What Clarko says
Thanks for continuing to follow my countdown from player 48 in Will Langford to number 2 in Jarryd Roughead.
Today's feature player is Ryan Schoenmakers who will wear the number 25 guernsey again this year. Ryan's just completed his third season at the Hawks having been drafted at the end of 2008 - the same year as Shane Savage and Liam Shiels. All three draftees have become pretty entrenched in our senior side over the last couple of seasons.
Not withstanding, we've experienced a bit of pain at our footy Club since our 2008 premiership victory with the premature retirements of guys like Trent Croad and Robbie Campbell - but it did enable us to get some game time into players like those I mentioned above including Ryan who's now played 35 games. He experienced a little bit of grief last season having to recover from two injuries to his lower legs - one injury in a preseason match and the other mid-season.
Ryan's played a fair amount of his footy in the back half at Hawthorn despite playing a lot of his junior footy at Norwood as a forward. We've developed him thus far as a backman but feel we have the flexibility in the years ahead to play him forward or back.
Us coaches have been pleased with his rate of progress. At this same stage in Ryan's career Collingwood's Ben Reid had a game tally in the single figures. We feel like he is tracking in the right manner and we expect that with more consistency week-to-week this year he's going to graduate to becoming an important player in a key post in the years ahead.
We see Ryan as a big part of our future together together with a number of other players including Isaac Smith, Paul Puopolo, Shane Savage, Liam Shiels and the like. We think that with these type of players coming through we'll have the depth necessary to launch into a finals campaign and hopefully go all the way in season 2012.
Tomorrow's feature player is number 24 Ben Stratton. I don't think I need to express to Hawks supporters how much we missed this bloke in 2011, together with Steve Gilham. We're really looking forward to having Ben fit and available again for what we hope is a full season in 2012.
Until then, leave your thoughts below on Ryan Schoenmakers.
What are your thoughts?
What impresses you most about Ryan? How can he develop his game in 2012?
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