COACH BACKS TALENT
ADRIAN Fletcher hit the ground running in his new role as coach of the Tasmanian Devils TAC Cup team yesterday by declaring four Tasmanians would get drafted by AFL clubs next month.
On the same day Tasmanian teenagers Chayce Jones and Tarryn Thomas were rated in the top 30 draft hopes by the AFL’s statistics specialists Champion Data, Fletcher said it was an exciting year for Tasmanian football in terms of next month’s draft.
Jones, the Tassie Mariners captain, and Thomas, the Mariners’ star onballer, were ranked 12th and 13th respectively by Champion Data ahead of the draft. And Fletcher is certain both are on the cusp of AFL careers.
“Chayce Jones will go top 20, I’ll put my house on that,” Fletcher said. “Tarryn Thomas will go top 10. “Then you’ve got Fraser Turner, who will probably go as a thirdrounder in the draft, and Nick Baker, a tough half-back flanker with good AFL aspirations.
“It’s an exciting year for Tasmanian football.”
Fletcher, 49, brings vast AFL experience to the table.
He played 231 games at Geelong, St Kilda, Brisbane and was captain of Fremantle, and kicked 97 goals, in a career spanning 13 seasons.
He then went on to be an AFL assistant-coach for 15 years, working under Mick Malthouse at Collingwood, Mark Thompson at Geelong and Leigh Matthews at the Lions.
Fletcher, the 2018 coach of the Allies in the AFL’s under-18 division one championship, left his role as Academy and High Performance coach at AFL Queensland to take up the development role in his home state.
His mantra is intensity and opportunity.
“We have the talent coming through here in Tassie,” Fletcher said. “The state under-16s went really well this year — they won their championship — and we know the under-15s have got some really good players.
“We know we are going to get four drafted this year.
“So the state is not going too bad but we just need to be consistent, make sure we create intensity and be holistically looking at our players to give them the best chance to play the game they love at the highest level.
“I want to show this state has some great players and that we can consistently get players drafted.”
Development hubs have been established in the state’s south, north and northwest to find and nurture future players.
“We will get intensity into the hubs and that will give the Tassie kids the best chance, if they are good enough, to get themselves get drafted,” Fletcher said. “But we are not just about getting kids drafted, we are about getting kids to play the game and enjoy the environment and if they don’t get drafted we want them to go back into community footy.”
Meanwhile, the TSL roster is being drafted and scheduled to for release in December.