AFL 2024: Geelong midfielder Tom Atkins lauds young gun Jhye Clark after impressive pre-season
One of Geelong’s key players has praised the pre-season of young talent Jhye Clark as he looks primed for a big year. Plus, he sheds light on how they will replace Cameron Guthrie.
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Geelong midfielder Tom Atkins believes young Cat Jhye Clark plays in a similar vein to himself and is excited to see what the highly-touted talent can produce as a round one berth appears certain.
Clark, 19, was among his side’s best in their practice match against Essendon last week, where his manic defensive pressure came to the fore as he finished with 17 disposals, 10 contested possession and four clearances.
The eighth selection of the 2022 AFL Draft managed just one senior game last year after the club discovered a navicular stress reaction in his foot just days after making his debut.
But extra midfield opportunity beckons following the long-term injury to Cameron Guthrie who is set to miss the first two months of the season with a quad blow.
Veteran Mitch Duncan and the versatile Mark Blicavs were among the players thrown into the middle against the Bombers.
Atkins is confident that the Cats can stand up and fill the void left by Guthrie with tweaks brought in from incoming assistant coach and Geelong great Steven King.
He also lauded the strong pre-seasons of several Cats, including Clark.
“I love Jhye, he’s a similar player to me I guess. He works really hard at his pressure and he values the in and under stuff so I’m looking forward to watching him play and I’ve already enjoyed playing with him so far this year,” Atkins said.
“I think Jhye has been impressive. I think Tanner as well, not just in a couple of practice matches, throughout the whole pre-season he’s been a standout. And then you’ve got guys like Toby (Conway), who’s been playing well. Then obviously Ollie Dempsey played pretty well as well. The amount of young crew that we’ve got coming through, they’re just great people as well and they’ve got a great attitude to work so it’s really impressive.
“(Guthrie) obviously a super important player for us, works both ways as a midfielder and he’s very damaging with the ball. We saw evidence of it last year, what happened when he went down, what happened when ‘Blitz’ went down, we had Max Holmes step up, we had Tanner step up. So it just provides an opportunity for another one of our young guys to become a great player for us.
“With (Steven King) this year as well we’re changing the way that we play in the midfield where there’s new things that we’ve been working on so it’s exciting to see what it’s going to look like.
“We’re really flexible in there, everyone’s got their own personal strengths and it’s great for us as midfield group we can sort of tailor how we want to play in there based on what personnel is in there. Having Mitch in there as such an experienced player, good ball user, as well is always helpful.”
The ever-determined Atkins conceded he found it difficult to take it down a notch when he first returned in the pre-season.
“It’s probably been something I’ve had to temper. We had such a such a long break that as soon as I got back, I was way too keen sort of get into things and we were still, at the time, three months away from playing against opposition. Now I feel I’ve had a good bodywork behind me,” Atkins said.
The St Joseph’s product is eager to play in front of the redeveloped GMHBA Stadium with the new Selwood Stand, a venue he lived just next to.
And he believes there is still more that can be done to revamp the now 40,000 seat stadium.
“I used to live across the road. So I used to walk the dog. And I’ve sort of seen the whole process of them ripping it down to them building it back up over the last couple of years,” Atkins said.
“It’s wild what can happen, and I don’t think it’s done – really. There’s always more developments happening. I think there’s more things more things to come from the stadium.
“I think we got a bit of a glimpse of it on Friday, with the crowd sort of moving to the bottom part of the Joel Selwood stand and to imagine that completely packed out, it’s hard to imagine what it’s going to look like.”
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Originally published as AFL 2024: Geelong midfielder Tom Atkins lauds young gun Jhye Clark after impressive pre-season
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