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For footy followers of all codes, persistent detractors, supporters and curious onlookers alike, the wait is over. Former rugby league star turned AFL convert Israel Folau had his first competitive Australian Rules Football match on Saturday.
Folau demonstrated that like his fledgling team, he has a considerable amount of work to do in the next twelve months before the Greater Western Sydney Giants enter the league in 2012.
Folau was generous with his time speaking to the media pre-game, and tried to hide his nerves as best he could. The GWS media manager was far more forthcoming – Big Izzy was in a tizzy, nervous as could be before his first competitive game in his new code of football.
Although it is impossible to be certain how Folau will fare as an AFL player on the basis of a single match, the performance from the former Storm and Broncos star was far from encouraging, and the Greater Western Sydney coaching staff will be wondering how their million dollar recruit will justify a spot in the team’s starting line-up next season.
The body shape and size of Folau resembles those of AFL key forwards Nick Riewoldt and Jonathan Brown, suggesting he is best suited to playing in a key forward role. However, his complete lack of understanding of the game renders this an impossible ask for the AFL newbie.
The problem for Greater Western Sydney coach Kevin Sheedy will be where to play a 195 centimetre, 100 kilogram monolith of a man with no previous AFL experience.
He doesn’t read the play well enough to play in a key forward role, and he looked all at sea playing in the backline on Saturday.
Folau lacked any tactical sense of where to position himself in a contest for much of Saturday’s match. Port Adelaide’s Jay Schulz was given far too much latitude by Folau to move around the forward line.
Folau’s lack of physical pressure allowed Schulz to lead into space and mark easily, and does not bode well for Folau’s prospects as a key defender.
If the Giants’ coaching staff view Folau as a key defender in the long term, Stephen Silvagni – AFL Team of the Century full-back and Giants’ list manager – has his work ahead of him in teaching Folau the finer points of playing in defence.
So the dilemma for the Giants is where to play Israel Folau?
If Sheedy, Silvagni and the GWS coaching staff are able to teach him how to stand his direct opponent more closely, then he could potentially play at centre half back, although the hard running Riewoldt or Brown would savour a match up against a far less experienced opponent in Folau.
They have cut far better and more experienced opponents to ribbons in the past.
The only other positional option for Folau is to play him in the ruck. He is shorter than most ruckmen, but has an excellent vertical leap and is very strong.
These physical attributes mean he would likely be serviceable as a ruckman, assuming he is given considerable tutelage from ex-AFL ruckmen over the next twelve months.
Folau’s athleticism and pace will allow him to follow up his ruck work with second efforts once the ball falls to ground, but he lacks the aerobic capacity to play extended periods of time in this position at the moment.
The AFL has been keen to recruit pure athletes of late, and then mould them into AFL players, a move which has drawn criticism from supporters of all codes of football. AFL followers would rather see positions on team lists be given to players who have taken a traditional path in the game, working their way up from junior to senior ranks.
Followers of rugby league see the luring of ex-league players Karmichael Hunt and Israel Folau as just a marketing ploy and resent rugby league’s best talent being taken by the AFL.
Although Folau has a full year before he will enter the AFL proper, it is difficult to see him being anything short of a liability, no matter where the Giants’ coaching staff choose to play him.
A supreme athlete Folau may be, an AFL player he is not….yet.
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