Bailey Rice (16 VFL games)
“It took a little while for Bailey to get his head around becoming an elite athlete, but he embraced that and as the year continued to unfold he really developed and evolved in facets of his game and with his preparation. His training performance became really strong and in the last month of the season he averaged mid-twenties coming off half-back. He’s a player that will eventually go into the midfield – he will be able to flip. He loves the contest; he loves a scrap; he’s a really good defensive player; he’s a beautiful klick, not unlike his old man. For those that turned up in the VFL finals, they would have seen him marking off half-back. That’s where he will play while he develops, but I eventually see him moving up to the midfield.” – Alan Richardson
Nick O’Kearney (11 VFL games, four development league games)
“Nick came in with a really strong work ethic and commitment to work on his game – he’s a young pro. He played some pretty solid footy early on and then broke his arm, which set him back a bit. Obviously that took some time for him to come back and it probably took a bit of time for him to get some confidence in his arm and confidence in the contest. His last quarter of the year was quite exciting; his ability to find the ball was impressive; his use was good; his attack on the opposition was also a positive. Nick played a combination of forward and midfield and held his own. He’s not a big but it doesn’t worry him, he still whacks in when he needs to whack in, he still tackle strongly when it’s time to put pressure on the opposition. He’s a very positive young man that has a bright future.” – Alan Richardson
Nick Coughlan (12 VFL games, three development league games)
“When you first come in it takes a good six to 12 months to understand the philosophy and the way we want to play as a backline and I reckon late in the year at VFL level we saw some real improvement from a positioning point of view and reading the game, so there was some real positives there. He would have been frustrated at times during the year because of the situation of playing in development; it didn’t help his development. It was good to see late in the year his form at VFL level. It was a shame he couldn’t play finals because of injury because I think he would have really thrived in the finals atmosphere. First year coming in to a new club is a strong learning year, so I think his next pre-season is really important for him to put on some size, understand the game plan, come out of his skin a little bit more, learn to use his voice more and be one of the real leaders in the backline.” – Rohan Welsh
Nathan Freeman (four VFL games, five development league games)
“‘Freezer’s’ here for a long time, not a short time. So we knew when you get a player that hasn’t played in two years, your focus is to build his body up to make sure that he can develop some resilience in his body so that he can play at the level. The role that ‘Freezer’ will play for us is a very dynamic one – it’s an outside midfielder/high forward that is going to be a really ballistic player that’s going to put a lot of stress on his body. So we knew that going in and the program reflected that. As we started to filter him back into games there were a couple of hiccups, but that was very much expected, but what was pleasing was he was able to play seven games at the end of the year. He should get a fair bit of confidence out of that back end of the year, we certainly do. He wasn’t at his best, but he was able to continue to play but got through. We’re still quite excited by what ‘Freezer’ can do to complement our midfield.” – Alan Richardson
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