62 rounds since...

[hammo]

A Swans player was nominated for the Rising Star award.

The last player was Paul Bevan round 4, 2004.

Are there any theories on why this is the case? I would have thought Malceski, Grundy or Dempster would have at least earned nominations.

Do our players:

- debut at a later age
- develop at a later age
- does Roos not promote young talent
- are they ineligible because they play for Sydney and are therefore perceived to be too negative to be nominated for such an award
- or a combination of the above??

[Sanecow]

I think Roos tends to give them assignments ("roles") that do not involve cutting sick and racking up a huge number of possessions or goals.

[SimonH]

Eligible players simply don't play for us in anywhere near the same numbers. Malceski is the perfect example; ineligible by the time he started getting a regular game.

It's not that there are no sub-21 year olds getting debuts for the side (see Grundy, Schmidt, Phillips); it's just that we have fewer of them playing fewer games, and spending more time on the bench in the games they play. So we will have few (in 2005 and 2006, no) rising stars.

The larger volume of youngsters for other sides making debuts, and keeping their spots for longer, are either:
a) because they're more desperate (lots of injuries and/or their senior players are no good and/or they're getting experience into youngsters at the back end of a season where they won't make the 8), or
b) the youngsters are obvious elite players, usually top 5 draft picks, who arrive at the club ready to play senior footy.

Neither one applies to the Swans. We've had just one top 5 pick (McVeigh) since Goodes won the RS in 1999, and he didn't play a single 'best player list' game when he was eligible (2004).

Says little to nothing about the long-term viability of our list management, because the '20 or younger' cut-off is arbitrary. A 21 year old still has potentially 10 or more seasons in him.