Aaron Edwards could be a huge bonus for Richmond's forward line as Tigers head towards September Mark Hayes
Herald Sun
July 1, 2013IT will be six years in September since Aaron Edwards took the mighty mark that might have ignited the career of an enormous talent.
Then 23 and with North Melbourne, the world - and on that semi-final night a pack full of Hawks - were at his feet.
But, on a path trodden by so many unfulfilled talents, Edwards drifted, just as he had from West Coast after 2005.
And when he spent a night in a police cell after a drunken celebration last October after switching to his third club, what was almost certainly going to be his last AFL chance threatened to be a short one.
So his transformation eight months later is nothing short of remarkable.
Gone is the player who won the Liston Trophy and VFL goalkicking award in 2006.
Gone are the days when he'll be expected to fully shoulder the expectations of a team's forward line.
But in their place is a dedicated soul who has clearly taken on the urgency of his situation.
And alongside the once overused Jack Riewoldt as a forward line foil, he last night showed exactly how valuable he could be to the Tigers.
It wasn't just Edwards' nine marks - just two off his personal best in his 86th career match despite no longer being the chief target.
Nor was it his precision field kicking, his goal or his bullocking nature in contests and shepherds that have greater effect than his 184cm frame would suggest.
It was his ability - in just his fourth senior game in the yellow and black - to orchestrate the space in which his fellow forwards could best operate.
He led to contests when he was the best alternative. He led away - taking his backman - from the dangerous zone when Riewoldt and the Tigers' marauding midfielders were hot to trot.
He ran hard to block spaces in the Tiger backline when the Saints made rare co-ordinated assaults, taking three marks in the defensive half and effecting eight pressure acts in the attacking end.
But perhaps most tellingly, he appeared to have won the respect of his teammates who listened as he barked instructions as to where they'd be best placed.
Eight of his 19 possessions were contested, the bulk of them when the heat was still in the game - almost as if he was fulfilling the promise of earning respect that he made to his new Tiger mates after his inauspicious arrival at Punt Rd.
Edwards has too much ink and testosterone to ever be described in a floral sense, but it seems - finally - that his footy career is about to blossom.
And in what easily could have been the autumn of his career, he looks like being a huge, unexpected bonus for Richmond.
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