Two young Bulldogs caught Senior Coach Brendan McCartney’s eye on Saturday against the Brisbane Lions, despite the Club not being able to register the desired result.
“[Jack Macrae and Marcus Bontempelli] are still young with so much to learn… about the game but you can see the raw talent,” McCartney said.
“The thing that stamps them both is that they are just so competitive.
“They want to play and they want to win – they don’t accept that they can’t win the ball, they don’t accept that it’s not their ball to have which is a great trait to have in a young player.”
That competitive drive is not isolated to Bontempelli and Macrae with a number of young Bulldogs thriving and showing signs that they can forge long term careers at the Club.
“We are really optimistic with the young blokes, we understand we’ve got to get more out of our talls but there’s enough there to build on,” he said.
While a focus of drafting young talent has been a high priority for McCartney, he said it’s equally important to put quality support staff around them.
The fruition of a stand-alone Footscray VFL side has allowed the Bulldogs to invest in this area of the Club and McCartney believes the additional resources will pay dividends long term.
“The senior coach can go to the draft with recruiting people and you can draft good young boys but you need brilliant people with them at development level – and we’ve now got that,” he said.
“We are really confident with the staff we have around our younger people.
“There’s going to be a little bit of a lag, that’s the patience side of it but our young kids are being taught the right way and they just need a little bit of time to come through together.”
McCartney said player development would continue to influence team selection this season but games would not be gifted without merit.
A preference for allowing young players to experience the full four quarters of football will also see Giansiracusa continue to make the substitute role his own, more often than not.
“We still want to give development opportunities to young players but only if they deserve it, only if they’re productive when they are out on the ground,” he said.
“[I’m] probably not totally in favour of playing young players as the sub – giving them only a quarter or quarter and a half.
“It’s sort of not a real look at the game and they just don’t experience the fatigue that you get when you play three or four games in a row, dealing with fast starts and then having to hang on late in the game.”
