Despite an almost non-existent pre-season, St Kilda midfielder David Armitage played all 22 games in 2016 and continued to play an integral role in the Saints’ engine room.
While he didn’t quite reach the heights he set in his career-best season last year, the 28-year-old was once again a bull inside, forging a strong link with Tom Hickey, Jack Steven, Luke Dunstan and Seb Ross around the ball.
Armitage started the year strongly against Port Adelaide in South Australia, before producing one of his best performances for the year in the narrow loss to Hawthorn at Aurora Stadium, where he amassed a season-high 35 possessions and earned two Brownlow votes.
He earned another pair of Brownlow votes for his dogged effort against Fremantle in Round 10, where he set a new club record for tackles and came within two of the AFL’s all-time record of 19.
While his outside game suffered due to his limited pre-season, Armitage went to work on the inside, leading the Saints for tackles and finishing just behind Steven for pressure points, pressure acts and clearances.
Armitage received life membership at this month’s Trevor Barker Award by reaching the 150-game milestone in the final round of the season. The former top-ten pick celebrated the mark in style by producing one of his best performances of the year to earn another set of two Brownlow votes.
Alan Richardson’s Views:
“‘Armo’ had a year that I can describe as up and down. He had a really positive start to the year, albeit off a pretty average preparation. He would have had the worst lead in to the year of any player who played as much footy as he did this year, other guys that had preps like him just didn’t play. He just wasn’t able to do the running required of him during the pre-season because of injury and that’s where he had such a big upswing the year before, where he lost five kilos and was able to run really hard on the outside and combine that with the strong physical work on the inside that he is renowned for.
“So we didn’t quite get the outside stuff from Dave this year – we got it against the Hawks down in Tassie and we got it in the last two games – if the year had of kept going Dave would have continued to get stronger on the outside he really finished the year well. What we never compromised was Dave’s really aggressive attack on the footy and on the man. In the Fremantle game he laid 17 tackles and that’s what we get from him; he just keeps hitting the opposition and taking hits for our team in terms of first possession and standing up in tackles to then give the footy off. He’s one that we need to go to another level, we need him to get back to his form from last year and then go to another level and that will come from a really strong pre-season in his runners. And then I reckon we’ll see the real David Armitage, the David Armitage that is a brute inside and hard to play on the outside.
“Not unlike ‘Gears’, he got the role to play our skipper last year and he’s growing all the time in that space. He sets a great example with the way he goes about it, he’s a real warrior type that people look up to and through his actions he demands others to follow him and get on board. He can be quite challenging at times on his teammates in a constructive way. He’s got an enormous amount of care, especially for his younger teammates. He’s really quite impressive in that space.”
The Numbers:
22 games
10th in the Trevor Barker Award
21.7 possessions (No. 5 at St Kilda)
9.7 contested possessions (No. 2)
5.7 tackles (No. 1)
4.7 clearances (No. 2)
3.2 inside 50s (No. 6)
48.7 pressure points (No. 2)
