MOONEY COLUMN
YOUNG players can change a team’s fortunes the moment they arrive.
Joel Selwood didn’t change everything at Geelong, but he stepped into the club and all of a sudden we were better for having him.
And that’s exactly what Gold Coast has now with Matthew Rowell. The Suns have the next Joel Selwood.
Rowell has everyone watching. I watched the Suns’ clash against West Coast live on Saturday night and I have not seen a kid in his second outing dominate a game of football like he did.
And he dominated, clearly best on ground. He’s an absolute bull.
Not even Joel was as big as Rowell at the same age, particularly around the upper body.
This kid has stepped in and proved he is pure class from the word go. Against arguably the best midfield in West Coast, he bullied them.
He took on tackles, broke tackles, twisted his hips, got his hands free and got the ball out to his runners with such brilliance. It was incredible to watch.
This kid will be a champion. He will be the next captain of Gold Coast. He will make players around him better.
When Joel arrived at the Cats, he went off with the blood rule in his first or second training session.
He split his head because he went in that hard. All of a sudden we realised that we needed to train harder and we became a lot more physical at training. And you must train for it. There’s no point training nicely. When you get to the finals and the game is at its hottest, you are unable to compete.
We were brutal at training and Rowell will make the Suns brutal at training.
You can see Stuart Dew has put in a lot of work with contested footy, getting numbers around the ball, winning the footy on the inside and getting the Suns’ game going on the outside.
If you don’t win the ball on the inside, you are not going to win. This kid will change the way they train and change the way they compete.
It takes a very special individual to do that and they very rarely come through your doors, particularly at that age.
They might mature later in their careers, like Jimmy Bartel, Joel Corey, Gary Ablett, Cameron Ling, Matty Scarlett, Steve Johnson and Paul Chapman.
It took those boys years to develop and Geelong took a period of time to train us up to reach those heights of the premierships.
But Selwood trained like that from the moment he walked in the door and he made us older players think, “You know what? Maybe we need to up the anti as well”.
That’s what Rowell will do to that club.
It’s too early to make predictions about how good he will be in the future, but even if he’s on par with Selwood, we’re looking at a champion of the AFL.
For me, that’s good enough. It’s more about what he will bring to that footy club and it’s Selwood like.
If you look at the pure size of Rowell, he is a brute.
He’s a big unit.
Just look at his shoulders. And this is a kid who has probably only been in the gym for two years.
With two or three years in the gym, and barring injury, Rowell will be a bull for a long, long time.
Patrick Cripps is another one. From the moment he walked in the door, Cripps has carried Carlton. He’s done it with no help.
Joel was lucky. He had players alongside him who were on the verge of becoming superstars.
The Blues will only get better and better, and I believe the Suns will be the same with Rowell.
He has some good players around him in Lachie Weller and Noah Anderson. If Rowell didn’t have the amazing game he had on Saturday night, we’d be talking about Anderson.
The Suns are just starting to get it right.
They have been a basket case and the laughing stock of the AFL since they came into the competition.
But I just hope now, having found a gem in Rowell, that this might be the stepping stone the club needs.
The Suns just need to hold on to him because every club will come knocking.
And this is where Stuey Dew has become really important to the club. We can see that the way they train and the way they play is completely different.
Round 1 was a shocking game, but even in the preseason, they were up for the contest.
Critics will say, “It was only the pre-season”, but you must stamp your authority somewhere and they were a hard, contested team.
Dew is training his boys up to win the ball in numbers and spread from there.
They have a forward in Ben King who could be a super player for them. And if you have a great culture and you can start winning games and teach the kids the right way to play, keeping them won’t be a problem.
When players are getting smacked every week and aren’t enjoying themselves, that’s when they get homesick. That’s when the likes of Tom Lynch, Steve May and Dion Prestia leave because they search for greener pastures.
But this could be the new beginning for the Suns.