FIRST FLIGHT

Young gun Thilthorpe to face Hawks at UTAS

ADELAIDE will unleash the highest ever draft pick in its history with Riley Thilthorpe to debut against Hawthorn.

But Crows senior coach Matthew Nicks says the club and its supporters have to be “really mindful” of what expectations they have as the boyhood Adelaide fan gets his first crack at the big time. While he hasn’t yet settled on a team to take on the Hawks, Nicks revealed that the No. 2 pick of the 2020 Draft would play his first AFL game for the club in Launceston on Sunday. “Riley will play this week,” he said

“That’s a really exciting thing for our footy club and for the squad.

“We look forward to him have an opportunity at the highest level.

“It’s going to be a challenge for him, he’s a young key position player but we think he’s ready to step up and have a crack at the highest level.”

But Nicks said Crows fans had to be realistic about what Thilthorpe could produce in his first crack at AFL level, especially as a young key forward. “From a training point of view you don’t get many better, we talk about being a pro and he’s that and some,” Nicks said.

“Sometimes we have to pull him back on the amount of load he is trying to put through his body.

“It’s a huge step up, from an expectation point of view we understand that he is a young key forward.

“It is about tempering expectations, it’s not all on Riley on how he performs.

“If he plays his role for the team and we can get the job done that’s what we are looking for.”

Nicks said Thilthorpe had a large smile and gave him a “bit of a nod” to say “I’m ready” after he told him he would play his first AFL game for the Crows.

“If we asked Riley early on in the year he would have said he was ready for Round 1,” he said. “But I know he has done a hell of a lot of work over six weeks just working on his game and the off-field understanding of how we play.” Thilthorpe will likely come in for Billy Frampton, who hasn’t kicked a goal since Round 1, but Nicks said the Crows were yet to finalise their team for the clash against the Hawks. “That has been our conversation of late,” Nicks said. “Billy has been playing a really important role for us, he’s the first one to admit that we haven’t seen his weapon as much as we would like.

“And Elliott (Himmelberg) has been playing some good footy at the lower level, so we are still to make some decisions in that space.”