Living up to top billing
By Lyall Johnson
The Age
August 3, 2005
After promising much during a solid preseason, Richmond trotted on to the MCG in round one to take on Geelong and played the type of the football you would expect from a club that had earned the wooden spoon the previous year.
The thumping even had coach Terry Wallace musing whether his time over summer would have been better spent in the pub than wasting it on the training track. About the only bright thing to come out of the otherwise bleak day was the display by the young man the Tigers had selected as the best player in the draft, Brett Deledio.
"Lids", as he is known around the club, adjusted immediately to the speed of the game, showed poise and good decision-making and ended the day with eight kicks, one handball and six marks.
Most outsiders who had merely heard the hype about the 17-year-old from Kyabram - described in reports as "a Chris Judd type" - had speculated he would take time to develop.
But for those around the club and others who had seen him first-hand, his debut was no surprise, and neither is it that he has gone on to play every game and become one of the favourites to collect the National Rising Star award for the best first-year player.
Wallace recalls that although he had high hopes for Deledio, he wasn't expecting too much too soon. At the same time, he had no doubts about putting him in the side first up.
"He'd been (at the club) for five or six months so I knew by then that he was going to handle it all right. As soon as you saw him running around over pre-season and saw how professional he was in his approach to football you knew he was going to handle it fine," Wallace said.
Part of Wallace's overall impression was struck with a cricket bat and not a football. The day after arriving at the club, Deledio, a handy pace bowler, was playing in a cricket match at Punt Road.
"That first day when he played in a social game he just belted them all over the park," Wallace said. "He's an all-rounder. I think he's a better bowler than batsman, but he dispatched them all over anyway. I think he hit five sixes in a row."
Being an all-rounder in his football is probably what Wallace sees as the biggest plus for Deledio, whom he likes to compare more with the Western Bulldogs' Brad Johnson than Judd.
"I have always been a rap for Brad Johnson because he is that type of player. He was an All-Australian wingman who was just as capable as ruck rover and was capable of being a 60-goal full-forward because he hurts them above his head," Wallace said. "And I see this kid as having that ability, he can rotate his positions. He's not just a midfielder or he's not just a forward."
AFL national talent manager Kevin Sheehan has seen a lot of young players over the years but the thing that impresses him most about Deledio's first year is that he is doing it at such a young age. The West Coast's Judd might have had a more spectacular first year, but Sheehan points out he was more than half a year older.
"It might not sound much but it makes a big difference," Sheehan said. "For a 17-year-old to do what he's done, he hasn't got the body developed as much as, say, a Chris Judd, but he's been super for a kid of his age with a lighter frame. Judd, being that little bit stronger and more mature in the body, and with his great athletic talent was able to dominate right from his first match whereas Deledio has been able to slip in and contribute valuably in every match and is growing by the game, getting better week by week.
"The boys who have had two pre-seasons . . . it makes an enormous difference in the way you are able to go about it. He's just had the one, his first at an elite level, so that's why it is so different, he's a genuine first-year player."
Wallace, who is not a fan of the Rising Star rules that allow second or even third-year players to be judged alongside first-year players, agrees.
"I don't really like the 10-game rule because you are really comparing apples to oranges," Wallace said. "He's only about three weeks out of playing under-18s again this year, and yet he is competing against people who are considerably older than him and yet setting the standard."
Tiger veteran and former skipper Wayne Campbell suggested Deledio would be the "raging favourite" to win the Rising Star award. "I can't think of too many blokes who have come into the club and done what he's done in their first year," Campbell said. "The thing is his attitude is as good as his ability that's the thing that makes you think down the track he is going to be a very, very good player for a long time.
"I'd almost say he is just about the best decision-maker at our club already. He does the right thing and makes the right decision 95 per cent of the time. He does the basics very, very well, and that's what the real good players do and then he's got that little bit of magic on top of that as well."
While obviously impressed by Deledio's year, Sheehan was diplomatic about who might take out the award and suggested the race was wide open. "I think this year has been a fairly even group. I think that he, along with the likes of (the Bulldogs' Ryan) Griffen and (Hawthorn's Lance) Franklin have had some terrific moments. And don't forget the older boys. Even the next four weeks, whoever finishes off the best might end up being the winner," he said.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/articles/2005/08/02/1122748634690.html
