How we completed our playing list for ’06 . . .
1:37:32 PM Wed 14 December, 2005
Richmond’s Director of Football Greg Miller
richmondfc.com.au
Our plan in the lead-up to this week’s AFL pre-season and rookie drafts was to have as many young players as we could training at the Club, so we could gain some valuable first-hand knowledge of them.
That’s why, the day after the National Draft in late November, we had a special training session at Punt Road with about 30 candidates who were vying for selection in the pre-season and rookie drafts.
We then narrowed that list down to nine or 10 players, and they trained with us up until draft day this week.
It became quite evident to us over the past couple of weeks that Matthew White, from the Calder Cannons TAC Cup team, was the standout candidate of the group training with us due to his aerobic capacity, his speed, his strength, his whole manner around the Club . . .
We felt he had the necessary qualities to make the grade at the game’s highest level, but we also were aware that Collingwood was most interested in him.
So, to ensure that he came to Tigerland – and not across the road to the Magpies – we took the unusual step of choosing him in the pre-season draft, rather than waiting until the rookie draft.
If we had left him until our first selection in the rookie draft (pick five overall), he may well have been gone to Collingwood, or another club that had choices before us.
The resultant increased payment to Matthew as a senior list player, on a two-year contract, was not significant and, overall, we believed this was the best tactic available to us to further develop the type of playing list we want.
Matthew missed a bit of footy throughout the ’05 season due to some niggling injuries – but never more than one or two weeks at a time.
We had him checked out by our medial staff and they found his body to be very sound. Certainly, his pre-season trial with us, and a couple of weeks before that with the Coburg Tigers, showed he’s in outstanding physical condition.
With our first rookie-list selection, we felt we needed to develop a young ruckman, so we identified the two best ‘talls’ who didn’t get picked up in the National Draft – Angus Graham and Luke McEntee.
We basically pitted them against each other at training over a couple of weeks, and were most pleased to end up taking Angus as our Rookie Club’s choice.
Angus is a 200cm boy from King Island, who’s had a meteoric rise through the football ranks this year, having played more than 40 games of football for Assumption College, the Calder Cannons (TAC Cup) and Tasmania (the under-18 championships). He is still pretty raw, but we feel there’s quite an upside to him at just 18 years of age.
With our second rookie choice, which came courtesy of a pledge from our “Captains’ Club” coterie group, we were looking at either Daniel Nicholls of the Stingrays, who had trained with us during that two-week period, or ex-West Coast Eagle Jeremy Humm, who joined our sessions only three or four days before the rookie draft.
Nicholls was taken by Collingwood, which meant that we were able to pick the 22-year-old Humm, who’d spent five frustrating seasons at West Coast, after moving over there from North Ballarat as a 17-year-old.
The third rookie player we took last Tuesday was Cameron Howat, who deserves every opportunity to make it at the elite level.
Cameron started pre-season training with us back in late October and hasn’t missed a beat since.
He also has excellent aerobic capacity, and has shown us in all the various training drills that he’s got fine football nous to go with his physical attributes. Following a couple of good seasons of VFL football with the Box Hill Hawks (playing under new Coburg Tigers coach Andy Collins), he now gets his chance at an AFL club.
I’m sure members of the Tiger Tribe will join me in welcoming these young men to Punt Road and, hopefully, they’ll go on to enjoy long, successful careers at the Club.
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