He’s enjoyed a rookie season for the ages but Port Adelaide’s Connor Rozee faces an uphill battle to win the AFL Rising Star award
Port Adelaide standout Connor Rozee faces an uphill battle to win AFL Rising Star award on Friday, despite spectacular rookie year.
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He has enjoyed one of the greatest debut seasons ever but Port Adelaide’s Connor Rozee is likely to come up short when the AFL Rising Star award is announced in Melbourne on Friday.
While Power assistant coach Dean Brogan has described Rozee as the best first-year player he had played alongside or worked with, the 19-year-old is opposed to a player who broke an AFL record this year.
Carlton midfielder Sam Walsh — the No. 1 pick at last year’s national draft — recorded the most disposals by a first-year player since Champion Data started keeping statistics in 1999.
Walsh’s 554 broke the previous record of 539 held by Greater Western Sydney star Toby Greene in 2012.
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Walsh, who is favoured to finish in the top-three of the Blues’ best and fairest award, played every game for the Victorian club, averaging 25.2 disposals and failing to have at least 20 disposals in only three of his 22 appearances, illustrating his consistency.
He is an overwhelming favourite to become the first Carlton player to win the Ron Evans Medal as the AFL’s best young player.
Utility Rozee — taken at No. 5 at last year’s draft after playing in a SANFL league premiership with North Adelaide in his first-year of senior football — enjoyed a standout year for the Power.
Of the club's three 2018 first-round draft selections — Zak Butters (No. 12) and Xavier Duursma (18) were the others — Rozee was the pick of the bunch.
An athletic beast, he earned a Rising Star nomination for his electrifying five-goal performance against Brisbane at the Gabba in round three and finished as Port’s leading goalkicker with 29.
Playing primarily as a medium forward with the occasional run on-ball, Rozee became the youngest leading goalkicker in Power history.
In the past 20 years, only two other players have won their club’s goalkicking in their first year on an AFL list — West Coast’s Troy Wilson in 2001 and GWS’s Jeremy Cameron in 2012.
Both were key forwards.
Rozee played all 22 home-and-away matches for Port, averaging 15.3 disposals, 3.5 marks, four tackles and 1.3 goals.
Power great Kane Cornes acknowledged that Walsh would probably win the Rising Star but believes Rozee will be the better, more influential player.
“I have made the odd big call in my time but I think Rozee is the next Nathan Fyfe (Fremantle Brownlow Medallist),’’ he said.
“He has matchwinning attributes to win games off his own boot.’’
To be eligible for the Rising Star, a player must be aged 20 or under on January 1 that year and have played 10 or fewer AFL games at the start of the season.
A panel of experts will vote on a five-to-one basis on the 22 nominees this year, with the player with the highest number of votes winning.
Rozee is vying to become the third Power player to win the medal, following Michael Wilson in 1997 and Danyle Pearce in 2006.
He is certain to finish in the top three, with Richmond’s Sydney Stack his biggest rival in the likely battle for runner-up.
Duursma is also in the running for the award, having earned a nomination in round six.
The Crows did not have a nominee.