adding strength, he is not only a flashy finisher.
"Scott is unique in that he can play inside and outside,'' recruiter Hine says.
"A lot of the stuff he does doesn't get caught because he is so quick with his hands.''
Gippsland Power regional manager Peter Francis says fans will spend many pleasurable years working out which of his 2005 Gippsland alumni _ Thomas, Pendlebury and Hawthorn's No.4 selection Xavier Ellis _ is the superior player.
"They will all be terrific players,'' Francis says.
"Scott is a different type of player. He is a real smooth mover and his body movements are that X-factor because people don't seem to be able to tackle him and he is able to extract the ball out of packs so well.''
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/footy/common/story_page/0,8033,21759209%5E19742,00.html
Great article.
Interesting that Ellis would be mentioned in the same breath as Daisy and Pendles at this stage.
