Universal Love Welcome Pick #39 Rhys Mathieson!

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Sounds like a real hard nut. Robinson, Bell, Robertson... He's in good company. Gotta love a player who has a real crack and goes out and gives their all. Can see him having a cult following once he gets his fitness up to speed
 
JasRulz63 said:
Quigley mentioned in his phantom draft that he was bottom 5% in the beep test. Combine that endurance base with the Queensland heat and supposed increased running loads at training so far, Rhys is going to have a tough pre-season ahead of him. He's apparently super competitive though, so he'll enjoy the challenge!
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Says in that article that he's already working to improve his endurance base. Worth remembering that was the major knock on Rocky originally as well.
 
_Gin said:
Says in that article that he's already working to improve his endurance base. Worth remembering that was the major knock on Rocky originally as well.
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Was thinking the same thing and also the fact that he seems to be a player rather than an athlete. Hard work ahead but then again that is for everyone on our list. Hope he enjoys his fishing trips with Westie and Rhino out on the bay.
 

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jjami15 said:
Was thinking the same thing and also the fact that he seems to be a player rather than an athlete. Hard work ahead but then again that is for everyone on our list. Hope he enjoys his fishing trips with Westie and Rhino out on the bay.
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agree. always go for "players"over athletes, vision, awareness, game sense very hard to coach, if the desire is there the rest can be worked on quite easily.
 
Don't mind the pick, we've been crying out for an clearance winner for a while now, although with bastinac and Jansen coming in I thought we may have gone for some dash off half back given we can be a bit pedestrian there. Always love a kid who's a real competitor. The fact he ran a 12 beep test at combine and that was apparently an improvement is a bit alarming. What the hell was he running previously?! I would have thought a guy that competitive would have been much better. Let's hope its not because of any physiological reason.

Good luck to him
 
Someone made the comment that Mathieson is a similar player to Priddis, seems a very apt comparison. Great in close at winning the ball but doesn't have the cleanest hands, not the greatest kick under pressure but seems to use it ok when he has a bit of time. Think he will be a very good player, we just need to be patient with him.

Cracks in very hard though which will make him a fan favourite in years to come similar to Robbo.
 
Fatcat08 said:
Don't mind the pick, we've been crying out for an clearance winner for a while now, although with bastinac and Jansen coming in I thought we may have gone for some dash off half back given we can be a bit pedestrian there. Always love a kid who's a real competitor. The fact he ran a 12 beep test at combine and that was apparently an improvement is a bit alarming. What the hell was he running previously?! I would have thought a guy that competitive would have been much better. Let's hope its not because of any physiological reason.

Good luck to him
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agree with you about the fitness issues. think he will get to know the white line running around giffin park quite a bit in the off season.
 
Eons said:
Someone made the comment that Mathieson is a similar player to Priddis, seems a very apt comparison. Great in close at winning the ball but doesn't have the cleanest hands, not the greatest kick under pressure but seems to use it ok when he has a bit of time. Think he will be a very good player, we just need to be patient with him.

Cracks in very hard though which will make him a fan favourite in years to come similar to Robbo.
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Mathieson excelled in the clean hands testing at the combine
 
Big surprise we got him, I doubt he will sniff the ones while he works on his fitness base, in saying that our magoos midfield will have some big boys!!

Def seems like a footballer over athlete, I'm sure that he can get his endurance to average and great think about a pure footballer is that can shave his distance during the match by good game awareness and taking the right angles.

Hasn't got much traction yet but he really seems more than useful as a forward too, with limited interchange likely to be in place throughout his career that will become an essential string to his game.
 
Eons said:
Someone made the comment that Mathieson is a similar player to Priddis, seems a very apt comparison. Great in close at winning the ball but doesn't have the cleanest hands, not the greatest kick under pressure but seems to use it ok when he has a bit of time. Think he will be a very good player, we just need to be patient with him.

Cracks in very hard though which will make him a fan favourite in years to come similar to Robbo.
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I think this, in combination with the fitness concerns are why he slid. He will need to learn more composure instead of jamming it on the boot or looping out a hospital handball.
 
The Flying Belgian said:
I think this, in combination with the fitness concerns are why he slid. He will need to learn more composure instead of jamming it on the boot or looping out a hospital handball.
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Yep. I initially got caught up in everyone being so surprised that he slid, after watching his videos and hearing how poor some of his results were at the combine you can see why we got him at the pick we did.

He gives his all though and there is plenty to work with.
 

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Eons said:
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Cheers. First footage I've seen. Understand where you're coming from with his handballs. I think the awareness is there, maybe just trying to be a bit clever sometimes. With experience I'd expect him to improve a fair bit. No trouble getting his hands on the pill.
 
Having watched those clips, I see what Eons is getting at. He seems to have great hands when it comes to collecting the ball in traffic, but does shoot the ball out a little erratically sometimes. That seems more likely to be a composure thing than a skills thing, and he does win the ball and get it moving forward which is a good base to start from. Encouraging stuff.
 
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Emma Quayle on SEN this morning - "I know a lot of clubs thought yep, just give us Rhys and we'll chuck him out there in a final and he'll go and get the ball for us."

Also mentioned that his had a lot of exposure in the past two years giving recruiters more chance to pick more flaws in his game, as well as not being a great runner.
 
JasRulz63 said:
Emma Quayle on SEN this morning - "I know a lot of clubs thought yep, just give us Rhys and we'll chuck him out there in a final and he'll go and get the ball for us."

Also mentioned that his had a lot of exposure in the past two years giving recruiters more chance to pick more flaws in his game, as well as not being a great runner.
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That's an interesting thought, and maybe illustrates some differences between the various clubs' drafting. At the risk of oversimplifying, we seem to put relatively more weight on performance across U17 and U18 combined relative to some other clubs who are more inclined to pick a bolter. Maybe part of that is that we think that the well known prospects tend to be scrutinized disproportionately compared to late bloomers.
 
Was interesting watching that video as I hadn't paid much attention to him previously given I thought from reading he was well out of our range.

On his handballing I saw two main issues that contribute to some of his loop

1. He doesn't really like hand balling with his left, which in close causes issues with him being more rushed with his handball then necessary due to the time it takes to transfer the ball to the other hand, then get the arm in position to make contact and finally move forward through the ball. He needs to work on his left hand work by hand and try to overcome that instinct to almost always go the transfer otherwise he'll lack the time to get sufficient force on the ball.

2. He has a very stop start handball and doesn't really go through the ball in one fluid motion. He goes one of two ways. He either extends the arms right out, then stops and tries to handball with just the momentum of his striking hand, or he strikes the ball while it is still tucked in with his elbows bent and doesn't extend at all. This causes his handballs to lack velocity and hang in the air a long time.

Overall there's a base there to work with but there's going to be some intense work on his handballing technique. Luckily we have one of the best to learn from in Black and i'd be getting him working with Blacky on this straight away. Black was so good with his handballs because he got all his momentum going towards the direction he wanted to handball. Often he didn't try to stand fully upright and then go for an option, instead he stayed low and almost jumped into the direction he wanted to handball. Its something I hope he can team Rhys.
 
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In. And. Under.
Love it!
 
Fatcat08 said:
Overall there's a base there to work with but there's going to be some intense work on his handballing technique. Luckily we have one of the best to learn from in Black and i'd be getting him working with Blacky on this straight away. Black was so good with his handballs because he got all his momentum going towards the direction he wanted to handball. Often he didn't try to stand fully upright and then go for an option, instead he stayed low and almost jumped into the direction he wanted to handball. Its something I hope he can team Rhys.
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I loved this technique of Black's - he was often on his knees too. That momentum idea is similar to the way you're supposed to transfer weight performing a tennis serve - it's not about the arm or the racquet speed - it's about the body stepping forward and upward.

I hope we see heaps of clones of this in the future.
 
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