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RayByrneForPOPE wrote:I would compare the 2 players like this.
Dale Thomas to a Licuria
Xavier Ellis to a Nick Dal Santo
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
surely you're kidding?????????? have you actually seen thomas in action??
I have watched all Gippsland Powers home games and watched them train all season, Thomas is a midfielder who goes forward and kicks a few goals he kicked four in the Tac G/F which would be the only time you have seen either of them play, Thomas is an under pack midfielder like Licuria plays where as Ellis is all class and plays identical to Dal Santo. Read all my other post for the last 3 months. I do live 100 metres from Gippsland Powers home ground.
All I am trying to say was we said we would pick the BEST player not a player for position or needs and I dont reckon we did. Xavier Ellis is the best player in my opinion (and alot of others)
From someone who knows[/quote]
And the club has said they didn't want another outside reciever, they wanted somebody with all the attributes you've accorded Thomas above. I repeat, you are a tosser!
JLC wrote:Great he can play basketball with Fanning and be another project player like Walker.
I am a bit sceptical on this selection as i am with Thomas. Not sure why we didnt go with the obvious choices.
jlc
Do you also post under the nick, Eddie Gold
Enough said...
Wouldnt you be sceptical after our recent draft history? Danny Roach, Luke Shackleton, Billy Morrison and Bo Nixon to name just a few. All of them came with big wraps but none delivered. I left out Davidson as he had the ability but was cut down by injury.
jlc
Derek Hine had his first draft last year. I don't see to many people complaining about Egan, Rusling, C3, etc. Lets not dwell on the sins of the past like a rampant bunch of Catholics.
Beautiful mover in traffic, very evasive and despite still having some way to go in terms of development and getting up to speed after concentrating on basketball for a few years, he still managed to average 23 possies a game in the TAC comp.
Of all the top draftees taken in this year's NAB AFL draft, it is Collingwood's number five pick Scott Pendlebury, who has taken one of the more unusual paths to the big time.
Pendlebury, a 17-year-old who already stands 190cm, was the Pies' second pick in last Saturday's draft - an effort more remarkable considering he was taken after his first football season at any level for four years.
The talented wingman, who could develop into a key position player, could well have been lost to football at the start of 2005 when he was offered a basketball scholarship with the Australian Institute of Sport.
Pendlebury had concentrated on the sport for the past four years playing both for Sale in country Victoria as well as for Diamond Valley team Eltham in Melbourne.
But just as he looked set to pursue a basketball career, the yearning to take up football again proved too strong and he instead decided to play for TAC Cup team Gippsland Power in 2005 in Victoria's prestigious under 18 competition.
"I was pretty close (to pursing a basketball career), I was up there (at the AIS in Canberra) for two weeks at the start of the year and I spoke to my family and said I wanted to play footy and Dad said to me 'back yourself and play footy because it will kill you if you don't have a crack."
Now after just one season, Pendlebury is a top five draft pick and one with arguably more scope for improvement than any other top draftee considering how little footy he has played in recent seasons.
"I got offered a (basketball) scholarship at the AIS but I knocked it back to have a go at footy so it looks like I made the right decision," he said.
"Collingwood came down to the draft camp and said we can't promise anything and I thought I might go between (picks) 15 and 30 but to be called out at five was a big thrill and I was rapt to stay in Victoria."
Pendlebury has his Gippsland teammate Dale Thomas for company now at Collingwood after Thomas was the Pies' first choice at pick two while another teammate from last year in Xavier Ellis went to Hawthorn at pick three with the trio providing the backbone of the Gippsland team, which won the TAC Cup in 2005 under the coaching of former Hawthorn and Western Bulldogs star Paul Hudson.
While Pendlebury had not played footy for four years, prior to this season, the game was never far from his thoughts.
"My older brother played for two years at the (Gippsland) Power so I was always having a kick with him so I was practising the skills even though I wasn't playing."
Now Pendlebury finds himself at the one of the AFL's biggest clubs and admits he still has to pinch himself to believe it.
"I walked into the Lexus Centre (Collingwood's plush training centre) and thought 'this who I play for now' so it is very exciting," he said.
Just to let you know ,Scotty has never been called "Pendles" in his life, for some reason he has always been known locally (in Sale) as "Dipper".When you think of it ,"Pendles" would be a disappointing handle for the young kid to have to wear during his career.
Cause he is not as a midfielder. He is bottom aged and already 190cm. By the time he is right to play he will be 19-20 yrs old and 193-4 cm.
He represented his school in those four years (Catholic College Sale) in the grand final of the country section of the HS shield and was voted best afield in the school's 2004 victory despite not playing regularly during the season.
Welcome to the Collingwood football club, our next Centre Half Back.
SCOTT Pendlebury has been on his best behaviour since becoming a Collingwood player three weeks ago.
He hasn't had much choice. Since moving to town with best mate Dale Thomas, national draft picks two and five have been living in a bungalow behind chief executive Greg Swann's Williamstown home.
"We pretty much just go home and sleep because our bodies aren't used to the workload. But we're loving it out there," Pendlebury said.
"It's like a little granny flat, we've got a couple of rooms and a laundry, so it's not a bad set-up. It's pretty nice out there."
As Thomas heads home to Drouin next Thursday night for his Christmas break, Pendlebury will go home to Sale, not quite as exhausted as he thought he might have been after his initial taste of an AFL pre-season.
The sessions have run far longer than he is used to, and the weights harder to lift, but the new boys have been let off some of the running work. The hardest part: just fitting in and getting to know everyone.
"For a couple of days, you'd walk around just thinking, 'Oh my god, there's Nathan Buckley and Brodie Holland, what am I supposed to say to them?' That was the hardest bit, so once you got used to that, it was fine," Pendlebury said.
"The days have felt pretty long sometimes, but all the boys say we're still in cotton wool. You wake up some mornings feeling a bit sore, but we're putting a lot of work into our bodies and hopefully just learning how to cope with it all."
Finding a place to slot in is something Pendlebury is used to, too. This time last year, he was getting ready to represent Australia in basketball at the Youth Olympics in Sydney, and then tour Germany with the national under-20 team.
He moved to Canberra on an Australian Institute of Sport scholarship, but after three weeks, decided he had done as much as he could do in that sport, called the Gippsland Power and joined in on the last month of pre-season training.
Having patched together only half a season of football in more than four years, the tall, bouncy winger played a full year for the Power, in its premiership on the MCG and for Vic Country at the under-18 championships mid-season, zooming up the draft order after the draft camp.
"It was a dream year to go back, really, but it took me a while to settle in. I had to sharpen up on my skills and get used to to the ball again, but after a couple of weeks, it was fine," Pendlebury said.
"It was finding a position for me that was the hardest thing. Once I settled down and found my spot, it all started to come together. That's probably the challenge again here now, just finding somewhere to fit in."
